Planning For Unexpected Costs Before You Retire

Your retirement planning needs to incorporate more than just investments. Your open heart and your relatives can combine to threaten your retirement savings – savings you soon may need. Learn the true cost to your future before you write that well-intentioned check. If you’re close to joining the other side of 50, you have probably noticed already that patterns are …

Fatherly Advice: 6 Timeless Financial Tips Our Fathers Taught Us

Although many things have changed in the financial world over the past 20 years, some nuggets of financial advice are timeless. Here are a few tips that have remained constant for several generations. Always Spend Less Than You Make Wealth creation is not about how much you earn. It is about how much you save.1 Spending more than you make …

QCDs: Donating and Gift Giving Through Your IRA

A qualified charitable distribution, or QCD, allows you to distribute funds from your IRA to an eligible charity (a 501(c)(3) organization) as long as you’re 70 1/2 years of age or older. Since the gift will go directly to the charity, you can exclude the dollar amount of the gift from your taxable income up to $100,000 each year. However, …

High Inflation – How Long Will It Last?

In March 2022, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), the most common measure of inflation, rose at an annual rate of 8.5%, the highest level since December 1981.1 It’s not surprising that a Gallup poll at the end of March found that one out of six Americans considers inflation to be the most important problem facing the …