I’m a firm believer in how our ability to recognize and understand the biases that motivate us goes a long way in helping to modify, or stop, potentially bad behavior. This is especially interesting to me when it comes to behaviors associated with our personal finances. A recent article posted by Bloomberg highlighted 2 that are extremely detrimental to the health of your retirement savings: Present Bias and Exponential-Growth Bias. The former puts your present wants above your potential future needs; the latter is a failure to realize how a dollar today grows over time....
Key Ages and Dates for Retirement Planning
Sharing the following from Next Avenue, courtesy of Emily Brandon’s new book, Pensionless. It’s a great summary of key ages and dates important to the retirement planning timeline. These ages and dates are a bit like mile markers on your retirement road-map. Knowing the ramifications associated with each (i.e. the ability to contribute more, the age at which you can start taking benefits without penalty, the age and time by which you need to make distributions from your retirement accounts) are critical to one’s decisions made about and in retirement....
Retirement Planning for the Self-Employed
The nature of the job market has shifted coming out of the last recession. As unemployment stayed persistently high for a few years after the recovery, many chose to “go it alone” when employers weren’t hiring. As a result, those opting for self-employment and freelance work rose in numbers. Indeed today nearly a quarter of workers work for themselves, either full-time or part-time. They can make good money at it too, with almost half earning six figures.
There are plenty of perks to self-employment: you set your own hours, you choose who you work with, and you can spend all day in your pajamas and still bill hours if your business is set up that way. However, being self-employed also means you are responsible for providing yourself with your own benefits (i.e. healthcare, retirement plans, life insurance, etc.)....
The Cost of Student Debt to Retirement
As the school year winds down, high school seniors are making that crucial decision about which college they will be attending this Fall. I remember when I was in that similar position, and I can say with absolute certainty that my future ability to save for retirement was not even a blip on my decision-making matrix. Perhaps it should have been...