A Financial Literacy Blog for All
Note from Susie Q: When I published my post on Social Security, I promised my Canadian readers a similar post about the Canada Pension Plan. It took a while, but here it is! Graeme Hughes, the Money Geek, was kind enough to write it for …
Once you know how much you want to save for retirement, you need a plan for building that savings. Your annual retirement savings target depends on your total savings target, how many years you have until you want to retire and how much risk you …
Retiring is one of the riskiest financial decisions you will make. On the day you retire, you can calculate your net worth. You won’t know, however, how much retirement savings you need because you don’t know: how much you will actually spend on day-to-day expenses …
The difference between Roth vs Traditional plans for retirement is primarily about tax rates. Other differences relate to when you can or must withdraw your savings. With one exception, the same withdrawal rules apply to both 401(k)s and Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), so I’ll refer to …
Social Security is a key pillar in most American’s retirement plans, especially those approaching retirement. Many younger workers, though, have serious concerns about whether they will receive any benefits at all. Even at current levels, Social Security benefits are not enough to support most people. …
Case Study To help set the stage, I created a fictitious person, Mary, whose finances I use for illustration. Mary is single with no dependents. She lives alone in an apartment she rents. She makes $62,000 per year. Mary has $25,000 in a savings account …
All investment decisions are a trade-off between risk and reward. In this post, I’ll focus on how risk and reward affect your decision among the investment options in your employer-sponsored retirement plans. If you look at returns over very long periods of time, well diversified, …
Once you have the basics covered – food, housing, transportation and a few other things, saving for retirement is likely to become a priority. Many governments have retiree income programs, such as Social Security in the US. However, as is discussed in this post, many …