Retirement

For the first time since 2006, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) didn’t release next year’s projected premiums and other data for Medicare Part D policies in July. Instead, the CMS has been reworking the program to keep Part D 2025 premiums from rising substantially, increases that would be announced around election time. Significant

Retirement planning gets real after age 50. People realize they no longer have the luxury of time to make up for financial mistakes. Making smart money moves in your 50s to achieve financial independence is essential. Here are three financial moves for people in their 50s: 1. Control your housing expense. Develop a plan to

A lot of couples sign prenuptial agreements to protect an inheritance. Some people have been gifted monies that they want to safeguard. Others may be expecting a large sum in the future. Often, the couple’s parents have suggested the use of a prenup. After all, the family does not want to see their monies divvied

There are things in life that are not a matter of opinion. They are a matter of math. We do not believe that financial decisions, whether they are about Roth IRA conversions, a snowbird lifestyle, or a gifting program for your children and grandchildren, should be based on an inclination or an unexamined “gut feeling.”

After years of favoring online and telephone scams, a number of crooks are drifting back to old-fashioned theft involving paper checks. In the last year, a number of individuals, including employees of the U.S. Postal Service, have been arrested or indicted for stealing paper tax refund checks. Over $3 million of such check thefts were

While Christians and Christianity have taken many often-justifiable hits over the past couple thousand years, the actual person of Christ has remained compelling, even irresistible, for most, including me. Having followed His story for many years, I confess I was surprised, then, to only recently learn the directive that Jesus gave most often in the

Careful research done by PhD economists conclude we face a huge retirement shortfall. We are about eight to nine years away from Social Security’s inability to pay full benefits; all boomers are past age 60, and the typical Gen Y and Millennial is predicted to do a little worse or much worse than the cohorts

Many retirees are finding that retirement isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and they’re returning to work in some way. In fact, the number is in the millions, as indicated by the results of a recent survey of retirees conducted by T. Rowe Price. They report that 1.5 million retirees had reentered the workforce

Age discrimination in medicine is real and it can affect someone you love. Our society holds physicians in high regard. People tend to trust a doctor for a lot of reasons, one of which is the extent of their education. But they’re human and they certainly make mistakes. We are hopeful that with artificial intelligence,

More and more households led by someone age 55 or older have debt, according to recent research from the Employee Benefits Research Institute (EBRI). In 1992, 53.8% of older households had debt. But the percentage steadily increased from 1998 through 2019 before dropping a little from 2019 to 2022, the latest year for which data

Thirty-five years ago, Ken Dychtwald, PhD, wrote a landmark book, Age Wave. It was a thoughtful and well researched analysis on the impact of the baby boom population on the U.S. Dr. Dychtwald (Ken) went on to write many more books (19 in all) about the aging of America, but in this writer’s opinion, Age

Really, I don’t want to be doing this. I just want a fact-based discussion on retirement income security, so we can fix what needs fixing and stop worrying about things we shouldn’t be worrying about. Is that too much to ask? Apparently, it is. Back in August I published an entire study through the American

What role do family members play in caring for frail older adults and younger people with disabilities? What can society do to make it easier for them? I got thinking about this when Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance suggested that families could lower their daycare costs if “grandma and grandpa” took on more child

One of the biggest obstacles investors face on the road to a secure retirement is the pursuit of perfection. This may seem counterintuitive. Our culture touts “practice makes perfect”, we should be continuously training to achieve perfection. Unfortunately, in the world of investing, striving for perfection generally leads to inaction and missed opportunities. Continuously searching

You probably find lots of junk mail in your mailbox. But, if you are one of the 50 million beneficiaries with Part D prescription drug coverage, either through a stand-alone Part D drug plan or incorporated into a Medicare Advantage plan, pay attention now. Buried in that stack of mail will be the Annual Notice

It’s an issue for some adult children with aging parents. When the elders need care, there is resistance to using the parent’s own funds to cover the cost of caregiving. It’s puzzling. For example, faithful son (FS) has been taking care of his mom by himself for 25 years. He lives in her home and

The simplest oversights can cause the biggest problems for heirs, especially those intended to inherit retirement accounts. Over the years, I’ve seen a number of court cases in which the logical beneficiary of a retirement plan is denied the benefits because of an incomplete or outdated beneficiary designation. In the latest case, a woman worked

With more than half of marriages ending in divorce and disagreements over money regularly cited as one of the foremost reasons for the split, don’t you think it might be a good idea to talk about how we can avoid financial disagreements? Well, that might be nice, but we can’t. We can’t avoid disagreements in

CTA and Estate Plans and Trusts The Corporate Transparency Act (“CTA”) is a mandate that requires most smaller closely held business entities to file a rather invasive report with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network of the Treasury Department. The CTA has been written about extensively, but it seems that most business entities, and their owners

Forbes screened more than 800 U.S. locales for everything from climate risk to crime to doctor availability. Those that made the cut were compared on leisure offerings—from the arts, fine dining and learning to hiking, skiing, watersports and golf. Here are the top 25. By William P. Barrett, Senior Contributor Jill and David DeForest Colvig