[Updated on October 11, 2018.] The official announcement for 2019 Social Security cost of living adjustment (COLA) came out. The COLA in 2019 will be larger than in 2018, but it's actually bad news. Social Security COLA goes by the increase in [...]
Social Security Claiming Strategy Calculators Compared
[Updated with new calculator. Removed calculators that are no longer available.] Mike Piper is the author of the book Social Security Made Simple. In addition to explaining how Social Security works, he recently created an interactive calculator [...]
You Can’t Eat Your House. Or Can You?
The purpose of my recent absence was to look into a Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) for my aging mom. In a CCRC, residents start with independent living, and as their need for assistance progresses, they will receive increasing levels of [...]
Plan It and Update It
Note from the editor: This is a guest post from long-time reader KD. KD contributed Looking At the Big Financial Picture back in 2012. I also interviewed KD in Lifestyle Design: Choose Where You Live. Now six years later, KD shows us how to use a [...]
Maintaining and Executing An Estate Plan
You make your will and trust. The real test for whether they worked or not only comes after you die. Between now and then you have to keep your will and trust updated. Reader Steve kindly shared his experience in maintaining his parents' estate plan [...]
Switching Brokerage Account Into A Trust: Fidelity, Vanguard, Merrill Edge
This is part 2 of our experience in setting up our basic estate planning, which included a revocable living trust. Please read part 1 Will and Trust Through Employer Legal Plan for the background. After we signed the trust documents at the [...]
Will and Trust Through Employer Legal Plan
Like many large companies, my employer offers a legal plan as part of our benefits package. At open enrollment in October or November, employees can sign up for the next year. Among other things, the legal plan covers basic will and trust. I signed [...]
Financially Comfortable and Pivot
I participated in a panel discussion on Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) at a South Bay Bogleheads meeting on March 12. South Bay Bogleheads is a local group of people who read or post on the Bogleheads Investment Forums. Here's a gist of [...]
Roth 401k Makes People Have More Money To Spend In Retirement
Reader Joel left a comment on my blog post The Case Against Roth 401(k) and asked about a study by Harvard and Yale professors which concluded that Roth 401k makes people have more money in retirement than Traditional 401k. The study was done with [...]
