Photo by Kaizen Nguyễn on Unsplash Let’s face it, for most people, the first half of 2022 has not been the best from a financial perspective. Inflation has been around 8% for some time, with little signs of slowing down so far, empty shelves are becoming the norm, and your savings may have taken a nosedive! What can you do? The bad news is that you have no control over what inflation, interest rates, or market returns will be in the future. The good news is that jobs are plentiful and the pandemic is over. So, with summer in the air, let’s focus on what we can control to improve our financial ..read more

We always talk about how much we make in terms of gross income. However, no matter how much we get paid, the amount that we actually take home always feels too small. To add insult to injury, payroll companies give us pay stubs that are impossible to decipher, and good luck trying to ask your payroll department for an explanation…Understanding the breakdown of your pay stub will help you better understand your tax withholding and optimize your savings. So here is a breakdown of the major items in your paystub, from your gross pay to your take-home income. Everyone is different, so little diffe ..read more

Open enrollment affects several areas of your overall financial plan, including health care costs and benefits, life and disability insurance, retirement planning, tax planning, and more.  So why only devote a few minutes right before the deadline to it? It’s worth doing some homework, using the suggestions we provide below as a start. It’s that time of the year again. Open enrollment for the coverage year 2022 goes from November 1 to December 15. We get various notifications from our HR departments, brochures that explain all the benefits, and maybe some live sessions from HR with invite ..read more

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay One of the hardest questions for anyone planning for retirement is to translate what their savings plans mean for their ability to replace income in retirement. In a previous post, we dubbed it the $64,000 question of retirement planning. You have money in your 401(k), IRAs, and taxable accounts. But what does all that mean in terms of the retirement income that you can expect it to deliver when you retire? Are you contributing enough for the retirement you want? Will you have enough by your desired retirement age? Or when will you accumulate enough to sustai ..read more

Photo by Max van den Oetelaar on Unsplash A big concern for people seriously thinking about retirement is whether they are on track for the retirement they want. The question is particularly relevant today as financial gurus talk about a possible new normal, with low-interest rates potentially indicating low future returns. Consider this situation: You set a goal, estimate your annual savings towards retirement, and have a target year in mind. You use a retirement calculator and find that at the current rate of savings, you fall short of your goal. What do you do? You need a budget  The f ..read more

Employer retirement benefits have evolved. We used to think about the 401(k) or 403(b) plan as a place where we put pre-tax money to grow tax-deferred and get some additional compensation through the ‘employer match.’ Not any more. More and more plans now offer other benefits that are at least as important to help you save for retirement: the ability to make Roth and after-tax contributions. But what are these options and when does it make sense to use them? Roth contributions In the typical 401(k) or 403(b) plan, you make pre-tax contributions: In the year you make the contribution, that amou ..read more

A key goal when you retire is to generate a steady level of spending and not run out of money too soon. For many, the retirement spending strategy involves a combination of social security, taxable accounts (T), tax-deferred accounts (TD) like 401(k)s or IRAs, and tax-exempt accounts (TE) like Roth accounts. Because of the different taxability across accounts, how you withdraw from them can make an important difference to the level and longevity of your retirement spending. Research shows large differences in ending account balances or the expected number of sustainable years across different ..read more

Having a strategy to optimize our current resources is crucial to successful retirement outcomes. When it comes to choosing savings accounts, there are many options available, including 401(k), IRA, Roth accounts, and HSA. But how do you choose among them? Read more to find how. Review their key features and how to combine them to improve your retirement plan. All information in this post is provided for illustrative and educational purposes only and should not be considered tax or investment advice, or a recommendation to buy or sell any type of securities. There are a number of accounts desi ..read more