How to Make a Retirement Income Plan How much do you need to retire? Where will your retirement paycheck come from each year? In this class, we’ll illustrate what a detailed retirement income plan looks like using a series of timelines to chart your future income, expenses and account withdrawals. You’ll learn what it takes to create a crystal-clear picture of your future retirement income. Topics we’ll cover: • How to make a retirement budget and the most commonly overlooked expenses • What a future income timeline looks like • How to calculate the amount you’ll need to withdraw each year • M ..read more

Sensible Money was founded by Dana Anspach. She hosted the official Grand Opening party on Thursday, May 10th, 2012, on the patio outside the office, which was located on the corner of 5th Ave and Marshall Way in Old Town Scottsdale. You can check out more pics on Sensible Money’s Facebook page. History of Sensible Money Dana began her career as a financial advisor in February 1995, working for Waddell and Reed in Grand Junction, Colorado. In November of 1999, she moved to Merrill Lynch, also in Colorado. She quickly realized she wanted a planning-based practice; not one focused on selling pr ..read more

Most people who work in the U.S. have heard of Medicare, the federal health insurance program. If you’ve worked in the U.S. long enough to be eligible for Social Security, then at 65, you’ll be eligible for Medicare (some disabled people and people with End-Stage Renal Disease are eligible prior to age 65). What many don’t know, though, is that there are several parts to Medicare. Medicare Part A is hospital insurance and is the more commonly known feature of Medicare. It covers inpatient care, including care received while in a hospital. If you meet certain conditions, such as having a q ..read more

Retirees face new tax issues when they stop working or shift to working part-time. Once retired, you are likely to have less income than during your peak working years. While that implies lower taxes, you’ll likely have multiple sources of income. And that complicates tax payments for those who are used to a single source from their employer. There will be Social Security, required minimum distributions from tax-advantaged retirement accounts, and perhaps cash flow from investments, rental property, pensions, annuities, freelance or part-time work, etc. Instead of getting a single paycheck wit ..read more

Individual Retirement Accounts, called IRAs, are one of the most common and accessible ways to save for retirement. Over the years, the rules governing IRAs have changed. Many people think they know how an IRA works or what they can do with it, but every week I still surprise people with some of the IRA facts I share below. 1. What is an IRA? An IRA is an Individual Retirement Account. When you contribute to an IRA, you are putting money aside for your future so you will have some money when you retire. Think of an IRA as a type of savings account where you can invest in many different types o ..read more

Dana here. We, as a firm, received an incredible honor this August. We found out Sensible Money ranks among the 2022 Inc. 5000’s list of fastest-growing privately owned companies in America. As the founder, I’m a bit awe-struck that we’ve been able to take our work from myself and one and a half employees to the fifteen-strong and growing team we have today. I never set out to grow fast and furiously, nor did I set a goal to rank as one of America’s fastest-growing companies. However, I did set other goals – values-based goals. And I believe our success results from those guiding principles ..read more

Tax-deferred growth is the winning feature of retirement accounts — traditional IRAs, SEP-IRAs, SIMPLE IRAS, SARSEP IRAs, Roth IRAs, 401(k)s and the like. But, except for distributions from a Roth IRA, you can’t defer income taxes forever. In fact, upon reaching age 72, the IRS requires that you start withdrawing as ordinary income a portion of the money in your retirement accounts each year and pay taxes on it. (The start date for your first required minimum distribution or RMD was age 70½ before the passing of the SECURE Act in December 2019.) When do you need to know about RMDs, what accoun ..read more

You’ve thought about retirement for years. Now, here you are getting close, and you feel… anxious, nervous, and for some, even terrified. After putting away money for so long, the thought of spending that savings makes all kinds of questions race through your mind. What if the market goes down? What if you don’t have enough? What if a health situation arises? How should you withdraw your money? Once a year as a lump sum, or monthly more like a paycheck? Should you take money out of your retirement accounts or out of the brokerage account investments in stocks and mutual funds that you have acc ..read more