Helpful Articles
Planning, General
These are articles that were written to help develop ideas for journalists that work for The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Kiplinger’s, Smart Money, AARP, newspapers, financial web sites, etc. They’ve been used as a source of quotes for these publications.
Safe Withdrawal Rates. In an attempt to keep retirement planning simple, analysts and journalists oversimplify retirement planning--most often producing results that exhaust investments prematurely. This article explains the problem and what to do about it.
The Best Present. Here is a reference for the kind of things you should have ready if you become incapacitated or die. Your spouse, children, caretaker and executor will be forever grateful!
Multiple skills provide resilience. Learning new skills continuously throughout our lives will provide us with the capability to survive the technology and physical changes that inevitable will face us.
Watch your planner's planning! This article points out very common problems with current planning programs on the Web as well as those used by professionals. Unfortunately, most of these errors led to overly optimistic forecasts.
Is Debt Friend or Foe? This is both a national and personal question. Both answers will affect your plans
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On Being Conservative. Using conservative assumptions and making provisions for emergencies has turned out to be very good for me during my 20 years of retirement. An excerpt of this article appeared in the August 2009 issue of Financial Planning.
Growing Savings, Income and Investments Now. People are searching both for ways to save more in this environment as well as to find prudent ways to invest their money. This article may give you some ideas that will help you find places to spend less, earn more and invest appropriately.
Planning and Investing in Difficult Times. Most people have significantly smaller savings now that the market has tumbled so. Recovery is likely to be very long in coming. The article displays some of my responses to a Business Week journalist in Q & A format.
Using Historical Financial Data. Even many planners forget that financial statistics represent the past, not the future. This article shows some of the most misleading aspects of historical data.
Is there a way out of this economic mess? The future is not very bright for many future retirees. This article describes the difficulties and suggests some solutions.
Doing Better Than Your Peers. Here are some tips on things that you can do to live better than your peers in retirement considering the environment that I believe most of us are going to face in the future.
Head in the Sand Planning. There are a number of major problems with forecasting that the financial industry and the government trivialize to present an optimistic view of the future. This article shows how you can make some simple adjustments to make more realistic projections.
What? Retirement Funds from Your Home? This discusses the wisdom of planning to get some money from your home for retirement. In general, if your plan shows you are going to have to sell you home to provide funds, it’s better to downsize as early as possible even though there are situations where reverse mortgages may help.
Inflation and Debt in Retirement Planning. This article shows four planning related things you can do to help protect your future from the devastating effects of inflation.