Helpful Articles
Planning,
Pre Retirement
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.
Ten Steps To A Better Financial Future. Make a financial plan, use automatic payroll deductions to save, stick with a sound allocation plan, pay attention to financial costs, learn from your own and other’s mistakes, keep emergency reserves, consider downsizing home, get some financial education, get professional help when needed, and prepare your family for your death.
How Much Income Will I Need in Retirement? This article exposes the fallacy of developing a retirement plan based on using 70% to 80% of your working income. If you are over 40 years old and not yet retired, you can get a much better estimate of your retirement needs.
Selecting a Program for
Retirement Planning (PDF File)*.
Watch out for
Financial Dynamics Improves
Lifelong Planning (PDF File)*.
This technical article describes the background used for a presentation
to the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors in the October 24,
2003 regional conference in
Provident Living. This article points toward the urgency to do some financial planning to avoid a destitute and dreary retirement. It's aimed at the baby boomers' problems but other generations will be affected as well.
Mad as H,E, doubleQ! (PDF File) *. Reader’s Digest, as well as financial sources that should know better, advocate planning methods that knowingly give optimistic retirement projections thereby misleading people into thinking their savings are sufficient. The article explains some of the main fallacies.
Saving for Retirement (PDF File)*. Here is a simple method for a person to estimate how much to save for retirement. It’s only a rough estimate, but it has more realism than many of the commercial programs touted by the financial industry. It’s not a good idea to spend very little time in planning for retirement which could well be about one-third of your life, but if you are so inclined take a look at this.
Do-It-Yourself Retirement Spreadsheets (PDF File). Almost everyone who knows how to make a spreadsheet tries to do self-planning for retirement. If you are one of these, the article will help you do a better job and give you better perspective with some common-sense.
Retirement Planning: Morticians vs. Obstetricians. This article will help give you some perspective that’s between the view of pessimists (Morticians) and optimists (Obstetricians).
The Biggest Retirement Planning Myth. Almost all planning methods include some very unrealistic and hidden assumptions. This article shows the huge effect that these things have on retirement forecasts. Unlike most articles on this site, this article is for professionals or those who understand financial planning equations.