Q. My SGLI premium--- Serviceman Group Life Insurance--- is due to increase soon when I turn 70. I am trying to figure out if I should continue, or drop the $200,000 policy. I also have another level-term policy for $150,000. The premiums for that policy are about $1,800 a year. We have no…
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Fresh off a week at the beach, the ugly reality hits me in the face: it’s an election year. It was nice to ignore the news while I chose between ceviche or grilled snapper and reading on the beach or boogie boarding. But now I’m back in the real world with my concerns about what happens after…
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So far this year, stocks have given investors a white-knuckle ride. By February, global stocks had dropped more than 10 percent. By April they recovered. But then they went nuts. Some blame Great Britain for voting to leave the European Union. Three days after the United Kingdom’s June 23rd…
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The reader was upset. He didn’t know it yet, but the “tax torpedo” had just hit his retirement. That’s the name I gave the taxation of Social Security benefits back in 2003. His note asked if there was some mistake in his income tax calculations. They didn’t make sense. If he took an extra $1,000…
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It’s human nature to complain about constraints on our freedom mandated by Congress. Required Minimum Distributions – RMDs – are no exception.But if you’re going to have a problem, the RMD has to rank as one of the best. For one thing, it means you’ve lived past your 70th birthday, which is a good…
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On June 23, citizens of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. While there has been much speculation leading up to and since the vote, many of the longer-term implications of the referendum remain unclear, as the process for negotiating what the UK exit may look like is just…
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Q. My husband and I are retired and in our seventies. We live on about $8,000 a month from a combination of Social Security, an inherited annuity, my pension, and required minimum distributions from our IRAs. I also take $700 a month from a brokerage account to pay on a home equity loan. Our…
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If there is one lesson we should have learned from the last decade of nutrition recommendations and research, it’s that there is no demon food group. Dietary fat was nutrition’s ugly stepchild for decades. But, finally, we have come to terms with the idea that fat isn’t so terrible. In fact,…
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Last year, my friend Bob and I strolled across a soccer field during one of his lunch breaks. We were talking about his wife–and her relationship with their financial advisor.No, they weren’t having an affair. But she had been asking the same question a lot. “Why do we have to pay this guy…
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Will you suffer if your retirement income is only 60 percent of your earnings before retirement? A recent article on the Bankrate.com website suggests just that. I beg to differ--- as I have for decades. The financial services industry claims that we need to replace 70 to 85 percent of our…
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Q. We are a retired couple. We have two debts that we have not paid off. One is a Sallie Mae student loan at 3.875 percent. We are making payments of $500 monthly. We also have a 30-year home mortgage at 3.5 percent that has 27 years remaining. We owe $147,000 on the home with a monthly payment…
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On average we spend $9,523 on healthcare, per person, in the U.S. This comes to about three trillion dollars each year and climbing. It has grown from seven percent of GDP in 1970 to 18 percent of GDP today. Half of this spending is publicly funded, primarily through Medicaid and Medicare. But…
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The stock market is cheeky. It’s also patient. It baits investors onto one side of a boat. It waits. And it waits. Then it tips them over. When investors recover from the cold-water shock, they climb aboard again. But the market lulls the lot to the boat’s other side. It waits. And it…
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The cost of living higher on the hog has risen again. Nothing wild, mind you. It’s just what happens when yields on stocks and bonds decline. The lower they go, the more investment cash you need. This year the Life of Riley Index has a price tag of $4,774,478. That’s an increase of 8 percent from…
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We all want to find the fountain of youth. And we’d like it to be pleasant to partake of, thank you very much. If we don’t get sparkling water from a legendary fountain, a simple supplement or two is an acceptable alternative. Research in animals, including primates, has uncovered a potential…
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Mrs. Short owned two multi-million dollar oceanfront homes. One was in Victoria, B.C. It’s one of the most expensive cities in Canada. Her other home was in Bermuda. When I was a university student, she paid me to do odd jobs around her garden. On one occasion, before she left for Bermuda, she…
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Q. One of your recent columns was very interesting to me. It was from a 61-year-old woman with a 74-year-old husband. I am 62 and my husband is 78, so there are similarities. However, you assumed (or maybe the writer included the information but it was not in the printed question) that her…
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Modern life can feel like a to-do list in a never-ending loop - if we let it. Wake up, go to work, grocery shop, prepare food, do household tasks, wake up, go to work… Some days you might get to throw in an exciting change of pace like filling up the car with gas or picking up the dry cleaning. …
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I walked across the football field in the dark. It was a shortcut to McDonalds. All I had to do was climb the schoolyard fence and drop deftly to the back of the parking lot. I lowered myself from the fence before plunging into the blackness of an open shed. That’s when I learned where…
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Remember this number: 234.242. It’s the average consumer price index for the third quarter of 2014. It's an important number because it will help determine whether 60 million Social Security beneficiaries get a benefit increase in 2017. Yes, you read that right: 60 million people will be…
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