Retirement Planning

Living at a level of comfort you’re used to when you retire requires taking steps to ensure that you have enough money. Retirement planning involves examining your goals for retirement, and then figuring how much you need to meet those objectives. You need to figure-out when to start investing and saving, how much you need to save, and what you may expect to receive from other sources such as Social Security. Retirement objectives, costs and resources are issues you need to take stock of before you quit working. Otherwise, you may find that you can’t afford to stop working.

Review of Free Retirement Planning Tools

U.S. News & World Report featured a review of five free retirement planning tools that can be found online. The review includes retirement planning software from: AARP Fidelity MetLife T. Rowe Price The U.S. Department of Labor The general conclusion is that the tools do "an inconsitent and poor job," often ignoring critical factors such as longevity risk , inflation and medical expenses. Source: U.S. News & World Report Full Story

Retirement Planning with TIPS and Longevity Annuities

Gowri Shankar of the University of Washington has published an article on the use of Treasury Inflation -Protected Securities ( TIPS ) and longevity annuities. Shankar suggests that a combination of TIPS and longevity insurance provides an optimal strategy when the objective is guaranteed retirement income . Shankar demonstrates that the combination affords the ability to sustain relatively high withdrawal rates while minimizing the probability of financial ruin in retirement. The strategy also...

Financial Advisors Struggling with Retirement Planning Compensation Models

One of the core compensation models for financial advisors involves fees that are based on client assets under management. As a result, it is naturally in an advisor's interest to gather, maintain and grow as many assets as possible. Retirement planning is proving to be a business challenge for many advisors as retirement involves asset decumulation rather than accumulation. In other words, advisors are in a situation where they are reducing assets under management and subsequently the...
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Putnam CEO Sees Market for Annuities and Other Retirement Income Products Reaching $5.5 Trillion by 2020

Putnam Investments President and CEO Robert Reynolds has been a consistently vocal advocate of retirement reform. Reynolds believes that the retirement planning landscape requires revamping so that annuities and other sources of guaranteed retirement income play a more prominent role. During a recent industry conference, Reynolds discussed the notion of a "product allocation" in the context of retirement finances: A crucial part of the reform effort is helping to protect workers` savings as...

The Top Reasons to Consider an Annuity

Annuities are complex, largely misunderstood, and often misrepresented in popular financial media.

The reality, though, is that these financial products are becoming an increasingly important part of the financial plans of millions of people around the world.  In fact, annuities are a vital component of the retirement planning process.

While the negative aspects of annuities tend to receive broad coverage, there are several fundamental reasons why one should consider the use of these financial products.  The following list highlights the core issues that are addressed through the use of annuities:

1) ...

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