Search results for retirement
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Posted
Aug 07 2009, 05:58 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog The Dough Roller.
The memorial for Michael Jackson cost the city of Los Angeles $1.4 million, according to The Associated Press. While most of us won't be remembered at the Staples Center in front of 11,000 people, funerals are expensive.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, a traditional funeral costs about $6,000, and many funerals run well over $10,000. Costs include the casket, embalming, the service, cemetery site, and grave liner. In short, death is big business in the United States.
And to make matters worse, most of us plan a funeral while dealing with the emotional trauma of the death of a loved one. We find ourselves making important financial decisions in the midst of an emotional crisis with very little time to consider our options. Our sadness for the loss of a loved one, moreover, sometimes expresses itself in high cost funeral decisions.
With a little effort, however, we can plan a respectful memorial without breaking the bank. What follows are a number of tips, resources and links to help you plan a low-cost funeral.
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Posted
Jul 31 2009, 06:33 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog The Dough Roller.
One of the features of many 401(k) retirement plans is that you can borrow money from your own account. While 401(k) plans are not required to permit plan participants to take out loans, many plans do.
Much has been written about the pros and cons of 401(k) loans. One of the potential drawbacks comes into play if you leave your job (voluntarily or otherwise) while you still have an outstanding loan from your 401(k) plan.
When this happens, you generally have two options: Pay back the loan in full within 60 days, or don't. If you follow the second option, the IRS will treat the loan as an early withdrawal from your 401(k) plan and, with some exceptions, smack you with a 10% penalty of the outstanding loan amount AND require you to pay taxes on the distribution.
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Posted
Jul 22 2009, 09:18 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Grace of GRACEful Retirement is 60 years old, and she plans to work for nine more years. Otherwise, she won't have enough savings for even a modest retirement.
So a recent study was sobering news for her: Nearly half of retirees leave the workforce earlier than planned.
Here's how she summed it up: "Job loss, age discrimination, family duties (such as caring for a spouse or one's parents) or a personal health crisis make a mockery of well-laid plans."
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Posted
Jul 20 2009, 01:45 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This guest post comes from Frank Curmudgeon at Bad Money Advice.
I'd been hoping for a Brett Arends column I could say something nice about, and I got my wish in the form of "Baby boomers to kids: Kiss your inheritance goodbye." The theme of the article, or the first few paragraphs anyway, is the trend of dropping a nice inheritance for the kiddies from the retirement plan in reaction to the market swoon.
I myself am just a bit too young to be a baby boomer and my parents just a little too old, so I am merely an outside observer on this one. But I have to ask those kids of boomers out there: You were expecting to inherit something? From the Me Generation? Really?
A few paragraphs into Arends' column, he abruptly starts talking about annuities. This may seem like a non sequitur, but it follows nicely from the idea that retirees may be jettisoning the legacy for the children from their planning.
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Posted
Jul 06 2009, 08:35 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This guest post comes from Mr. GoTo at Go To Retirement.
Our vacation home is on a lake in a rural area. The nearest small town is a 20-minute drive. Although we do not live on a farm or have lots of land, it is a country lifestyle with a waterfront bonus. When we spend time here, I often think about the positive and negative aspects of retirement in a small town or rural community.
Benefits
Our neighbors across the street retired years ago and live at the lake full time. Our neighbors next door are retiring this summer and plan on living at the lake after they sell their city home and farm. That has caused me to think even more about the combination of small town country living and retirement for us.
Cost of living. Food is more expensive in our local grocery stores. If we were to drive another 30 minutes, we can find larger chain groceries with lower prices. When we start living here for longer periods, that might make sense.
Everything else that we buy in our rural community seems to be less expensive, including utilities, insurance, and maintenance services. I think that a lot of that is related to real estate. The land is cheaper, houses cost less, and property taxes are lower compared with city living. This flows into all other cost-of-living categories.
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Posted
May 07 2009, 10:48 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This guest post comes from Frank Curmudgeon at Bad Money Advice.
A reader named Trent pointed me to a story that "60 Minutes" did recently, "Retirement dreams disappear with 401(k)s." It's not their best work, and I'm not one who thinks much of their best work.
Helpfully, the CBS Web site gives a near transcript of it, so I can easily quote the way over-the-top copy read by the reporter, Steve Kroft.
It was a gray, chilly morning in midtown Manhattan and a line of unemployed, mostly white-collar workers stretched for blocks around the Radisson Hotel. More than 1,000 middle managers, stockbrokers, consultants, secretaries and receptionists had come hoping to find a job.
It was called a career fair, but there was no merriment -- only a whiff of desperation.
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Posted
Mar 27 2009, 06:37 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog The Dough Roller.
Picking your first mutual fund is kind of like a first date -- scary at first, but later you wonder what all the fuss was about. And with the recent market volatility, investing in the stock market can be downright horrifying.
A couple years ago, a close relative spent some time with my family and me. We'll call her Susie (not her real name). Susie was 31, had one daughter (cute as can be), and had no retirement savings (not so cute). Her employer not only offered a 401(k), but also matched 100% of all contributions up to 6% of Susie's pay.
We got to talking about why she'd never starting saving for retirement, and her answer was illuminating -- she was intimidated.
Sure, there were times when money was tight, but one of the biggest hurdles for her was not knowing what to invest in. We spent about 30 minutes looking over her investment options, and I'm happy to report that she enrolled in her company's Fidelity 401(k) plan and began contributing 7% of her gross pay.
If you or somebody you know is in a situation similar to Susie's, this article is for you.
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Posted
Mar 23 2009, 04:15 PM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This guest post comes from "vh" at Funny about Money.
This month's statement from Fidelity shows another $10,000 loss in my big IRA, despite my financial advisers' having moved as much as possible into conservative investments, gold and cash.
At the age of 63 -- damn! soon to be 64! -- I'm watching my retirement investments melt away. That IRA has dropped in value from a high of $326,000 to $193,000. Total savings have dropped from more than $600,000 to less than $420,000. Meanwhile, we owe $100,000 more than the investment house is presently worth, and I took out a second on my own house to renovate said investment.
I'm wondering if it's time to do something completely, utterly, totally contrarian. Hang on to your hats, folks, because this is one scary idea:
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Posted
Mar 18 2009, 02:57 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Another blogger has joined the tiny chorus of personal-finance writers outraged about what The New York Times calls the "newest frontier" in debt collecting -- going after debts of the dead.
Why the outrage? These bill collectors are asking surviving family members to pay when they're often under no legal obligation to do so.
"Is this the height of tackiness or what?" said Andrea of Fools and Sages in a post called "From dead to worse."
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Posted
Mar 18 2009, 06:56 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This guest post comes from Mary at Simply Forties.
I have to admit, fear of becoming a bag lady is starting to creep up on me.
Record numbers of women are living alone these days and we're living longer. We're starting to worry about what is going to happen to us when we're too old to work or when no one is willing to hire us.
I'm in a good place in my life right now with an exceptionally good job, which I do from home, and which allows me a great deal of free time. I'm paying down my debt and socking away money as quickly as I can but, having gotten a late start, I have some concerns about getting where I need to be financially by the time I need to be there.
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