Retirement

Chicago River with boats and traffic from above in the morning Getty Last week, between cookouts and fireworks, it came to my attention that the City of Chicago CAFR (Comprehensive Annual Financial Report) for 2018 has now been issued, alongside the actuarial reports for three of the four pension funds (the police are a bit

If Kylie Jenner can become a billionaire, what is your excuse for not being on track to be a millionaire? (Photo by Kevin Tachman/Getty Images for Vogue) Getty If Kylie Jenner can become the world’s youngest “self-made” billionaire at 21, surely the rest of us can manage to become mere millionaires over our lifetimes.  The

It’s become a cliché in so many ways. It’s called “The Honeymoon Period.” As the name implies, it derives from that short phase of marital bliss that extends from the nuptial blessing through to some undefined time following the end of the couple’s honeymoon. It’s the exuberance of experiencing something fresh, something new, something exciting.

Lend a planning hand to a loved one with chronic illness. Getty If you or a loved one is living with a chronic disease,  such as Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, or Alzheimer’s, your estate planning likely should reflect that challenge. Chronic illness is more common than most imagine More than 130 million Americans are living with

Talk to your financial advisor about your chronic illness. photo credit: Getty Getty If you or a loved one have a chronic illness, it’s imperative that you talk frankly about it with your financial advisers. You don’t necessarily need to hire advisers who have specific expertise in dealing with chronic illness, just advisers with sufficient

John W. Weeks Bridge, Dunster House, Havard University, Cambridge, Boston, Massachusetts, America Getty Major universities have big endowments in the tens of billions. These funds, often a result of donations, support financial aid, teaching and improved resources for the universities. Perhaps more importantly, with billions of dollars to invest you can afford some of the

The state of Illinois, it turns out, has a teacher shortage; with a study commissioned by the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of  Schools (IARSS) reporting that Superintendents in 85% of the districts surveyed believed that they have either a major or a minor problem with teacher shortages. Broken down, 32% deem the problem “serious” and 53% “minor”; however, when asked to forecast their expectations for 2020 and 2021, the percent predicting a “serious” problem grows to 51%.  In

Investing to create wealth is more about maximizing your returns after fees, than minimizing your expenses. The top 3 mutual funds in my just-completed analysis are not the cheapest. Nevertheless, these funds beat their benchmarks by the widest margins for the last 10 years  and are still managed by the people responsible for the fund’s track

A diagnosis of breast cancer changes your life but you can proactively improve your finances and add legal protection. Following a diagnosis of breast cancer take proactive financial and steps. photo credit: Getty Getty A diagnosis of breast cancer will affect every aspect of your life, not just health issues. It will affect finances, life

To me, understanding how a 401(k) works should be easier than reading a food ingredients label. You should know at a glance how your plan works. Yet millions of retirement savers don’t have a clue, even though a 401(k) structure is simple: It’s a group of mutual funds where your money is pooled with thousands

A $6 billion loan approved from the International Monetary Fund this week will ease Pakistan’s debt problems, for now. But it won’t stop China from turning the country into the next Sri Lanka. China has been very close to Pakistan in recent years, for a couple of reasons. One of them is that Pakistan is

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg © 2019 Bloomberg Finance LP With the U.S. Treasury 10-year yield close to 2% and many other government bonds in Europe and Japan yielding negative rates. Does it still make sense to hold bonds in a

WESTMINSTER, CO – OCTOBER 10: Air Force Veterans Bill Hill, 86, and Merrill Hudson, 94, head back to their room at Greenridge Place Memory Care Community after they were honored during a ceremony for veterans. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post Denver Post via Getty Images Americans bought only about 60,000 stand-alone long-term care (LTC)

Believe it or not, we now have the best window to buy dividend stocks that we’ve had in decades. Two proven 100%-return indicators just flipped to “green.” The conditions we’re about to see are rocket fuel for companies growing their dividends like weeds. As usual, we’re going to zig while like-minded money managers (you know,

An updated spreadsheet of the greatest fund managers is available to download at the link at the end of this article. Getty At the midpoint of the year, it’s time to review the performance of the greatest fund managers. I have received many emails from readers asking how to use the spreadsheet listing the greatest fund

Part I of this post covered some troubling issues with Qualified plans and IRAs that arise with the arrival of SECURE Act, particularly as they apply to professionals and business owners. Since it’s been suggested that many professionals and business owners don’t retire in the conventional sense, this legislation poses some unique challenges to tax,

Photocredit: Rob Grabowski/Invision/AP Sometimes it’s a hard thing to swallow when you realize that a personal icon has failed to maintain the standards you set for them.  Lance Armstrong, whose career I followed with admiration, conquered testicular cancer and went on to win the Tour de France seven times.  He would go on to inspire

ASSOCIATED PRESS Increasingly, the old family homestead is not being passed down to the family when the parents die. Older parents are taking advantage of reverse mortgages to pay off credit cards and to escape poverty and debt. This reduces equity in the home and often leads to foreclosure, leaving traditional heirs with nothing but

By Laurence J. Kotlikoff, Next Avenue Contributor United Income, a financial planning advisory service, just released an important study called, “The Retirement Solution Hiding In Plain Sight.” Using government data and proprietary software, it calculates how much money retirees have lost, and are losing, by making mistakes about when to start claiming Social Security benefits. United

America is trying to turn China into another Japan. When it comes to trade relations between the two sides, that is. Washington wants to be in control of US-China trade. The same way it wanted to be in control of the US-Japan trade back in the 1980s. That’s has been obvious from the very beginning