One of the important tenets of financial and retirement planning is to strategically match your upcoming liabilities (such as college funding, a second home purchase, or retirement income) to assets in your savings or investment accounts. Notice we mention two types...
How to Give Your Home to Your Children Tax-Free
Before the days of estate taxes, children simply moved into the family home and took over the master bedroom after their parents died. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy anymore. There are several ways to give a home to your child. And a few are tax-free. But in order...
May 2015 Monthly Insight: Setting Your Retirement Income Strategy
Over the last month or so, several folks have asked Don and me several questions regarding taxes, retirement savings, and the tax issues associated with drawing money out of a retirement account. Although I’m sure you’ve heard myths and all the long-standing...
Time Management For a Happy Retirement
For a happier retirement, the key isn’t how much free time you have to spend, it’s how you manage whatever free time you have. That’s the conclusion of a fascinating new study about time management in retirement I think is worth heeding. Earlier research has found...
Even at the Top, Making Plans for Life’s ‘Third Chapter’
When Sherry Lansing, the former chairwoman of Paramount Pictures, decided to end a 40-year career in the rough-and-tumble of Hollywood, the question she faced was where to direct all the energy and drive that had propelled her to the top of the industry. Lounging...
Online Tools Can Ease the Burden of Being Executor of an Estate
Being named the executor of a family member’s estate can be overwhelming: At at time when you’re grieving, you’re called on to handle a host of unfamiliar administrative duties. Daniel Stickel learned that firsthand when his father died in 2013. Mr. Stickel has worked...
Tips for the Future Care of Disabled Family Members
Christine Salerno is like many other single working mothers with small children, but her days are often packed with even more emotional highs and lows: Her 4-year-old daughter, Lily, with soft brown eyes and a wide smile, was found to have Rett syndrome, a rare...
Childhood Dreams Can Inspire Rewarding Second Careers
Ever since Sandra Colony was a child, when she was spellbound by the glossy photographs of exotic places in the pages of National Geographic, she has been driven by the desire to explore the world. And she has. To date, she has visited 90 countries. “I knew I loved to...
6 New Ways to Measure Your Financial Goals
Most of us want goals to shoot for, but all too often we pick the wrong ones. Earlier this month, Adam Nash, the chief executive of Wealthfront, explained the strange way this tends to happen at work. In a Corner Office column, he told my colleague Adam Bryant that if...
How to Calculate Your Personal Balance Sheet
What do you own and what do you owe? To figure out where you stand financially, you need to know your net worth — and yet that number is surprisingly difficult to calculate. Your assets are more than just your home and your investments, while your liabilities extend...