“A person saving for retirement who chooses low-cost investments instead of higher-cost ones could have a standard of living throughout retirement that's more than 20 percent higher”, says Noble Prize winner William Sharpe.
In a recent interview published on the Stanford Graduate School of Business website, Sharpe, a professor emeritus at the school, clearly illustrates how much more money retirees would have if they saved for retirement using lower-cost index funds rather than higher-cost actively managed funds.
A couple of weeks back, I received a call from a client couple, (who I’ll call ‘Z’) who have been happily retired for a few years. During our conversation, they let me know they needed to take out some extra money for a one-time expense that their regular retirement income won’t quite cover. However, this isn’t the first time; in fact, it seems for client couple Z there’s a different one-time request more years than not.
Here in the wealthy enclave of the San Francisco Bay Area, it seems and feels like ground zero for the everlasting internal debate between quality of life vs. standard of living.
The Roth IRA has been one of the best tax planning techniques to come out of Washington, DC in a very long time. But because the Roth comes with income limit eligibility limitations; (maximum income for singles in *2017 - $133,000 ) and (maximum income for married couples - $196,000 ), lots of high income earners have been unable to take advantage of this option. *These dates and figures have been updated for 2017.
Like many of you, including yours truly, that have already received loads of info about the ‘backdoor Roth IRA’ from tax planning firms or your CPA, below is a consolidation of the best of the best that I have received recently on this topic. All due credit belongs to the numerous sources that kindly sent me info about the new ‘tax kid’ on the block - the backdoor Roth IRA - thank you!
We are currently in the midst of one of the largest transfers of wealth from one generation to the next that our country has ever witnessed. That’s because as parents of baby boomers start to pass, the legacies they are leaving behind in the form of inheritances are in the trillions of dollars.
Last year alone in our financial planning practice, one out of three new clients contacted our practice as a result of receiving an inheritance. And in many cases, the inheritance they received was a game changer - meaning the amount received was large enough to create financial independence.
Mistakes, lies, omissions, inflating the truth - these can all amount to the same end. Major problems with the IRS and a possible audit.
This is a guest post from one of my dear clients Stacie, who I wrote about in an earlier blogpost about her budding journey toward living her own dream.
Giving your power away when it comes to your money is an age old affliction that affects both men and women, the rich as well as the poor, the famous and the non-famous, the young as well as the old.
