Social Security Isn’t a Nest Egg

SS isn't a Nest Egg

I was recently interviewed for a magazine with the question “what are the biggest misconceptions about Social Security”.

My conclusion, and the headline used, is that Social Security isn’t a nest egg.

  • Many people think it will pay out more to them than it actually will
  • Many believe you have an individualized account, sort of a government-held savings account.
  • A third misconception is that Social Security will be broke sometime in the future.  Different yes, but gone no

My advice is to take control of your own retirement and not abdicate it to someone else, and most definitely not those in government that might have different objectives than you.

Full Article – Social Security Isn’t a Nest Egg

Retirement Fear: Inflation

There are a number of risks we have to take into consideration when planning for the future.

There are the “tangible” ones that we can quantify, and the “intangibles” that are there but Inflation harder to see.

Inflation is a real cost.  If you don’t believe me, remember what your first home cost?  What was your salary when you joined the workforce?

It will probably be very similar in the future as inflation has been a constant for many years.

Have you taken inflation into consideration when calculating your retirement plan?

Retirement Fear: Inflation

Avoid Penalties on Your Required Minimum Distributions

I was recently asked by a news journalist my opinion on how to avoid penalties on your required minimum distributions. taxreturncalendar

Of course, my first answer was to make sure you actually take them and problem solved! I think she was looking for more…..so I did in fact answer more seriously.

Personally, I always watch over all my clients that are at least 70 years old (or have a beneficiary IRA) to calculate the requirement and ensure it’s taken care of. If you don’t adhere to the rules, the tax penalty is 50% of what you should have taken out, in addition to Federal and State taxes you’ll have on the actual withdrawal.

The link below references my response to the journalist on what to do if you make a mistake.

Avoid Penalties on Your Required Minimum Distributions

Understanding the New IRA Rollover Rules for 2015

 IRA nest egg

 

One technique for moving money from one IRA to another, and possibly use that money in the meantime, is to do a “60 day rollover”.  This is very common, and can be done once per year per individual IRA account.

Starting in 2015, you can only perform this 60 day rollover once per year for all your IRAs, regardless of how many you have.

What does this mean?  IRA transfers, which I usually recommend for clients, is the way to move money from trustee to trustee.       

 

Understanding the New IRA Rollover Rules for 2015

Life Expectancy and Costs

Do you know your life expectancy?  What does life expectancy really mean, and why should we care?

 These are the questions I answer in my video this newsletter.

Therefore, you should watch my video.

Hi there, Mike Brady with Generosity Wealth Management, a comprehensive, full service, wealth management firm headquartered here in Boulder, Colorado. Today I want to talk about life expectancy and withdrawals and Medicare and Social Security, etc. To be honest with you I only have three or four minutes so I’m only going to give you a little teaser and then I’m going to follow up in the next video.

The first one is life expectancy. If you are 65; I’m going to put up on the chart there, on the video, a chart. What you’ll see if you are 65 years old and you are a woman you have an 85% probability of living up to age 75. That’s a high probability of course. If a couple that are 65 years old the probability of one of you living past 75 is almost assured at 97%. We go out to 80, 85, 90. Let’s just look at 90 years old; if you’re 60 years old, from 75, 85, that’s 25 years to age 90. If you are a woman you have a 1 in 3 chance of living to 90. Periodically I’ll meet with someone who will say; well you know my mother and father they died in their early 80s and there’s no way I’m going to live to 90. Well, you know what, there’s a 1 in 3 chance that you will. Do you want to be that one and spend all your money in the next 25 years? Probably not; plus, many times our parents, that’s just kind of the way it worked. That generation they were smoking and drinking and all kinds of stuff and now we’re always eating kale and gluten free stuff so chances are we’re probably going to live a little bit longer. That’s what statistics have shown us.

One of the values that a financial advisor brings and I always bring to the relationship with clients is life expectancy, that’s usually; if my life expectancy is 85 or so I’ve got to make sure that I plan for much longer than that because that’s using the average. I think that chart there starts to show it. The reason why I bring that up is in retirement; I’m now going to throw one more chart up there for today and what you’re going to see is extending my age and category. From left to right it adds up to about 100%, some rounding and stuff like that, but the gray is the 10 years leading up to retirement at age 65. Then you hit 65 and then above. What you’re going to see is some housing and other increases as a percentage. Transportation goes down. Medical care of course goes up, etc. What we’re going to see on the bottom there is the average inflation from 1982 to 2013 of those particular categories. You’re going to see the medical care which is a higher percentage has a tendency to increase. You know this; you’ve been paying attention the last five years and I’m stating the obvious. Other things; housing is still almost 3%. The percentage of; the items that seem to go up as a percentage of your income also has some high inflation to it as well. That’s something that we have to keep in consideration. We live longer than what we think we’re going to do and many times things are more expensive than what we think as well.

Gosh, do I have time for one more really cool thing here? Here is the variation in healthcare cost. See that little graph there, the little United States there? What you’re going to see is the annual Medicare cost and in Colorado we’re right in the middle. We’re not on the cheap side like many of the world in blue, we’re between $3750 and $4500 and then $4500 after that entry has to do with those with traditional Medicare and comprehensive Medicare depending on where you live in retirement. We’re going to talk a little bit more at another video of some long-term planning, withdrawal strategies. One of the things that a financial advisor brings to the relationship are all the strategies about the de-accumulation of the portfolio; you’ve got the accumulation stage where you’re trying to save money and 401(k) all this type of stuff and then you hit a point and then it’s the de-accumulation. What’s your strategy? What’s your mix? How can you set things up to limit, to make the probability that you’ll outlive your money as low as possible because that’s of course a bad thing. These are some of the things I’m going to talk about in upcoming videos. Nice to talk to you today, sorry it’s so short but I did want to be short and pippy.

Mike Brady, 303-747-6455.

You have a great day.

 

Confidence in Retirement

One third (1/3) of workers and retirees have less than $1,000 in savings and investments in their retirement nest egg.

Only 44% have done a calculation to find out how much they should be saving.  Confidence in Retirement Picture

 With longer life expectancies, your retirement years can be the best years of your life, but outliving your money is a real risk!

 One of the biggest and best values I bring to clients is the ability to put the pieces of retirement planning together, and chart the progress along the way.

 Please contact me if you feel I can help you with your retirement planning.

 Retirement Confidence Rises, but the Data are grim