A 53-year-old listener wrote into The Retirement and IRA Show with a plan that sounds disciplined on paper: $1 million in a traditional 401(k) today, projected to grow to $3 million by age 63…
At 60, Catherine thought the retirement math worked. Between her husband’s pension, their savings, and the Social Security benefits they expected to collect together, the plan looked stable. Then her husband died unexpectedly, one…
On the June 13, 2024 episode of Women & Money, a listener named Peggy asked what plenty of pre-retirees feel but never say out loud. “I’ve been watching and listening for over 10 years.…
Picture a 73-year-old widow who retired at 66, lives on Social Security plus modest portfolio withdrawals, and has watched her traditional IRA grow to $1.9 million. She did not touch the IRA for years…
Four thousand dollars a month in passive income can support a modest but stable retirement alongside Social Security, covering housing, groceries, utilities, insurance, transportation, and a couple of trips to see the grandkids each…
A 67-year-old retiree opens her brokerage statement after three turbulent weeks and sees the balance has fallen from $1.2 million to roughly $1.013 million. The portfolio is 100% S&P 500 index funds. The paper…
A New York father sold his house to his daughter for one dollar, put her name on the deed, and assumed the estate planning was handled. Suze Orman, on her Women & Money podcast,…
On the Catching Up to FI podcast, host Bill Yount delivered a line that should reframe how late-start savers think about family budgets: “you can’t get a loan for retirement.” His follow-up is the…
A $75,000 salary sits at the top of the U.S. median household range, but for a retiree in a high federal and state bracket, replacing it with taxable income means earning much more before…
“It’s always conveniently a bad month the month that I have the statements for,” Caleb Hammer told Jessica on a recent episode of Financial Audit. The line landed because the math is brutal. Jessica…
A Washington listener named Linda called The Clark Howard Podcast with a tidy little question that opens up a much bigger one. Her credit union offered her $1,000 in complimentary accidental death and dismemberment…
The Smart Money Happy Hour podcast recently surfaced a Ramsey Show caller whose situation sounds engineered to scare prospective students: a social work degree financed with $250,000 in student loans, followed by a $45,000…
On a recent episode of the White Coat Investor podcast, the host described Adam Wrench, a small-town Nebraska doctor who discovered the blog as a medical student in 2012-2013 and attended WCI Con as…
On a recent Catching Up to FI podcast crossover with How To Money, the hosts laid out a sobering line about Gen X savers: “40% of our population lives off of just Social Security…
A 49-year-old called the Rich Habits Podcast with a question millions of parents quietly carry: should I borrow to send my son to a four-year school even though my retirement accounts are nearly empty?…
