The TIAA Institute-GFLEC Personal Finance Index has tracked how much Americans actually know about money for nearly a decade, and the 2025 wave delivers a finding that reads less like a survey result and…
Imagine your mother has a stroke. You are her power of attorney. You have her bank passwords written down in a notebook she left you. You sit at her kitchen table, log into her…
A 70-year-old retiree with $2 million in a traditional 401(k) has roughly three years before required minimum distributions force the IRS into the conversation. Compound that balance at 5% growth and it lands near…
A 56-year-old couple with $2.7 million saved for retirement sits down with an advisor and hears the standard line: apply the 4% rule and the portfolio can generate $108,000 a year. Clean, simple, reassuring.…
A 67-year-old retiree picks up two consulting clients, works roughly 20 hours a week, and bills out at around $50 an hour. That is about $50,000 a year layered on top of Social Security…
A dog trainer from Alaska called into The Ramsey Show recently and almost broke down on air. She had been self-employed for seven years and finally sat down to build her first real budget.…
On a recent episode of How to Money, a listener named Suzanne asked whether she should track her credit card rewards as part of her monthly budget. The hosts pushed back hard. I’ve been…
Social Security is a complicated program because it allows retirees lots of choices as to when they can start their benefits for the first time. Unfortunately, it can become even more complex for married couples,…
The TIAA Institute’s 2025 P-Fin Index put a deceptively simple question to U.S. adults: how much of a typical retiree’s healthcare expenses does Medicare actually cover? The big takeaway is that only 26% of…
When most people think of Social Security benefits, they think of retirement benefits. But these are not the only kind of benefits that are available. There are multiple other sources of income from the Social…
Picture a retiree who has circled April on the calendar, the month she turns 67 and wants Social Security to start. She has run the numbers, weighed claiming earlier versus waiting until 70, and…
A 68-year-old retiree living alone collects $30,000 a year from Social Security and pulls another $35,000 from a traditional IRA to satisfy required minimum distributions (RMDs). On paper, $65,000 of gross income sounds like…
Social Security Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs) are critical to seniors' financial security. Many retirees rely on their benefits to fund basic living expenses. If benefits didn't increase over time, their buying power would…
For decades, a particular kind of federal widow learned to live with a strange arithmetic: her late husband paid into Social Security through a side job, she qualified for a spousal or survivor benefit…
A retired couple, both 65, sits down with $5.8 million and two very different visions of retirement. One spouse imagines spending half the year in Belize, trading high U.S. costs for warm weather and…
