The 2025 Northwestern Mutual Planning & Progress Study asked adults 45 and older when they expect to claim Social Security, and the answers split cleanly into two camps. Only 26% of Gen X and…
Social Security benefits are a critical income source for many seniors, but unfortunately, some people were not getting the full amount of money they deserved. That’s because of federal rules called the Government Pension…
The couple is 64. He spent 28 years at a major tech company, accumulating $423,000 in employer stock through ESPP grants and RSUs. Add another $477,000 in diversified accounts, and the household holds roughly…
A 30-year-old earning $90,000 who routes 10% of pay into a 401(k) assumes the system is working. Contributions go in, the balance grows, the statement looks healthy. What the statement does not show is…
Picture a 68-year-old retired math teacher in San Antonio. She spent 32 years in Texas classrooms, earned a $54,000 annual pension from the Teacher Retirement System (TRS), and picked up work on the side…
It’s not uncommon for middle-aged people to realize they’re not where they should be financially. “At 50, I didn’t know what a net worth was,” said Bill Yount, an emergency physician and co-host of the…
A new study from the TIAA Institute and the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center sets a deliberately low bar for retirement knowledge, then watches almost everyone walk under it. The test covers six essential…
Generation Z is understandably discouraged. There’s the horrible job market. There’s the home affordability crisis. For many, there are crushing mounds of student debt. No wonder many make bad financial decisions, living by the…
The retirement plan looked straightforward until March 2026. A 64-year-old couple in Pennsylvania had built a $2.4 million portfolio around a familiar target: roughly $96,000 a year in retirement spending supported by the classic…
A new measure of how Americans understand money has surfaced the same finding researchers have documented for nearly a decade: women score about 10 points lower than men on financial literacy, and the gap…
After 22 years, a couple sold their restaurant and suddenly found themselves staring at a very different balance sheet. The sale dropped $1.1 million in cash onto the table, adding to the $480,000 already…
Plenty of fathers in their late 60s are still raising elementary or middle school kids. A second marriage, a blended family, an unexpected late chapter in life. By the time the youngest hits middle…
The $400,000 Vest That Quietly Builds Concentration Risk A 44-year-old VP at a public mega-cap tech company earns a $300,000 base salary with another $400,000 in annual RSU vests. She already maxes the 401(k),…
Tiffany Aliche was 30, the Great Recession was eating her job, her credit cards were maxed, and her condo was sliding toward foreclosure. She finally called her best friend Linda and told her everything.…
Most of the coverage around the latest Northwestern Mutual Planning & Progress Study centered on retirement readiness and the anxiety that comes with longer life expectancies. The more telling detail sat deeper in the…
