Can’t afford it? No problem: Just borrow money. At the popular (and pricey) Coachella music festival, about 60% of attendees borrowed money to buy their tickets, according to Billboard. It’s a perfect illustration of…
Picture a 67-year-old who filed for Social Security last year, a stay-at-home spouse who just turned 60, and a 12-year-old daughter from a late marriage. The retiree’s full-retirement-age (FRA) benefit is $2,800 per month.…
A 63-year-old hospital vice president has roughly six weeks to lock in her pension election. Her plan offers two paths: a $1,400,000 lump-sum cash equivalent rolled into an IRA, or a $77,000 joint-and-survivor annuity…
The oldest members of Gen X are stepping into their early sixties this year, and the youngest are settling into their mid‑forties. That span between 46 and 61 is supposed to be the stretch…
A 48-year-old engineer earning $400,000 with his spouse posted a question on a personal finance forum last month: with the 401(k) already maxed and a backdoor Roth in place, where should the next tax-advantaged…
Dave Ramsey delivers his core message on mortgage debt with characteristic bluntness: “Your most powerful wealth-building tool is your income. Don’t surrender it to debt. Debt is acid that eats your wealth.” Inside the…
When President Trump was running for office, he made Social Security a pretty notable talking point. And one thing he promised to do was get rid of taxes on Social Security benefits. There’s a…
You may think you can’t afford estate planning, or that you don’t need it. But can you afford not to? That was the question estate planning attorney Allison Harrison recently asked on the Catching…
Speaking to reporters before departing for Beijing, President Trump was asked whether American financial pressure from rising gas prices might shape his approach to ending the Iran conflict. His answer, captured on Bloomberg’s “Balance…
A 60-year-old single retiree sitting on $2.2 million in a traditional 401(k) and $400,000 in a taxable brokerage has roughly five quiet years before Medicare enrollment changes the tax math forever. Those years are…
A 67-year-old single retiree sits on a $1.4 million traditional 401(k), just turned on a $30,000 annual Social Security benefit, and spends roughly $70,000 a year. On paper the plan works. The portfolio yields…
There are a lot of warnings about the future of Social Security. Both the Social Security trustees and the Congressional Budget Office have sounded the alarm about the program’s trust fund running dry. An…
The Couple, the Cliff, and the $200,000 Spend A married couple, both 65, sits on $2.4 million in a traditional 401(k), $750,000 in a Roth IRA, and $400,000 in a taxable brokerage. They plan…
Picture a 64-year-old who has been receiving $1,800 a month in Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) since age 56. The check has paid the mortgage, kept the lights on, and covered the Medicare premium…
A couple in their late sixties with $3.2 million in combined traditional 401(k) assets and a healthy spending plan can write a clean check to the IRS every April and still get hit with…
