Category: Retirement Accounts

If You’re Self-Employed and Have Zero Employees, You Should Set Up an Individual 401k Plan Before the End of the Year

Financial planners and tax advisors tend to shy away from simple blanket statements. They’re far more comfortable using highly-detailed, multi-faceted statements that, while accurate, nonetheless lose something in the telling due to, ironically enough, their completeness. It’s understandable. After all, the arena in which financial planning and taxation come together […]

Beautifully Designed 401k Plans: Rare as Hen’s Teeth

As a financial planner, I’ve seen many a 401k plan in my day, and I’m here to tell you that the vast majority of them are not pretty, while some are even downright ugly. Admittedly, that’s a mighty broad brush full of awfully harsh words, and I’d surely prefer to […]

When a Vig Equals Ownership: The Forever-Cost of a 401k Plan

Wall Street — by which I mean the overall business behemoth that makes its money by holding investments of other people’s money and by trafficking in investments and money generally — is vigging all of us to death. I mean this pretty much literally, i.e., I mean that, from the […]

Top 10 Financial Decisions that Most People Take a Powder On — and Shouldn’t

According to The Free Dictionary, to take a powder means, “To leave a place suddenly, especially in order to avoid an unpleasant situation, as in, He saw the police coming and took a powder.” Lots of folks take lots of powders on lots of financial decisions. Doing so is never as effective […]

Putting Your Savings on Auto-Pilot Can Be a Great Idea (but Usually Not Via Complicated Life Insurance)

I’ve often said that your savings rate is the primary numeric fact underlying your overall financial health. See here, here, here and here, to just link a few. In the next breath, though, I usually have to add that, quite unfortunately, many of us are quite rotten at saving money, while just […]

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