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Where Your Retirement Savings Really Goes
Saving enough to retire someday is a tricky enough challenge. Yet as your account balance grows, beware. Money could be leaking out of your accounts unheeded. Nobody is “stealing” it, per se. Yet the cumulative effects of subpar performance and…
Social Security Benefit Verification Available Online but Also in Local Offices
Despite a hard push to encourage seniors and others who need benefit verification letters from the Social Security Administration to obtain them online, the agency today issued a news release confirming that local Social Security offices will continue to provide…
Social Security Insolvent, Voters Say ‘Do Nothing’
The main driver of the ballooning federal debtis wealth transfer payments. Indeed, more than two-thirds of the federal budget is money that goes from one taxpayer’s pocket into someone else’s. Some of this is naked wealth redistribution, like food stamps and…
Getting people with disabilities into the workforce
At a time when 70 percent of working-age Americans with disabilities are outside the workforce and more than 9 million working-age Americans with disabilities are living on government benefits, I was proud to join the majority of the U.S. House…
Social Security: Should Retirees Abandon High-Tax States?
One of the things about Social Security that annoys people the most is that the federal government makes many recipients pay income taxes on their Social Security benefits. To add insult to injury, many states pile on with taxes of…
Social Security: 1 Reason You Should Think Twice Before Getting Legally Remarried
If you’re either divorced or have lost your former spouse, then it’s important to know the impact that a remarriage will have on your Social Security survivors benefits. I was prompted to address this after receiving the following question from…
10 Ways to Fight High Medical Bills
We may all have health insurance now, but that doesn’t make our medical bills magically disappear. No, we still have plenty to pay out-of-pocket. In recent years, employers have shifted a greater portion of health care costs to workers. The…
A retirement planning lesson from a bike ride
Lately I’ve been studying behavioral finance’s applications to retirement planning, so you’d think that I wouldn’t succumb so easily to common behavioral finance mistakes such as unrealistic optimism and hyperbolic discounting. But you’d be wrong. I made a few of these common…
Benefits from Social Security help ease survivors’ loss
In the unfortunate event of a family member’s death, we want you to know that Social Security is here to help. In addition to the emotional difficulty family members’ experience, there is often a financial burden as well, especially if…
IRS TAX TIPS: Summer weddings mean tax changes for bride and groom
Taxes may not be high on your summer wedding plan checklist. But you should be aware of the tax issues that come along with marriage. Here are some basic tips from the Internal Revenue Service that can help keep those issues…