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What If Mom and Dad Outlive Their Money?
My wife and I recently took my healthy, active and still working 76-year-old parents on a wine-tasting and hiking trip. It was a fun trip, during which we had many great discussions over fine wine and food. It was during…
Social Security needs a leader
When historians write about this period in American history, a single word will sum it up: obstructionism. Delays in enacting the Affordable Care Act, drafting tax reform legislation, fixing the U.S. Postal Service and confirming judges and agency heads all can…
How to ease the pain of dealing with Social Security
At a retirement planning seminar I was leading recently, a few people groused about the difficulty of dealing with Social Security offices. There were a lot of nodding heads in the audience, although it’s hard to tell if their agreement…
Tax Tip: How Social Security and Railroad Retirement Is Taxed
All too often during the tax filing season my explanatory memo to clients includes the following statement: “Because of the way Social Security benefits are taxed, for every additional dollar you receive, you are taxed on $1.85!” The amount of Social…
Reflecting on 78 Years of Social Security
There are special moments when people look back and evaluate a life or an era: birthdays, class reunions, holidays, anniversaries. Time is, after all, simply the stringing together of a number of events, some small, others significant. These events can…
Roger Hedgecock: The nuclear debt bomb
Detroit is in bankruptcy, the dwindling tax base unable to provide basic city services and still make payments on a $20 billion debt. That’s twenty thousand million dollars of debt. Voices in Detroit clamor for a federal bailout. What’s good enough…
US on pace for lowest budget deficit in five years, CBO reports
The Congressional Budget Office forecasts the annual deficit will be $670 billion when the budget ends Sept. 30, far below last year’s $109 billion. This marks the first years since 2008 the gap between spending and revenues has been below…
Baby Boomers’ Parents Would Envy Their Retirements
Helaine Olen does a lot of good exposing the dark side of the finance industry in her bookPound Foolish, but I can’t get on board with this statement she made in a recent article: “For the first time in living memory, it…
Expert: Taxation of retirement income in need of reform
Although planning for a comfortable retirement is a mainstay of public discussion, far less attention has been paid to the tax consequences of generating retirement income, says a University of Illinois expert on taxation and retirement benefits. According to law professor…
Social Security Announces You Must Live In A Marriage Equality State To Collect Benefits – For Now
Saying they ”appreciate the public’s patience as we work through the legal issues to ensure that our policy is legally sound and clear,” the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Carolyn Colvin, announced the agency has begun processing claims from same-sex…