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Gray divorce is costly and complicated
A recent research paper on divorce found that about one percent of married Americans over age 50 get divorced each year. In a gray divorce, women are disproportionately affected financially by divorces: the average woman sees her standard of living…
Not knowing these three things could shrink your Social Security benefits
Social Security is a complex program with lots of rules; however, if you don’t educate yourself on how the program works, you could wind up reducing your benefits and potentially struggling financially as a result. The attached article reviews three…
7 Reasons Sen. Warren’s Social Security Plan Will Fail
Sean Williams of The Motley Fool takes aim at Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) plan to increase beneficiary payouts by $200 a month, or $2,400 a year. Her plan would also update a number of rules, and set minimum monthly benefits at 125%…
How To Increase Social Security Payments After You’ve Retired
There’s no magic bullet to boost Social Security benefits or secret stash of cash for folks despite on-line articles that suggest these things. Essentially the ways to maximize benefits are or should be well known. This piece by ABC news…
Best Advice for Financial Success
With Social Security on replacing about 40% of pre-retirement income and its long term financial health imperiled due to congressional inaction, saving money has never been more important. Katie Brockman reports on a survey from New York Life. The top five pieces of…
5 Reasons to Retire as Early as You Can
With so many articles stating to delay Social Security and to work as long as possible, Selena Maranjian’s piece here from The Motley Fool provides a different viewpoint. For those who have saved fairly diligently, early retirement is possible. She dives…
Congressional Budget Office Update to Social Security spending
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has issued its annual update to its long-term projections on Social Security. Click The latest update to read the full 90 page PDF document or click here for the brief highlights posted by the National Association of Plan Advisors. Two noteworthy…
Scam continues and cost grows
According to the Federal Trade Commission, there have been close to 73,000 reports on the “Your Social Security number has been suspended” scam in the first six months of 2019, with $17 million in reported losses. Cody Miller writes the informational piece in…
Underestimating Retirement Healthcare Costs a Dangerous Mistake
While Americans often overestimate the Social Security benefits they will one day receive, many underestimate what their health care expenditures will be. According to data cited by Nationwide, the average pre-retiree aged 50+ expects healthcare in retirement to cost $7,000 a…
Suburban mom loses $20,000 to Social Security scam
Contributor John Matarese tells the story of how a suburban mom was convinced in a phone call to withdraw $20,000 from her bank accounts and then purchase Target gift cards. The card numbers were then read to the caller over the…