Dream-House Shopping in Costa Rica
The house was for sale. Its mystical vibe seduced them into paying $150,000 in cash. Monkeys, sloths, macaws, butterflies and gekkos would be their neighbors as the couple aged....
Rx for Retirement: A Low Dose of Equities
'For retirement investors attempting to minimize downside risk while sustaining future withdrawals, appropriate equity allocations range between five and 25%,' write Keith C. Brown (inset) and W. V. Harlow...
Skin in the (Costa Rican Retirement) Game
How do Costa Ricans pay for retirement? In San Jose, Alvaro Ramos Chaves (above), the pensions regulator, told RIJ how his nation’s mandatory DB and DC plans work. His...
Who Will Sell Transamerica’s New No-Commission VA?
“The sales outlook for 2017 is too soon to tell, given . We are confident that there is a market need for this structure in...
Anecdotal Evidence: The 10% Solution
The smartest companies contribute 10% of pay to each employee's retirement account--not as a bonus but as a carve-out of compensation. This policy is the most effective way to...
The View from Costa Rica
By visiting Costa Rica and interviewing retirement experts there, I hope to gather a few facts that might help me and RIJ readers understand our domestic retirement financing...
RetirePreneur: Dream Forward
The next wave of automation in retirement plans will be chatbots--intelligent virtual assistants that both teach and learn from participants. Dream Forward, a startup led by Grant Easterbrook, is...
‘Yours Sincerely, Wasting Away’
Ultimately, I'm fatalistic about the high cost of getting old. No matter how expensive health care gets, the elderly and their families will pay no more than they are...
When You’re 64
Six months after reaching age 64, Americans are showered with Medicare supplement pitches. While the path of least resistance leads to a Medicare Advantage plan, a Medigap plan might...
Xmas Cheer: The Debt Is Not Our Biggest Problem
Why do so many pundits and politicians, including the future director of the Office of Management and Budget, beat the debt drum so loudly and so often? It’s one...
Policy Forecast: Gloom with a Chance of Doom
At the Employee Benefit Research Institute's policy forum in D.C. last week, retirement policy experts were not cheerful about the coming inauguration, and some feared that retirement security will...
Calculating After-Tax Social Security Benefits
A handy crib sheet recently published by Vanguard shows the formulae for calculating the portion of an individual's or couple's Social Security benefits that will be subject to ordinary...
Voya: From Orange to Origami
Almost four years after its IPO, Voya (formerly ING-US) has rebranded, retooled itself as a fixed indexed annuity shop and launched an ad campaign featuring origami rodents that talk....
What To Tell Nervous (Older) Clients Now
During market turmoil, the messages from “retirement income” advisors to their clients should be substantially different in their content from the messages that investment advisors typically send to their...
At DCIIA Forum, Familiar Faces and Fresh Ideas
Does automatic enrollment lead to higher consumer debt? Should employers stop sponsoring retirement plans? These are other ideas were floated at the Defined Contribution Institutional Investors Association Academic Forum...
Which Annuity Is Better? This New Tool Tells You
Cannex, the Toronto-based annuity product data, just announced a new tool, based on research by annuity guru Moshe Milvesky, that enables advisors to do side-by-side comparisons of annuity contracts....
