Easing a Widow’s Hardship
What's the best way for a 62-year-old man to say “I love you” to his wife? By waiting to claim Social Security benefits until he reaches full retirement...
In Search of Plan C
“We have a crisis of confidence regarding retirement,” said assistant Secretary of Labor Phyllis C. Borzi at the NIRS conference in Washington, D.C. Tuesday.
The Strongest Financial Brands Are…
In Cogent Research's Investor Brandscape 2010 survey, Vanguard, Charles Schwab and TIAA-CREF earned top honors for brand strength. But many affluent investors are mistrustful of the financial industry and...
Heard On The Grapevine
An all-star group of RIIA members engaged in a spontaneous online debate about 'time-segmentation' bucket methods. Here’s what they said.
New York Life Introduces ‘Lifetime Wealth Strategies’
The big mutual insurer plans to offer its managed account program, incubated last year among career agents, to third-party registered reps, says Michael Gordon, first vice president in the...
The Trouble with Calculators
A new critical survey of twelve retirement planning calculators shows why they're so frustrating to use.
AXA Trumpets a Treasury-Linked VA Rider
AXA Equitable Life (and its trademark gorilla) have bounced back from the financial crisis with a novel variable annuity rider that pegs guaranteed accumulation and withdrawal rates to the...
Can’t Do The Math
You knew it all along, but now there's evidence. Most Americans are financially illiterate. Experts wonder how the millions who don't understand compound interest can possibly fashion successful retirements.
Bridge to Somewhere
"Liability-driven investing for individuals" is how J. Brent Burns, MBA, (left), and Stephen J. Huxley, Ph.D., describe Asset
Dedication, which is the name of their bond-laddering methodology, their book...
Luck of the Draw
In this second installment of our series on retirement risks, we examine sequence-of-returns risk: what it is, what it can cost, and how best to deal with it.
Holiday Cheer
Forget doom-and-gloom. Recent research suggests that the Crash of 2008 will not prevent most Boomers from retiring as planned.
Ally, Ally, InFRE
The International Foundation for Retirement Education, directed by Kevin S. Seibert, CFP, has been certifying retirement advisors since 1997. Now the certifier itself is certified.
Dubya’s Lingering Gift
Tax rates are obviously northbound. So high-bracket folks should convert to Roth IRAs next year, right? Not necessarily, advisors told us.
Estimating Out-of-Pocket Health Care Costs in Retirement
Couples can expect to spend $200,000 or more on premiums, deductibles and co-pays in retirement. This article is the first in a series on retirement risks.
The View from Taroko Gorge
Touring this marble-walled canyon, I could see millions of years into Taiwan's geological past and a few years into its demographic future.
Taiwan Grapples With Retirement Finance
Over lunch in Taipei, economist Jack Wu explained the pension dynamics of an aging society.
Unsolved Mystery
In Matt Greenwald's "mystery shopper" experiment, near-retirement couples met with eight financial advisors to find out if they would recommend income annuities. None did.
In the ‘Green Zone’ with Jim Otar
The Toronto engineer-turned-advisor has self-published an exhaustive new book and launched a refined version of his Retirement Optimizer software.
‘Old People with Attitude and Expectations’
Boomers hope for a long and feisty retirement. But at the Longevity 5 conference in Manhattan last month, experts saw global aging as a threat almost as great as...
A Comic Approach to Participant-Ed
A Dutch pension administrator hopes a mildly racy comic book will help educate its plans' younger bus drivers and railway workers.
