When I became a teenager and received my first driver’s license my father gave me a few pieces of advice about safety and driving, etc. Of course, as a teenager that “knew” everything I rolled my eyes. One additional piece of advice my father gave, which also caused me to roll my eyes, was to…
Author: Rich Slick
Do You Have An I-Bond Time Bomb?
One of the blogs I love to read is www.tipswatch.com by David Enna. The blog covers, as you might imagine by the name, Treasury Inflation Protected Securities and a recent post had me thinking about my own bond portfolio. The crux of the matter is if you’ve been buying bonds for a long time and…
My 10 Year Anniversary With Kiva.org
One of the ways I like to give back to the community and help others is through Kiva.org. If you don’t know what Kiva is, here is a blurb from their About page: More than 1.7 billion people around the world are unbanked and can’t access the financial services they need. Kiva is an international…
Retirement Planning: Step 5 – Putting It All Together
Let’s review my five retirement planning steps in case you missed any…click on the Steps to go to the appropriate Step. Step 1 – Total all retirement accounts. Step 2 – Estimate how much social security might provide. Step 3 – Estimate what the IRS standard deduction might be during my retirement years. Step 4 – Estimate…
Retirement Planning: Step 4 – IRS Tax Brackets
It’s 2:00 a.m. on a cold February morning, do you know which tax bracket you’re in right now? If you don’t, you’re in luck because I put this table together from the IRS that shows the tax brackets for 2023. I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that tax brackets are…
Retirement Planning: Step 3 – IRS Standard Deduction
Do you know what the IRS standard deduction is and how it fits into retirement planning? First the definition of the standard deduction from the IRS: The standard deduction is a specific dollar amount that reduces the amount of income on which you’re taxed. Your standard deduction consists of the sum of the basic standard…
Retirement Planning: Step 2 – Social Security
In Step 1, I gathered all my retirement accounts and established what pool of money I will have to be able to retire and that will be my largest bucket of money to live off of for the rest of my life. Another bucket of money that may or may not exist when I retire…
Retirement Planning: Step 1 – How Much Money?
Step 1 in retirement planning seems easy and straight forward but it can be a little complicated, especially if you have changed jobs, industries and types of employers. The goal of step 1 is to identify ALL the buckets of money you have in retirement accounts (tax deferred), bank and brokerage accounts (taxable) and accounts…
Are All Financial Advisors Snake Oil Salespeople?
After reading The New Retirement Savings Time Bomb by Ed Slott, it lit a fire under my feet to update my retirement plan. While retirement may be 10+ years away, I figured I’d better double check my strategy and confirm some of the choices and assumptions I’ve made. To that end I have been contacting…
Book Review: The New Retirement Savings Time Bomb by Ed Slott
Get this book! It’s that simple. If there is one book you need in your financial books library it’s this one and I’ll explain why below but this book feels like an A to Z manual for understanding all types of retirement accounts, the IRS tax codes and definitions, estate taxation and planning and so…