Retirement & Financial Planning Report

If you’re investing in municipal bonds or a municipal bond fund for income, consider a “closed-end” muni fund instead. Such …More

If you baby sit for your grandchildren, ask to be paid in cash, at the going rate. Sound callous? Read …More

In tax year 2000, you can leave any amount to your spouse and up to $675,000 to other heirs — …More

If you had to predict the dominant trends of the next 10 or 20 years, a few choices seem clearly …More

Homeowner’s insurance policies are becoming more conservative. Instead of paying whatever it takes to replace a destroyed home, most policies …More

When you calculate your life insurance needs, you may have to consider your aging parents as well as your spouse …More

Indexing has become an increasingly popular investment strategy in recent years. If you invest in an index fund you’ll get …More

When you retire you’ll stop receiving a paycheck and begin collecting a pension or annuity, and you and/or your spouse …More

A common estate planning strategy is to create a trust and have the trustee buy life insurance on the trust …More

If you have to sacrifice your retirement savings to fund a college education for the kids, you may be making …More

Probably not a good idea. There are two big drawbacks to borrowing from a 401k-styled program, such as the federal …More

Studying historic data, investment pros have come up with a method of tapping a retirement portfolio: (1) In the first …More

Once parent’s have gotten older and beyond the young children stage it may be tempting to cash out of a …More

You may be surprised to see what your Social Security payments are really worth. Get an estimate of your Social …More

Nursing home costs are extremely expensive — but you haven’t seen anything yet. The national average recently was about $110 …More

Not all mutual funds fit neatly into specific categories. Morningstar considers “value funds” to be those that hold stocks with …More