Perhaps you are familiar with an annuity. The basic premise is that you convert a lump sum of money into a stream of income. Unlike an investment, once you commit a fixed amount of money to the insurance company, that company is contractually obligated to provide you a minimum level of income with the option to continue receiving it as long as you live. All guarantees are backed by the financial strength of the issuing insurance company.
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There are different formulas for launching highly successful companies. First, create a product that solves a problem that no one knew they had — for instance, how online search engines replaced encyclopedias. Then, there are ideas that help solve problems that plague millions of people.
Back pain, for example. Not only do approximately eight in 10 adults experience low-back pain at some point in their lifetime, but it’s also the most common cause of job-related disability.
One individual who suffered severe back pain while sitting at work all day decided to invent a new kind of desk. This desk would allow him to stand while he worked, alleviating his back pain. This man was a co-founder of VARIDESK, a new type of office furniture manufacturer. But this new company didn’t just enter the office supply industry; it introduced a new sales model that was key to its rampant success: Selling online direct to consumers.
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In 1985, only 10 percent of people aged 65 and older were either in the workforce or job hunting. Today, that share has doubled, for a couple of reasons. First, fewer 65-year-olds have enough money to retire. Second, the number of people in this demographic with a college degree has more than doubled (53 percent today vs. 25 percent in 1985).
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Financial literacy has always been a challenge. However, now that much of the burden of retirement income has shifted to employees instead of employers, it is all the more important that we begin teaching the principles of saving and investing to people as early as possible.
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When the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reduced the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, the hope was companies would spend their influx of money on expansion and increased jobs and wages. Instead, public companies’ most popular way to spend the excess capital has been to buy back their own stock.
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March 9, 2019, marked the 10th anniversary of the current bull market, the longest-running in U.S. history. In that decade, the market more than quadrupled, and when you factor in dividends, it’s up fivefold.
The short-term spikes over the past few years coupled with corporate share buybacks have served to keep performance humming. As we move forward, a few points of note:
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When Lessie Brown, a 114-year-old woman from Ohio, passed away in January, her family attributed her longevity to the fact that she ate a sweet potato nearly every day until she was well past 100.
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According to new research from Genworth, one of the nation’s leading long-term care insurance companies, Americans are both entering caregiver roles and requiring care at younger ages.
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U.S. stock markets were enjoying an eighth consecutive year of a bull market until volatility toward the end of 2018 erased all of the past year’s gains.1 In times like this, as share prices continue to bounce back and forth on a day-to-day basis, investors close to or in retirement often transition to more conservative investments. One option is the municipal bond market.
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Thirty years ago, developed markets were seen as much more stable than smaller, emerging countries. But as political division and uncertainty permeates the West, the differences have faded, and emerging markets (EM) have shed the high-risk perception that accompanied foreign investment.
Sound government situations, conservative monetary policy and lower levels of debt were once staples of developed markets, while EMs posed higher risks with regard to politics and central bank policies. EM countries have evolved, along with their institutions and policies, while populist politicians have gained prominence in the West by touting the benefits of isolationism and protectionism.1
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Seven Strategies to Protect Your Assets from Health Care Costs
Health care is expensive. Add in the cost of potential long-term care and retirement health care is even more expensive. Today Jon and Karyn talk about the best ways to protect your income from those high costs by using portions of your assets in areas such as insurance or health savings accounts to provide funding if the worst case scenario does occur.
Five Financial Fundamentals for Your Retirement
These fundamentals are specifically designed to help prevent your portfolio from the kind of market volatility that occurred this past February – and which we did not see much of last year. Today Karyn goes through all five of them to help you make sure your plan and nest egg are protected.
Picking The Right Retirement Date
Do you have an idea of when you want to retire? Whether you have that or are still in the process, Jon and Karyn talk about the factors you need to take into account when deciding when to pull the trigger and making sure that the decision you make is the right one for you.
Like the Idea of Retiring Sooner?
Who doesn’t, right? Even though more Americans are retiring later, more people would prefer to call it quits sooner. But that’s easier said than done – especially if you don’t have a rock solid plan to do it. Today Jon discusses the things you can’t overlook if you plan to retire early. Including trying to save more, allowing for health care until Medicare eligibility kicks in, and seven other factors you need to have locked down if retiring sooner rather than later.
Taking the Road Less Traveled
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
–Robert Frost, excerpt from the Road Not Taken
In a recent article from Financial Advisor Magazine that identified the regrets many people have for not taking more risks in life. “Among the top regrets were: not following their dreams, not taking risks with their careers, not taking risks with their lives in general, and not being gutsy enough in the choices they made.”[i]
What was reassuring about these findings is that many people vowed to fix these regrets by taking more risks with the time they have left. There is an optimism there that is unique to our time. People are living longer, way longer than we were even a few decades ago and with that comes opportunities to evolve and edit things about our lives that don’t make sense or don’t satisfy us regardless of our age or stage in life.