Young families with an eye to the future are faced with a daunting choice – to save earnestly for a secure retirement or to save for their children’s education. Can you do both?
When people’s attention eventually turns to planning their estate, they are suddenly confronted with a new language replete with the kind of legalese and Latin terms that only a lawyer can love, and that’s mainly because lawyers are typically the only people who can understand it.
With the long financial nightmare of the recession and financial crisis shrinking in the memories of those who endured it, Americans are, once again, setting their sights on a shorter retirement time horizon.
It wasn’t long ago that financial planning was thought of as a discipline that only applied to the very wealthy.
With rising retirement costs, longer life spans, and the need to rely almost exclusively on one’s own assets for income, there is little margin for error in investing for retirement. When we’re talking about securing a comfortable income that needs to last as many as 25 or 30 years, mistakes made early on can be magnified to tragic proportions.
Sadly, more than 55% of Americans die each year without a will; and while it’s understandable why the subject of death is not one people like to contemplate, if they actually knew what happens to their estate when they die “intestate” (without a will), they might reconsider their reluctance.
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