http://to.pbs.org/a3mu2w
PBS Airdate: October 20, 2010
Is your Social Security account accurate? In Nightly Business Report’s Money Profiles, a widow is paying the price for missed Social Security tax payments to her husband’s account.
For more information visit:
http://to.pbs.org/a3mu2w

Duration : 0:4:2

I am years from retirement, but an immediate annuity appears to offer a higher withdrawal rate than I can guarantee on my own. If I plan for an annuity it can help me achieve my goal. Is that a good strategy?

I don’t like annuities.
Some charge as high as 5% – all this to give you a check each month.
Do not go through an advisor for this.
Annuities are the biggest money makers for them – that’s how they buy their Lexus’s.

If you like annuities though – Charles Schwab offers a super low cost ones.
Fidelity Investments probably have some good ones also.
These discount brokers are not out to get you.
Go the schwab website and spend a little hour looking around and compare.
If I wanted an annuity that’s the way I would go.
Don’t get ripped off – also google annuity cons, and read, read, read.
I would also like for you to go to the bookstore and get a book on the subject.
The fees run in the thousands a year for some annuities – the least you can do is spend $20 on a book.
I think Schwab has an annuity that automatically buys laddered cd’s.
Be careful with high returns in variable annuities in a volatile market – you can lose it all.
Schwab and Fidelity have been around for 30 years – trust them.
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A spoof Altamira commercial on how to invest for retirement.

Duration : 0:1:26

All Americans know that retirement planning is vitally important. We know that pensions are a thing of the past, and that Social Security is likely to be “reformed” so that it does not provide the same benefits it once did.

We know that we must take the planning bull by the horns ourselves. And yet, few Americans take full advantage of employer-sponsored retirement planning services like 401k’s. For workers without employer-sponsored retirement vehicles, retirement planning and saving is even lower. Sadly, those of us who fail to plan should plan to fail.

Retirement Planning – How Much Will You Need in Retirement?

Step One in planning is determining how much you will need. Will your mortgage be paid off? Will you have other outstanding debts? If you will own your home, in full, and be completely debt-free upon retirement, experts say you will need 70 percent of your current income to retire comfortably.

However, you must take inflation into account when planning, or you could wind up like many distressed widows and widowers who thought that their pensions would be enough, only to find out that rising prices quickly deflated their buying power.

When retirement planning, anticipate 3 percent inflation per year.

If you earn $60,000 per year, planning experts say you will need an inflation-adjusted $42,000 per year in retirement. If you were retiring in ten years, this would mean $54,800 per year. If you’re not retiring for 25 years, then plan on needing more than $85,000 per year.

A grisly aspect of retirement planning is estimating how long you will live. If your planning exercises tell you that you will need $85,000 per year, and you plan to retire at 65 and live to 90, this would mean you would need a staggering $2,125,000!

Retirement Planning Products and Services

Step Two in planning is determining the products and services that best fit your retirement planning needs. You may have one set of products that you use during the “accumulation phase” of planning the saving and investing during your working years; and another during your actual retirement years, where the emphasis will be on wisely utilizing your nest egg.

For example, you may decide to save $4,000 pear year in a target-retirement mutual fund sheltered in your Roth IRA. This may be a great accumulation phase strategy, but once you retire, you will need a new strategy that lets you preserve as much principal as possible.

Those of us wise enough to begin our retirement planning very early in life have a great advantage. Guess how much someone with the foresight to begin their planning at age 22, who saved $4,000 per year in a mutual fund that returned 11 percent per year, would have in their retirement account at age 67?

They would have saved $184,000 over the course of 46 years. Would that money have doubled to $368,000? How about tripled to $552,000? Would they be happy if it increased by ten-fold to $1.84 million? If so, then they would be really happy with the actual compound return of 11 percent, as it would amount to an amazing $4.8 million!

Even adjusted for 46 years of inflation, this would be more than $1.27 million, which would allow the retiree to live off the 5 percent interest on ultra-safe U.S. government bonds (inflation-adjusted $63,500 per year) and leave an estate of $4.8 million ($1.27 million, inflation-adjusted) to his or her family.

But there are planning options for those of us who weren’t so wise in our youths. A reverse mortgage, for example, allows you to sell your home to a bank, while you continue to occupy it. They pay you a monthly house payment, instead of the other way around, but they don’t take possession of your house until you pass away.

Various life insurance and annuity products can also be helpful in retirement planning. There is a whole world of options out there, you just have to know where to look, and this web site is a great place to start.

William Smith
http://www.articlesbase.com/finance-articles/retirement-planning-fail-to-plan-and-plan-to-fail-80189.html

Retirement Plan

Retirement Plan

The question of IRA vs 401k leaps to mind when setting up a small business retirement plan. Do you know the differences between plans? What does the Internal Revenue Code allow and restrict? Why should you even care? Because if you sell fixed indexed annuities and want to capitalize on one of the hottest specialty markets going today (setting up retirement plans for small business owners with 1 to 9 employees), you’ll want to brush up on IRA vs 401k and other important considerations.

First, consider that a small business retirement plan, now more than ever, is the best way to defer large amounts of tax-deductible dollars. Thanks to the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA), self-employed taxpayers now have unprecedented incentives to save for retirement. A business owner’s decision is quite literally whether to keep company profits… or send them off to Uncle Sam.

OWNER GETS MORE

It’s no secret the allure of a small business retirement plan is directly related to benefits available to the owner. The greater the owner’s share of the overall plan, the greater the interest. Before the new tax legislation, restrictions on owner’s benefits in small plan design often resulted in even fewer benefits for the employees. But the tools are now in place to ratchet up the owner’s benefits and still create a workable plan for the employees. So, should the plan be an IRA or a 401k? Let’s examine IRA vs 401k separately.

SIMPLIFIED EMPLOYEE PENSION

The simplest small business retirement plan for self-employed taxpayers and the easiest to set up and maintain is the Simplified Employee Pension (SEP). You may establish a SEP if you earn self-employment income, regardless of whether you have employees. A SEP is an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) and if maintained for more than one person becomes a group of IRAs.

All contributions to a SEP are tax deductible as a business expense. As an IRA the plan’s earnings are not taxed until they are withdrawn at retirement. As usual, withdrawals prior to age 59 ½ with this and other plans incur a 10% penalty. A SEP-IRA does not permit loans or salary deferral contributions. Also, the individual annual contribution limit for 2006 is the lesser of 25% of compensation or $44,000, and contributions may be reduced or skipped altogether in lean years.

INDIVIDUAL 401(k)

Another handy tool in the EGTRRA toolbox is the Individual or Solo 401(k). This small business retirement plan is ideally suited for businesses in which the owner or owners (and their spouses if working at the business) are the only employees. The biggest reason for opening a one-person 401(k) is the higher contribution limits allowed, plus the fact that contributions are based on revenue generated by the business.

The maximum tax-deductible employer contribution is 25% of gross eligible payroll. For 2006 the maximum effective salary deferral contribution for employer plus employee is $44,000 plus a catch-up contribution of $5,000 for individuals age 50 and over. Loans are permitted subject to limits and rules, and paperwork may be just a filing of the streamlined IRS Form 5500-EZ when plan assets exceed $100,000.

NEVER A BETTER TIME

The new tax law creates a multitude of opportunities with more than 60 new provisions to strongly encourage the startup and funding of your small business retirement plan. Variations in plan design allow opportunities to suit independent contractors, sole-practitioner professionals, small retail owners—virtually every type of small business imaginable. Answer the question of IRA vs 401k and you’re on your way.

For small business owners in search of large tax breaks, it doesn’t get any better than this. There has never been a better time than right now to convert current taxes into assets, defer tax payments, and generate large amounts of retirement income. And for you as the fixed indexed annuity specialist, this market is virtually untapped.

Gary Le Mon

http://www.articlesbase.com/sales-articles/ira-vs-401k-an-amazingly-simple-small-business-retirement-plan-decision-69007.html

Retirement Plan

Personal Retirement Account

A personal retirement account or investment retirement account should be planned by someone considering how much money they need at the end. When opening a personal retirement account determine the purpose of an investment with help from a licensed insurance agent in this free video on retirement planning and personal finance. A personal retirement account is also known as an individual retirement account or IRA. There are many examples of a personal retirement account. Open a personal retirement account at a young age. You can open a personal retirement account with a bank.

Expert: William Rae
Contact: www.hbwfl.com
Bio: William Rae has been licensed in the insurance and financial fields for more than 30 years.
Filmmaker: Christopher Rokosz

Duration : 0:1:18

Personal Retirement Account

The easy answer for how much a person should save for retirement is that they should save as much as they can. Save at least 10 percent of an annual income when planning for retirement with help from a licensed insurance agent in this free video on retirement planning and personal finance.

Expert: William Rae
Contact: www.hbwfl.com
Bio: William Rae has been licensed in the insurance and financial fields for more than 30 years.
Filmmaker: Christopher Rokosz

Duration : 0:1:24

Retirement Investment

Retirement Investment

So what are the most crucial aspects you really should know and understand so that when you find the ideal investment property you are prepared to make the move on it without delay or missing the possibility handy! Rules of the game! Above all you need to appreciate you’re not particularly buying the Retirement investment property your IRA is making the acquisition. For your IRA to buy investments you have to go thru an IRA Custodian.The custodian is the company that handles all the transactions for your investments and focuses on the self direct IRA for investment property they in truth expend all of the funds for you and hold the title in your IRA’s name. For the IRA to be treated as a retirement investment and be protected it’s got to have a custodian. When you have a solid group of contacts, you may also find this will help you learn of new chances for real-estate investment and you may have a group of banks who really understand the investments you are making. Another opening for finding potential banks to provide non-public funding is via net ads.

These will help you gain more info about the best way to secure personal funds, as well as a treasure house of extra info thru academic opportunities and reports. It isn’t a good idea to publicize for potential banks online yourself. For a backer searching for a safe investment lasting 5 years or longer, allowances simply surpass CDs in all classes of benefits. That presents a completely unique set of questions and challenges. Each one of these points merits greater reason which you’ll find at www.AnnuityStraightTalk.com, but this covers the fundamentals that each financier wishes to grasp to choose if a pension appears sensible. Training yourself will permit you to screen the information you get and make an enlightened call pertaining to your fiscal future. How these programs work is by employing mathematical processes which are usually based primarily on winning trading processes from successful traders who help oversee the development of the day trade system. These routines also create and maintain databases from taking a look at past breakout trends in the present and distant past markets, in particular having a look at the market and stock factors which led straight to those trends.

Wish To Have A Great Retirement Investment Return

They then use all of this to investigate market information fulltime to spot what they deem as being a high chance stock, then once it’s found it, it notifies you to again put you in the position to completely use that trend. Besides the most obvious profit potential, the use of a day trade system is perfect for several reasons. Whether or not you are a new or seasoned financier in this asset group I might suggest getting the data on as many properties as you can and then put them side-by-side and research every one. Go to MHPS.com and other net sites like Loopnet.com where you can view over one thousand mobile home parks for sale. You’ll get an idea of the capitalization rates, cost proportions, occupancy levels, and rental rates for different markets. You’ll find costs all around the place but if you allocate the time and effort in gauging deals, you will begin to develop a notion of what to look out for in details of price-per-space, how park-owned houses affect values and other crucial factors.

Retirement Investment

How do I get started? I do not have a huge income?
I am in my early thirties, and have some debt.

That is an awesome question. The second source book below will help you get to your answer. It’s going to explain how money is made, created and kept. I commend you on getting this information early on. The world has changed; it’s no longer "go to school, get a good job, and that job will take care of you for the rest of your life." Ask the senior citizens and the baby boomers how that is working……….it’s not! We see seniors at fast food restaurants and wal-mart stores working when they should be enjoying their golden years. We are in the information age, the rules have changed. You’ve asked the most important question that ANYONE could ask.

The great news is we are just entering the information age (12-13 years now). With great change comes great opportunities. The second source book below will help you come to a decision. Just do your homework, if people can’t source it, their information is probably just an opinion and everyone has one of those. All that is going to do is waste your time and money.

IN THE INFORMATION AGE SUCCESS BEGINS WITH THE CORRECT INFORMATION SOURCE.

Be careful who you listen to, they may be broke (financially or thinking). Don’t get information from people that don’t live or have the lifestyle you want to live or have.

Good Luck!!

Your retirement plan and investment portfolio really depends on your time horizon (i.e. age) and your risk tolerance. After you answer those questions…you could start a proper plan.

A good Investment Advisor will be your best bet. Good luck!