Category: Financial Planning

By Joel Dresang The wealth effect usually is mentioned as a factor in spending, but it also plays a role in investing and retiring. Of the three, I feel it affecting me the most as an investor — but that’s just the phase of life I’m in. […]

Early signs suggest retirees could get the fattest Social Security raise in more than a decade. […]

By Joel Dresang Having smaller families has been affecting how we try to accumulate wealth and what we do with it. […]

By Joel Dresang In the 14 minutes we were on the phone, Mark saved me $441.36. That was the good news. The bad news was all the other rigmarole still ahead for me — and the dreaded reality that this probably will happen again. […]

By Joel Dresang Rehearsal helps performance. It conditions us. It informs our expectations. It lets us anticipate how we’ll handle a situation. Even improvisers rehearse. Research suggests rehearsal can help retirement, too. […]

By Joel Dresang Life is full of risks, and as we try to assess how to handle them, it’s common to misjudge which risks to fear the most. […]

By Joel Dresang A study published in the Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences found “clear and alarming” evidence of declines in cognitive functioning among baby boomers. Findings could mean a reversal in recent trends of less dementia among older Americans. The financial fallout from a drop-off in cognitive skills is that it tends to coincide…

Because of the pandemic, more people have become familiar with videoconferencing and interacting virtually with financial professionals, which might make them more curious about ways technology can enrich them. Jason Scuglik has tips for how to learn more about devices and applications. […]

By Joel Dresang In our 30 years as homeowners, my wife and I have had occasional conversations about the urgency of retiring our mortgage. Math always settles it: At a fixed rate below 4%, our home loan is costing us less than the average 6%-7% a year that balanced investments have returned historically. […]

By Joel Dresang Like news editors, investors can plan and prepare with the best information available at the time, but they cannot foresee every possible cataclysm. […]