For Consumers

• Retirement Benefit Counselor - When Social Security Isn't Enough: A Look at Plans B and C

• Retirement Benefit Counselor - Your 401(k) account - a safety net in uncertain times

  If your name isn't Bill Gates, and you haven't spent the last year in a cave, you are undoubtedly concerned about the short-term future of the economy and what you ought to be doing now.

Advertisement

• Retirement Benefit Counselor -
  Retiring Your Way: Residential Options for the 55+ Crowd

  Generally healthier than generations before, and for the most part wealthier, the baby boomers are starting to retire. Like everything else in life, however, the nature and meaning of "retirement" has become more complex.

• Retirement Benefit Counselor -
  Retirement and brain age: What you need to know

  More and more, there's talk of "brain age," but what is it, and why should we care? Let's take a look at one of the things that probably concerns you most: planning for your retirement.

• Retirement Benefit Counselor -
  Retirement investment diversification in the year ahead

  Allocating among asset classes

• Retirement Benefit Counselor -
  Primer on Long-Term Care and Long-Term Care Insurance - Part II

  Last month, we examined in general terms what long-term care (LTC) is all about and introduced LTC insurance as a key piece of your financial and retirement planning. An accompanying piece, "Long-Term Care Insurance Benefit Basics," provided LTC insurance benefit basics.

• Changing faces, changing benefits - fifth in a six-part series

  This article is the fifth in a six-part series, "Changing Faces, changing benefits: The impact of demographic shifts on the benefits landscape." The series chronicles six growing workforce populations and arms employers with information to shape benefits to attract and retain workers in those demographic groups.

• Retirement Benefit Counselor -
  Caring for an aging parent

  Sometimes it happens suddenly - maybe after a bathtub fall and broken hip. Sometimes it's a gradual, worrisome progression of forgetfulness or mental mishaps. In any case, the realization that you have become the protector of a parent can be gut-wrenching.

• Retirement Benefit Counselor -
  A closer look at retirement income planning - Part II

  This is the second of a two-part article
  Last month's introduction to this important topic ended by noting some of life's variable factors that will influence the choice of a realistic withdrawal rate from your retirement plans and personal savings. Although the title of this article says "income planning," you'll see that many aspects might not seem income-related. These include life expectancy, the dollar's loss of purchasing power due to inflation, the inevitable variability of investment returns, and your likely health care needs. Tapping home equity - by selling and downsizing, or taking a reverse mortgage - is also an option for many.

• Retirement Benefit Counselor -
  A closer look at retirement income planning - Part I

  (The following is the first in a two part series) If financial service ads are any guide, accumulating "enough" assets for a secure retirement is the top priority for every investor. What the ads don't tell us, however, is that the amount and timing of Social Security benefits and withdrawals from one's nest egg each year during retirement are equally important in determining how long retirement assets will last.