Get smart with your money
Today’s top story: Goofed on your tax returns? Here’s what to do. Also in the news: 5 awful reasons to buy a stock, what newlyweds need to know about insurance, and does free shipping make you spend more money.
Goofed on Your Tax Return? Here’s What to Do
Don’t panic.
5 Awful Reasons to Buy a Stock
Be cautious when buying.
What Newlyweds Need to Know About Insurance
Changes you need to make.
Does Free Shipping Make You Spend More Money?
When free shipping gets costly.
Today’s top story: How to dodge scams and time-wasters in the online job market. Also in the news: Credit card bonuses are drifting further away, how job hopping can hurt Millennials in retirement, and how to fraud-proof your retirement savings.
Online Jobs: How to Dodge Scams and Time-Wasters
Don’t get taken for a ride.
As Credit Card Bonuses Balloon, They Drift Further Away
Bigger isn’t necessarily better in this case.
Job Hopping Can Hurt Millennials in Retirement
The 401(k) game.
6 ways to fraud-proof your retirement savings
Protecting your savings.
Some of us hoard cash while paying 18% interest on a credit card balance. Others blow through a tax refund as if it were free money when it’s actually a return of our own hard-earned dollars.
This brain quirk has a name: mental accounting. We treat money differently depending on where it comes from and how we intend to spend it, often to our own detriment.
We can, however, leverage this illogical behavior to help us save more.
In my latest for the Associated Press, how having multiple savings accounts could help you save more.
Today’s top story: VA Loans vs Conventional Mortgages. Also in the news: How much you can spend each month, how investors can sabotage their own portfolios, and what the AHCA ‘s preexisting condition rules could cost you.
VA Loans vs. Conventional Mortgages
The important differences.
How Much Can I Spend Each Month?
Creating a monthly budget.
How Investors Can Sabotage Their Own Portfolio Returns
Overconfidence can become a problem.
What the AHCA’s preexisting condition rules could cost you
Be prepared.
Dear Liz: My brokerage wanted me to start moving from stocks that paid me steady dividends into bonds as I got older. If I’d followed that advice, I wouldn’t be nearly where I am today. I sleep just fine with my dividends. Things can change, of course, but until I see solid evidence otherwise, I am sticking with my plan. I have no idea why the brokerage is still pushing the “more bonds with advancing age” idea.
Answer: Presumably you were invested during the financial crisis and saw the value of your stocks cut in half. If you can withstand that level of decline, then your risk tolerance is a good match for a portfolio that’s heavily invested in stocks.
The problem once you retire is that another big drop could have you siphoning money for living expenses from a shrinking pool. The money you spend won’t be in the market to benefit from the rebound. This is what financial planners call sequence risk or sequence-of-return risk, and it can dramatically increase the odds of running out of money.
Perhaps you plan to live solely off your dividends, but there’s no guarantee your buying power will keep up with inflation. Most people, unless they’re quite wealthy, wind up having to tap their principal at some point, which leaves them vulnerable to sequence risk.
There’s another risk you should know about: recency bias. That’s an illogical behavior common to humans that makes us think what happened in the recent past will continue to happen in the future, even when there’s no evidence that’s true and plenty of evidence to the contrary. During the real estate boom, for example, home buyers and pundits insisted that prices could only go up. We saw how that turned out.
Bonds and cash can provide some cushion against events we can’t foresee. The right allocation varies by investor, but consider discussing your situation with a fee-only financial planner to see how it aligns with your brokerage’s advice.
Dear Liz: I am 62. My friend (also 62) is considering when to take Social Security. She understands, from reading a finance book, that Social Security payments change only at 62, 66 and 70. She thinks if you don’t start at 62 when your benefit is, for example, $1,000, that it will stay $1,000 until age 66 when it bumps up to $1,400, or whatever. I thought that each month you delay would increase the payment you would receive. So if you get $1,000 at 62, you would get $1,005 at 62 and one month, $1,011 at 62 and two months, and so on. The Social Security site seems to support me. Can you clear this up for us?
Answer: You are correct. Your friend either misunderstood what she read or was unfortunate enough to find an author who didn’t know how Social Security works.
There are three important ages with Social Security: 62, the earliest you can begin retirement or spousal benefits; your full retirement age, which is currently 66 and rising to 67 for people born in 1960 and later; and 70, when your benefit maxes out.
Full retirement age is an important inflection point. Instead of having your checks reduced for an early start, you can begin earning delayed retirement credits that can boost your benefit by two-thirds of 1% each month, or 8% per year.
Full retirement age also marks the point at which Social Security benefits no longer are reduced if a recipient continues to work. Prior to full retirement age, benefits are reduced by $1 for every $2 earned over a certain limit ($16,920 in 2017). Also, those who started Social Security early have the option of suspending their benefits at full retirement age to allow them to begin growing again by earning delayed retirement credits. Those who suspend benefits can restart them at any time. Otherwise, suspended benefits will automatically restart at age 70.