Determining how much you can safely spend each year in retirement is challenging. Retirees want the flexibility to spend as much as they need. At the same time, nobody wants to run out of money halfway through their golden years. There are many uncertainties that make calculating retirement spending an educated guess, at best. These four unknowns may seem obvious, but they’re worth highlighting for our analysis: We don’t know [...]

Social Security isn't designed to sustain retirees without other income. Those benefits pay the average senior around $1,500 a month, or $18,000 a year, and for many older Americans, that's not enough income. It's for this reason that workers today are encouraged to save independently for retirement, and when we think about doing that, we usually land on tools like IRAs or 401(k) plans. But there's another powerful long-term savings tool you [...]

Social Security isn't designed to sustain retirees without other income. Those benefits pay the average senior around $1,500 a month, or $18,000 a year, and for many older Americans, that's not enough income. It's for this reason that workers today are encouraged to save independently for retirement, and when we think about doing that, we usually land on tools like IRAs or 401(k) plans. But there's another powerful long-term savings tool you [...]

TWIN LAKES — The community is rallying behind local police officer Joe Patla after village officials voted to send his partner Rex for “retraining” rather than allow Patla to purchase the dog when he leaves the department to take a position elsewhere. An online petition to keep the pair together has collected more than 2,000 signatures. Some of those who have signed the petition contend it was community donations that covered [...]

Your retirement isn’t a game of chance. It is not something to “hope for the best” about, trusting that a landslide of cash will shortly flow our way. That’s not the way retirement works. And believe it or not, that’s a good thing. You have more control over your retirement than you might think. “You win at this game when your savings are sufficient to support the retirement lifestyle you want,” [...]

You may have a very idealistic vision of retirement — doing all of the things that you never seem to have time to do now. But how do you pursue that vision? Social Security may be around when you retire, but the benefit that you get from Uncle Sam may not provide enough income for your retirement years. To make matters worse, few employers today offer a traditional company pension [...]