Last week’s column concluded that, while long-term care insurance is unaffordable for most Americans, everyone needs a long-term health care plan. Knowing how long you may live is one of the first variables to consider in putting together such a plan. A number of...
If you want to stop a conversation cold, just ask a group of friends, “Do you ever worry that you might outlive your retirement income?” The response is likely to be nervous laughter. It doesn’t occur to most people to seriously consider this possibility. The greatest...
One popular money script is, “I need to leave an inheritance to my kids.” Yet choices that parents make based on this money script can actually result in both failing to leave an inheritance and even costing children money. Here is one way that might happen. My town...
Whenever I surf television cable news channels, I can’t help but notice the plethora of ads for financial planning. Some of them sound compelling, even to me. I often find myself thinking, “Dang, that’s exactly what we do.” Then I notice the...
Suppose you have a net worth of one thousand dollars, while your friend has one million dollars. Would you consider yourselves to be in the same financial category? Almost certainly not. The comparison is absurd. Your friend’s one million is a thousand times...
