If you’re approaching retirement and looking for ways to beef up your monthly income, there are many strategies to consider. You could pick up part-time work or start a side hustle like tutoring or delivering groceries. Or, you could just rent out your home or part of your home for cash and travel the world.

If you think that final suggestion is intriguing, you’re not alone. Thanks to technology brought to use by companies like Airbnb and VRBO.com, it’s more common than ever for senior citizens or anyone approaching retirement to use their home as an income-producing asset so they can do…well….whatever they want.

If you are retired or getting close to retirement, chances are you are familiar with budgeting. There are many techniques for budgeting out there, but the basic idea is to balance your income and expenses. One way to do this is to think about your expenses as percentages. 

Budget percentages, as made popular by radio personality Dave Ramsey, help you understand where your money is going. The goal is simple: keep your expenses in each category within a certain percentage of your income. Most people who follow this method adhere to 10 common categories.

Only 32% of Americans are investing in 401(k) plans. Even though 59% of American companies offer these plans to their employees, many U.S. citizens opt out of one. If you work for a company that offers a 401(k), it is in your best interest to sign-up, especially if you want to live comfortably after you retire. 

While having a 401(k) is a great investment, people go through rough patches and need additional financial support to help pay for expensive situations. If you have a 401(k), you can get a loan to help you with your finances. Before applying, we want you to know how much a 401(k) loan will actually cost you. 

No matter how old you are, it’s never too early to start planning for retirement. While you should start saving as soon as possible, one of the best ways to build a substantial nest egg is to work somewhere that offers employer contributions, like a 401(k). However, for those working in nonprofit organizations, a 401(k) plan is not usually an option. 

Fortunately, many of these entities may offer what’s called a 403(b) retirement account. In this article, we’ll discuss the finer points of a 403(b), as well as compare it to an alternative, the individual retirement account (IRA). Here are the details you need to know. 

When it comes to retirement, one of the most valuable questions you can ask yourself is, “how much is enough?” Unfortunately, it can be challenging to determine the right amount because there are many variables to consider. 

In this article, we’re going to discuss the finer points of saving for retirement so that when it arrives, you can feel secure in the size of your nest egg. Ideally, you shouldn’t have to limit your lifestyle or cut down on expenses during your golden years. So, the more planning and preparation you can do now, the better off you’ll be later on. 

This post was last updated on January 15, 2021, to reflect all updated information and best serve your needs. 

When you retire, you deserve to enjoy years of relaxation and stress-free time doing the things that make you happy with the people you love. One of the best ways to make sure this happens is by paying off your mortgage before entering your retirement years. In this article, we’ll show you the freedom that not having a mortgage in retirement brings, and we’ll also tell you how to get there.

For many workers, the benefits package a company offers is almost as important as the salary that goes along with it. One of the benefits that workers are most interested in is the retirement plan. People want to know that they are going to be okay after they stop working, and in most cases, they are relying on their employer to help make that a reality when it comes to saving. 

Many companies offer retirement plans such as a 401(k). However, these plans can come with bureaucratic red tape and regulatory loopholes to jump through – which can make them more difficult to implement. Because of these difficulties, some companies choose to opt out of plans like 401(k)s altogether.

The idea of using life insurance as a retirement plan may seem, at best, counterintuitive. At worst, it sounds vaguely fraudulent if you’re not familiar with the intricacies of the life insurance industry. As far as most people are concerned, life insurance is there to support your family after you pass away, not to help you after you retire.  

What if you’re the beneficiary of someone else’s policy? Could you use the death benefit you receive for retirement then? Hypothetically, yes.

This post was last updated on January 20, 2021, to reflect all updated information and best serve your needs.

Full Disclosure: This article is not a get-rich-quick scheme of how to become a millionaire in no time. Rather, it's a list of sound principles and practices that you can put into place to become a millionaire at some point in your life. Becoming a millionaire and/or achieving financial independence takes discipline, hard work, and savings. I can assure you it WILL NOT happen overnight.

This post was last updated on January 15, 2021, to reflect all updated information and best serve your needs.

No matter how old you are right now, you should already be saving for retirement. Whether you're contributing to a 401(k), IRA, or other long-term investment (or all three), you have to make sure that you'll have enough money to last the rest of your life.

This post was last updated on January 15, 2021, to reflect all updated information and best serve your needs. 

For many of us, our 401(k) or similar employer-sponsored retirement plan is our primary vehicle for retirement savings. A 401(k) is a defined contribution plan meaning that our retirement benefit is determined primarily by the amount that we save and how we invest those savings. However, there is a maximum 401k contribution limit that we will cover.

For married couples, filing for Social Security comes with several options. Depending on the situation of the couple, there are different strategies that couples can employ to maximize their life-time benefits. We’ll cover each of these in more detail below but, for now, here is a brief overview to get you started. 

First, for couples that have a long life expectancy, the best strategy is to wait as long as possible before filing. Because waiting to file (up until age 70) increases the monthly size of your Social Security payments, a couple that expects to live a long time can earn more over the course of their retirement by waiting to file.

If you want to save money for retirement, you need to start doing it right now, no matter how old (or young) you are. While there are multiple methods for building a nest egg, one of the most reliable is contributing to an individual retirement account (IRA). 

There are two primary types of IRAs available - traditional and Roth. Both options have benefits and downsides, so it’s crucial to understand the differences between them. Here is what you need to know. 

As you get closer to retirement, it’s crucial to plan for every detail. While your primary concern will be whether you’ve saved enough, one element that can come into play is life insurance. 

Typically, most individuals believe that life insurance coverage is only necessary when they have dependents. However, it can be a valuable asset at any stage of life, including retirement. In this article, we’re going to outline the steps you should take to determine whether you need life insurance in retirement or not. 

If you’re saving for retirement, chances are that you are putting money away into an employer-sponsored 401(k) plan. According to a recent study by the Investment Company Institute, Americans put away over $5.8 trillion in assets in 2019. By comparison, that number was only $3.1 trillion in 2010. 

While 401(k) and 403b accounts are by far the most widely utilized saving plans, you may not be aware of the various costs and fees that come with them. In fact, if you’re like 37% of savers, you may not realize that you pay anything at all.

Planning for retirement can be both exhilarating and scary at the same time. Living a worry-free retirement requires a combination of a robust investment portfolio, liquid assets, potential annuities and social security income. 

At the beginning of 2020, no one could have imagined the sudden economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Market volatility has naturally made many people consider postponing retirement plans because of sudden drops in the stock market that have increased investment uncertainty in retirement accounts. 

This is one of the most common questions that I am asked on a regular basis. It’s certainly a fair question and one that’s probably even gone through my head a few times.

We live in an instant gratification world – what have you done for me lately?” We expect to see the results of our saving and investing efforts immediately. While there are times you’ll actually notice faster growth within your investments because of a specific sector or company, for the most part it’s a long-term process.

Since the novel coronavirus began spreading across the globe, it has impacted everything about our daily lives. However, while some of the effects were immediate, such as quarantines and lockdowns, one of the less obvious was how it would impact retirement planning. 

In this article, we want to look at the various ways that COVID-19 has disrupted retirement plans. To help understand these effects better, we’re going to look at the three stages of planning - early, pre-retirement, and retirement. We’ll also pay attention to the various legal changes that were inside the relief bill passed in March. 

The Financial Freedom Blueprint® Is Now An Online Course

We have some super exciting news around here at NextGen Wealth. We have taken our trademarked financial planning process, The Financial Freedom Blueprint®, and turned it into a do it yourself online course.

So, if you’re the do it yourselfer type when it comes to your personal finances, you now have a financial planning process laid out for you that will take you through every step of the way.

Now that the holidays are over, it’s back to reality. For many – hopefully, not you – it means paying off all the debts you racked up from your extremely generous giving. Let’s just hope you had already budgeted for it and you were merely using your credit card to get the free rewards.

Regardless of whether you have debt or not, sometimes, unknowns pop up in our lives where we need to get access to money. If you don’t have it sitting in a savings account – which I’m sure you do if you’re an avid reader of this blog – you have to find it somewhere.