A general rule of thumb when it comes to taking money out of qualified tax-deferred retirement accounts, such as regular IRAs and 401(k) plans, is this: Postpone withdrawing from them as long as you can. In other words, if you have other sources of retirement income or investment principal you can use, you should almost always use that first.

There's legislation wending its way through congress that could have a big effect on savers and retirees. One of the changes proposed is to make it easier for annuities to be part of an employer's retirement plan options (its 401(k) plan, usually).

If you don’t take enough risk when you’re young, you might not be able to retire when you want.. If you take too much risk when you’re older, you can be hurt badly by a serious market downturn. Diversification still works and is most important when you’re older.

The pace of increase in health care expenses is slowing for now, which is good news. But the trend is definitely still upward, and the uncertainty surrounding the topic isn't going away.

Most of us have read about the benefits of diversifying our investments. The key benefit, in theory, is that when some assets decline, others will go up at least partially reducing the pain of a serious market downturn.

Spend enough time on personal finance web sites and you can start to feel like tax-avoidance strategies are THE most important factor in coming up with a successful financial plan. (In fact, they're not--saving as much money as possible in low-cost index funds is.) We don't want to pile on, but we do have another piece to consider: Social Security taxation, and what can be done to minimize it.

Believe it or not, we might have a bipartisan bill pass through Congress that would likely signed by the president. This one involves saving for retirement. It is becoming widely recognized that most people are not prepared to retire at a reasonable age. In fact, many people in this country will have to work pretty much their entire lives.

Phased retirement, rather than traditional, stop-work-entirely-at-a-certain-date retirement, is a common way to ease into retirement. We discuss how to model it here.

Deferred compensation plans are becoming more popular for higher-income earners. These types of plan are non-qualified tax-deferred plans, which means that they are allowed to grow tax-free before the money is withdrawn. When the money is withdrawn, it is taxed at the owner’s income tax rate.

Their story will be familiar to readers who have seen articles about FIRE. Young-ish people decide they want out of the "rat race," and take their journey public via a blog. They generously publish a lot of details about their financial life and their progress, along with pictures of what they're eating, travelogues, and workout routines.

Since bond yields fell by more than half during the 2008/2009 financial meltdown and recession, many people in retirement sold their bond holdings and bought stocks with relatively high dividend yields, hoping to make up for the lost bond interest. But as a lot of investors have found out, dividends are not the same as bond interest, especially if we’re talking about treasury bonds.

Volatility is back and it can really change your retirement situation. You've probably heard of Monte Carlo simulations. Some people don't like Monte Carlo because it mostly relies on the past just as so many other tools we use to forecast the future. We understand that concern, but we still like it as one of the tools in the toolbox.

For those in retirement or very close to it, a 15% decline in the stock market over just a few short months can be gut-wrenching. This is of course why so many of us in the personal finance industry beat the drum of diversification so often. But what about people who have 20 to 30 years until they will need the funds from their retirement accounts? Should they really worry too much about month to month and even year to year gyrations in the stock market?

This is a family of five in North Carolina. The couple are in their late thirties and have effectively stopped working full time--and plan to keep it that way. They earn income from their web site and a few other sources, but it’s nothing like the 9-to-5 office-job money they used to make. In typical FIRE fashion, they worked hard at high-paying jobs for a short period of time (about 10 years), saving a huge portion of their income, and then . . . stopped. And started blogging about it and attracting media attention.

The concept of choosing where to put your money is not new. But with today’s do-it-yourself technology tools, it has become easier to calculate just how much you can save by implementing a better asset location strategy.

We're conflicted about FIRE. On the one hand, frugality is an underappreciated and powerful thing. A movement that inspires people to save money, consume less, and lead a more conscious life--what could be bad about that? Getting off the hamster wheel and spending more time living? That sounds pretty good.

Adjusted for inflation, the cost of going to college went up by about 350% from 1985 through 2010. The constant increasing costs of going to college became a major burden for both students and their parents. Many parents sacrificed an early retirement to help put their children through school and many students left college saddled with thousands of dollars in student loan debt.

In August, Fidelity announced that it was launching a couple of index funds that would be free to invest in--that is, their expense ratios would be 0%. Between Fidelity Zero Total Market Index (FZROX) and Fidelity Zero International Index (FZILX) funds, you get globe-spanning passive equity investments with no fees attached.

The recent tax law and changes to the tax code was pretty dramatic in terms of how it impacts most taxpayers. Not only did federal tax rates go down across the board, but the law regarding tax deductions changed a lot as well. Many people who used to itemize the taxes now will simply use the standard deduction of $12,000 per person, which is double what it used to be.

This example shows just how important stock returns are to a retirement plan. The power of compounding cannot be underestimated when we are talking about long periods of time. On the flip side, one should not underestimate what a long period of stock market stagnation can do to a portfolio either.