Accounting for long-term care is one of the trickiest parts of putting together a retirement plan. The uncertainty regarding long-term care is partly due to mispricing of long-term care insurance policies, which are a relatively new invention.

Inflation can be detrimental--even destructive--to a retirement plan. You don't have to look too far these days for signs of inflation. Beef prices are up more than 12% over the last year, while pork and chicken are up in the high single digits.

We've got nothing to add to the GameStop saga--what happened and why, its David-vs-Goliath narrative (only half true), what more should be done to protect individual investors from themselves (if anything).

You have choices to make about how you want to spend down retirement money. Once you stop working, which accounts do you want to use up first? Or does it make sense to spread it around, taking from multiple accounts at a time?

Low interest rates cut both ways. If you're an investor in search of income, bonds probably haven't been doing much for you in recent years, forcing you to look elsewhere.

Taking too much risk in retirement can lead to major problems when the market has a severe downturn. Not taking enough risk when young means leaving a lot of money on the table.

Should you rent a home in retirement? Renting is not necessarily just throwing money down the drain. There's more to the decision than financial concerns, but those should be considered carefully.

Hindsight may be telling us we should have sold in March. Don't listen.

Markets are showing a pattern of extreme calm followed by periods of extreme volatility. The last 30 years of stock market performance do not appear to be normally distributed. It is very important to be able to run scenarios on severe market downturns to stress test your investments and retirement plan.

It used to be--and still is, in the case where the original owner of the IRA died before the end of 2019--that owners of traditional IRAs inherited from someone other than the original owner's spouse only had to take annual required minimum distributions. Otherwise, an IRA could be passed on, theoretically, for generations.

Taking some risks with your portfolio can lead to higher returns over time. Over time" is important; in the short run, high risk can do damage to a portfolio--and a retirement plan. Emerging markets investments have a place in most portfolios. The question is how much.

A backdoor Roth IRA is completely legal and most online brokers have systems set up to handle it. There is also no income restriction on this strategy. Here is how it works: Basically, you contribute money to a traditional IRA and then immediately convert it to a Roth IRA. The money in the Roth now gets to grow tax-free and when you withdraw the money in retirement, you won’t pay any taxes at all on the withdrawal.

High fees can take a big bite out of your investments. Index funds, with low fees and passive management, normally outperform their more expensive, actively managed peers over time. It's a good idea to review your investments on an annual basis to make sure fees are reasonable and asset class balances are where you want them.

At the end of 2025, federal income tax rates are scheduled to go back to where they were before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017. Many expect Congress to extend the tax cuts, at least for lower brackets, but nothing is guaranteed. If tax rates are set to increase, Roth IRA conversions today would make more sense for many people.

Very few people wait to take Social Security at age 70 or later. But, retirees with a decent amount of investments probably should wait until that age.

Seemingly small decisions can lead to huge changes in wealth over time. Paying high fees, contributing to the wrong types of accounts, or not getting the full company match can mean the difference between retiring early with enough money or working well into your 70s.

When you're early in your working years, or even not so early, it can be tough to conceptualize how retirement might happen. Let's try to sharpen that focus a bit. Here's a list of things to do if you anticipate retiring five years out or less.

Recessions are difficult to predict, but it is a good idea to know how a recession might impact your investment portfolio and your retirement plan.

There's a generally accepted way of withdrawing from investment accounts in retirement. Sometimes there are reasons to handle those withdrawals differently, such as when using a bucket strategy.

The main reason that treasuries do well when stocks don’t is that the market usually predicts that the Federal Reserve will lower interest rates to fight off a recession or an impending recession. Another reason is what is called “flight to safety”, which means a lot of investors are moving their money out of stocks and into less volatile, much safer treasury bonds.