Posts by Robert Pagliarini

As Bankrate.com noted, 43% of Americans have no life insurance. Some view it as optional; some have simply procrastinated when it comes to buying a policy. Others believe that they can’t afford it. In reality, life insurance is cheap today. If you just want term life coverage – essentially, life insurance that you “rent” for…

The Roth IRA changed the whole retirement savings perspective. Since its introduction, it has become a fixture in many retirement planning strategies. The key argument for going Roth can be summed up in a sentence: Paying taxes on retirement contributions today is better than paying taxes on retirement savings tomorrow. Here is a closer look…

Your Social Security income could be taxed. That may seem unfair, or unfathomable. Regardless of how you feel about it, it is a possibility. Seniors have had to contend with this possibility since 1984. Social Security benefits became taxable above certain yearly income thresholds in that year. Frustratingly for retirees, these income thresholds have been…

An estate plan has three objectives. The first goal is to preserve your accumulated wealth. The second goal is to express who will receive your assets after your death. The third goal is to state who will make medical and financial decisions on your behalf if you cannot. Over time, your feelings about these objectives…

According to the insurance industry group LIMRA and the nonprofit Life Happens, 43% of Americans have no life insurance. Why don’t more young adults buy life insurance? Shopping for life insurance may seem confusing, boring, or unnecessary. Yet when you have kids, get married, buy a house or live a lifestyle funded by significant salaries,…

TWO STRAIGHT MONTHS OF IMPRESSIVE JOB GAINS The Department of Labor provided Wall Street and Main Street with some great news Friday. Last month, the population of Americans with full-time jobs rose by 255,000. About 70,000 of the workers hired in July found employment within the professional and business services sectors. In addition, the huge…

Picture an 18-wheeler, its 4,000-cubic-foot cargo trailer filled to capacity with stacks of $100 bills. The driver shuts and locks the trailer, closing the door on roughly $10 billion. Now imagine that truck driving off to a landfill, where that $10 billion will be dumped, shredded and buried, rendered useless. As the day goes on,…

No woman wants to end up impoverished, out of options, left to fend for herself on the streets. Only a tiny percentage of women from affluent households will experience this retirement nightmare, but that does not mean the risk should be dismissed. This is the financial circumstance you may fear more than any other. What…

CONFIDENCE INDICES HOLD STEADY Rising half a point from its previous reading, the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index finished July at 90.0. The Conference Board’s monthly household confidence gauge came in at 97.3 last week, near its (revised) June mark of 97.4. ROUNDING UP THE LATEST REAL ESTATE NEWS New Census Bureau data shows…

How many words have been written about retirement? It’s a preoccupation for many, and we devote so much time, thought, and energy toward saving for the last day we go to work. Saving and investing in such a way that we no longer have to work may seem ideal at first, but it raises a…