Jerry Golden on Retirement

5 ways to improve your investment returns in retirement

August 15, 2019 By Jerry Golden in Income Allocation Tags: Income annuities, low-fee, manage taxes, retirement savings

A recent New York Times article discussed ways to improve your retirement with investments in low-cost index funds. While it’s hard to argue against lower-cost funds for your stock market investments, particularly if they outperform higher-cost actively managed funds, the planning for earning high investment returns should start long before you choose a fund.

If you are ready to dive into more detail about how to improve your returns, keep reading. Following these steps will lead to more, and safer, income during retirement, driven in part by better investment returns.

What will happen to your retirement if the Fed lowers interest rates?

July 25, 2019 By Jerry Golden in Annuity Tags: Fed lowers interest rates, Income allocation, Income annuities

News from the financial world has been confusing lately. Is the economy strong or about to bust? Is the inevitable recession close or still years off?

What will the Fed do about interest rates? We do know that over the past eight months, interest rates have decreased.

That helps homebuyers, and homeowners who are refinancing their mortgages.
It hurts retirees who count on interest from savings to provide a substantial part of their income.
And it typically raises questions for new retirees who are ready to set up their retirement income plan and make other lifestyle decisions.

New ideas take patience and perseverance to become self-evident

July 1, 2019 By Jerry Golden in Annuity Tags: Annuities, guaranteed lifetime income, retirement income, tax benefits

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. – George Bernard Shaw

After four decades of inventing financial products that help people figure out how to retire comfortably, I am accustomed to the resistance these new ideas face. Please forgive me for trying to adapt the world of financial products to what I believe retirees and pre-retirees need.

As I’ve written about in this blog, I often critique financial advisers of all types who insist that their clients adapt their plans to the confines of whatever options the adviser’s business model supports. When it comes to retirement income planning, that model usually involves a pie chart of asset allocation, and a market simulation of when your income runs out.

How to lower your retirement tax rate to less than 10%

May 29, 2019 By Jerry Golden in Annuity

Is it true that retirement changes everything?

No, not literally. But it does significantly change many aspects of your finances, and the more you understand your new situation, the more money you will have available to spend or save.

How you set up retirement income to be taxed is complex — and a big part of retirement success.

I am surprised myself, in fact, by how much there is to learn. I’ve been studying annuities and retirement plans for 40 years and recently discovered calculations nestled within IRS schedules that might change your own plans for retirement. An important discovery was how taxes on one source of income, like dividends, are driven by how much a retiree has in another source, like taxable interest.

Step 1: Read my article published by Kiplinger. Step 2: Repeat

May 28, 2019 By Jerry Golden in Income Allocation

You may have read this article in Kiplinger’s online magazine, in which I explain how to earn maximum tax advantages from your investment in income annuities. I republish it here, slightly modified.

Like most taxpayers, I am a fan of legally minimizing your income taxes. But I think — if you are retired or about to retire — you should concentrate less on minimizing taxes and more about increasing after-tax spendable income and your financial legacy to heirs. Sounds like a non-sequitur, but it isn’t.

As an example, you could invest your entire savings in high-quality intermediate-term municipal bonds and pay no taxes on interest earnings. But you would earn something like 2.5% (or $25,000 on $1 million in bonds) in annual income. Wouldn’t it be an improvement if you paid some taxes and generated an income stream equal to, say, 6% after taxes?