cash flow


Adding QLACs to our toolkit

I went to a presentation yesterday from a NY Life agent about Qualified Longevity Annuity Contracts (QLACs). It’s a deferred annuity that moves up to $200,000 out of your IRA (where it’s subject to RMDs) into a cash stream in your old age.  They’ve been around since 2014, but for the past few years they were a very uninspiring product that had a very limited use case. There were a bunch of changes made to […]


How to sign up for Social Security Retirement Benefits

Congratulations, you’ve done the work to figure out when to start claiming Social Security and realized it’s sometime in the next four months.   WHEN to claim is a separate issue from how to sign up. It depends on whether you’re claiming under your spouse’s earnings, whether you’re widowed, whether you’re likely to live past 77, whether you’re still contributing to a Health Savings Account, how much you’re earning this year, and whether you’ll starve […]


Strange Change, Rainy Days and Big Emergencies

You know you need emergency money, right? But what does that actually mean? Here are the three kinds of “emergency” money I counsel my people to have. One is what I call “strange change”. You should have some cash in the house that you can use if you need to Get Out Of Dodge right this minute: no standing in line at the (probably empty) ATM, just get in your car and drive. For this, […]

College Savings Plans

Book Review: “The Money Book for Freelancers, Part-Timers, and the Self-Employed”

A friend mentioned that I ought to read something by Bogle so I trotted down to the library to fetch one the other day.   Our library didn’t have any in stock so I ordered it through inter-library loan, but in the meantime I picked up a few books from the same section of the library shelves. So I just finished reading “The Money Book for Freelancers, Part-Timers, and the Self-Employed: the only personal finance system for people […]


Financial Literacy for Young Adults, with book reviews!

A client asked me if I had any financial literacy suggestions for teenagers. It kicked off a reading festival! Here are my notes. Years ago I read Suze Orman’s Young Fabulous and Broke and I was underwhelmed. She seems to think that everyone is as clueless as she was and needs to have a come-to-Jesus moment and she’ll tell you how. Most people I know just want to know some facts and they’ll integrate them into their […]

Insurance for Workers

Tricks About Debt

Uses and Abuses, Tips and Tricks About Debt

Last April, I watched as my eldest son drove out of my driveway in his loaded-down Subaru with a brand-new Thule box on it, headed for Utah with all his possessions loaded in his modern-day Conestoga wagon. As many of you know, a month later he fell off a cliff and received a terrible spinal cord injury. (Happy update: it was a terrible adventure, but thanks to a whole host of blessings, he is nearly […]


Double Duty Retirement Strategies

When I was doing coursework to become a Certified Financial Planner, the capstone project required that we upload a video presentation as part of a financial plan for a fictional young couple with children. Since the couple are fictional, I figured it was okay to share this advice with anyone who want to see it. Originally published December 27, 2012, on a day when I had a particularly large amount of hair!


Book Review: Julie Jason’s AARP Retirement Survival Guide

ulie Jason’s book is entitled: “The AARP Retirement Survival Guide: How to Make Smart Financial Decisions in Good Times and Bad”. It’s a title done by committee. Really it’s a guide to avoiding the sharks swirling around you in retirement. It’s filled with hints of things to watch out for, with sections called “Julie’s Don’t-Be-Fooled Rules”. I liked her clear explanations and approved of her hints and warnings. I think it did good coverage of […]


Book Review: “All Your Worth” by Elizabeth Warren

I’ve heard wonderful things about Elizabeth Warren and I was intrigued by the concept of this personal financial husbandry book. The title of the first books I read, “All Your Worth”, made me cringe as it makes me think of a misspelled contraction. But it’s not a pronouncement or a discussion of what you are worth. Instead, it is a suggestion that you might be better off if you built some net worth. The basic […]


Book Review: Pay It Down

Jean Chatzky’s take on debt.   This was a quick read from the library: Pay It Down: From Debt to Wealth on $10/day by Jean Chatzky.   The  book is abbreviated and condensed into this series of articles on Money.cnn. First off, this book is nearly entirely about budgeting.  Figure out what you’re already spending, and then take a look.  The topic was just as dreary as it could be in this relentless little book.  It would not let you […]