On January 27, 2022, I sat in a small plane at Raleigh Exec Jetport, about to take my first solo flight. Before I taxied to the runway, my flight instructor told me something that changed how I think about retirement planning. “If anything feels wrong, you don’t have to take off today. Remember: takeoff is…
Phased Retirement: The Case for Not Stopping All at Once Many people think of retirement as flipping a switch. One day you’re working full time; the next, you pack up your office and never return. That approach is straightforward, and it works for some. But if you’re five to ten years from retirement and most…
The Retirement Moves in Your 50s That Matter Most The retirement steps you take in your 50s matter more than if you wait until your 60s. It’s not about being smarter now, but about giving your decisions more time to work. If you’re about 5 to 10 years from retirement and most of your savings…
The 5 Retirement Mistakes I See People Make Over and Over Many people believe that retirement is all about how much money they’ve managed to save. Saving is important. Still, most of my clients have spent 30 years steadily contributing to retirement accounts, yet they face choices that can quietly reduce what they’ve built. The…
Why Deciding When to Claim Social Security Deserves More Than a Rule of Thumb Few decisions in retirement carry as much permanent weight as this one. Long before their last day of work, most people start wondering when to claim Social Security, trying to balance the income they’ll need later against the cash they’d like…
Are You Ready for the Retirement Income Gap Years? You’ve done the math. You have the savings. You’re ready to call it quits at 62, maybe even 60, and waking up without an alarm clock sounds pretty good right about now. No commute. No meetings. No corporate politics. Then there’s the stretch nobody warns you…
How Accurate Is Your Retirement Spending Estimate, Really? If you ask a couple what they spend in a year, most will answer quickly. A number comes to mind and sounds reliable, but it usually isn’t. That number is their retirement spending estimate, and most retirement plans are based on it. The problem is, for most…
The Longer You Stay Invested, the Better Your Odds There is one thing about the stock market that most people never have explained to them clearly. The longer your time in the market, the more the odds have usually shifted in your favor. This is not a promise about what will happen next. It is…
Trump Account vs 529 Plan: What They Mean for the Kids and Grandkids You Love A new kind of account for children, the Trump account, has recently become available, alongside the 529 plan many families already use. If you have children or grandchildren, or you are planning for the next generation, it is worth a…
There Has Never Been a Quiet Time to Invest Think about this for a moment. There has never been a time when investing felt completely safe. Every year, there has been some headline that made people want to take their money out and wait for things to settle down. Investing during uncertain times is not…