Half of Americans are Saving Next to Nothing | Money Cnn

March 30, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

When it comes to saving, we aren’t doing enough of it.

Roughly half of Americans are saving 5% or less of their incomes, including 18% that are not saving anything, according to a survey from Bankrate. Only about a quarter of people are saving more than 10% of their earnings.

So how much should you be saving? Bankrate recommends 15%.

“Between emergency savings and the ever-increasing burden of retirement savings that is on the individual, the goal should be 15% of your income,” said Greg McBride, the personal finance website’s chief financial analyst.

Currently, one in seven people are saving more than 15%, the report showed.

A 401k Conundrum: Can You Make Cash Pile Last for Life? | Bloomberg

October 8, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Even if you’ve socked plenty of money away in your 401k plan and invested it carefully, some of your toughest decisions lie ahead. And don’t expect much help or clarity from the government or your employer. Strategies for drawing down lump-sum accounts in retirement — more important than ever in the 401k era — have received little attention from policy makers. For retirees, choices about how to spend a life’s worth of savings are fraught with tricky calculations about financial risk, taxes and death.

Personal Finance 101: What Is Rebalancing? – The Simple Dollar

April 9, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

One topic I see referenced quite often in personal finance books – especially books focused on retirement – is the idea of rebalancing. It’s often discussed as though the writer assumes that the reader knows what rebalancing is, but given the confusion I sometimes see in reader emails, I don’t think the idea of rebalancing is often clear to people.

So, let’s walk step by step through the story of rebalancing. I’m going to look at this with regards to retirement savings, but it’s true for any kind of investments.