Your guide for retirement news, insights, and resources
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10 Lessons From the Field
Quick note Yes, you’ve heard some of these before. There’s a reason. The moves below either stop a small problem from becoming a five-figure mess, or they quietly set you up for the next decade. We’re showing how they play out in real life so this isn’t just a checklist. The 5 DOs 1) Build…
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Disability Insurance: The Overlooked Side of Long-Term Care
Last year, we looked at disability insurance in simple terms – do you really need it, what does it cover, and how much does it cost? (If you missed that issue, you can find it here: Is Disability Insurance Really Necessary?. This time, we’re taking it further. Because disability insurance isn’t just about replacing a…
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The Cost of Care and Who Pays It
If the first shock of long-term care is realizing how common it is, the second is seeing the price tag. Care is expensive at every level, and most families are unprepared for how the system expects them to pay. Some of these numbers were mentioned in the last article, but they are worth repeating, because…
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How to Tell Sound Advice from a Sales Pitch
The trouble with financial advice today isn’t just that there’s too much of it. It’s that it all looks the same when you scroll. A budgeting tip, a debt hack, a hot stock idea, a “proven” crypto strategy – they show up in the same feed, delivered with the same energy. Some are useful, some…
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When Fear Steals Your Retirement
We spend most of our working years hearing the same warning: don’t run out of money. It’s drilled into every retirement calculator, financial seminar, and industry slogan. And it’s valid – once you’re retired, there’s no paycheck to replace a big mistake. But for some people, that fear never shuts off. It follows them into…
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Complexity Creep and the Cost of Getting It Wrong
Financial planning has always involved trade-offs. But in the past, the decisions were simpler – or at least the ripple effects were easier to predict. Now, with more moving parts and more interaction between them, it’s easy for even well-intentioned choices to backfire. Here are a few examples of how complexity creeps in and creates…
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What’s Your Risk Type? Why Advisors Use Assessments and How to Do a Gut Check on Your Own
A risk assessment is a tool financial advisors use to figure out how much risk you’re actually comfortable taking with your investments – not just in theory, but in real life, when markets get rough. It usually takes the form of a structured questionnaire. The goal isn’t to label you as aggressive or conservative, it’s…
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Is Stability a Lie?
The more unpredictable the world feels, the more the financial industry leans on one word: stability. It’s everywhere – in retirement plan brochures, annuity ads, risk-managed portfolios, and target-date fund descriptions. Products promise protection, guarantees, and peace of mind. But beneath the surface, that promise starts to look less like stability and more like control…
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Understanding Alternatives: A Clear-Eyed Look at Non-Traditional Investments
The term “alternative investments” gets thrown around a lot – usually with a mix of mystery, buzzwords, and promises of big returns. For a long time, most people didn’t have to pay much attention. Access was either restricted to ultra-high-net-worth investors, or the investments were so risky that no one dared mention them to a…
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Options for Homeowners Whose Retirement Plans Just Got Complicated
A lot of people in or near retirement are realizing that their home – once the linchpin of the plan – isn’t doing what they thought it would. They assumed they’d sell and downsize. Or relocate and live off the difference. Or stay put with minimal costs and stability. That plan made sense. It was…
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Money Milestones
Over the past few weeks we’ve been laying a foundation. Money Without a Map was about finding your bearings, and The Debt Dilemma dug into how to get out from under the weight of balances. Once you’ve done even a little of that work, the next logical question is: how do I know if I’m…
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The Debt Dilemma: Why the ‘Solutions’ Don’t Add Up
Debt…it’s everywhere, it’s confusing, and it’s dangerous because desperation can make anything look like a solution. Even people who are trying to be careful – who shop on reputable loan sites, who see “FDIC insured” attached to a bank name – can still end up in a mess. FDIC coverage only protects deposits if a…
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Money Without a Map: A Guide to Staying Afloat
Money and health are two of the biggest parts of our lives. But only one of them comes with a system. If you wake up with chest pain, you don’t have to decide on your own whether it’s indigestion or a heart attack. You know you can walk into an emergency room and be told…
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Identity Theft 2.0: Why It’s Getting Worse, Not Better
Last year, we did a subscriber-only issue on identity theft. Since then, the problem hasn’t slowed – it’s escalated. In the past few months alone, several data breaches have been reported, including TransUnion – one of the very credit bureaus that sells consumers monitoring services. At My Retirement Network, track this space closely. We deliver…
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Life Insurance and Long-Term Care: More Connected Than You Think
Life insurance is usually framed as protection for the people you leave behind. It pays a death benefit to your family, helping them cover bills, pay off a mortgage, or replace lost income. But when you look at long-term care, life insurance can sometimes become a tool for the living – a way to access…
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What Long-Term Care Really Looks Like
When people hear “long-term care,” they picture a nursing home late in life. A vague image of wheelchairs and hospital beds, something that only matters in your 90s. The reality is more complicated, more expensive, and much closer than most people think. Long-term care is any help with the basic activities of daily living –…
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Financial Rules of Thumb: Guidelines, Not Guarantees
Rules of thumb exist for a reason. They’re quick, simple, and easy to remember – “save 10% of your income,” “spend no more than 30% on housing,” “withdraw 4% in retirement.” The problem is, life rarely fits into neat percentages. What works as a guidepost can fail completely once you apply it to real situations,…
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Finance as Entertainment: The Rise of the Finfluencer
Finance has always had its performers. The radio hosts promising to “make you a millionaire.” The call-in shows offering bite-sized fixes for complex problems. The cable TV personalities pounding tables, flashing charts, and shouting tickers. Each era found a stage. Today’s stage is smaller – a phone screen – but the reach is larger than…
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Can Uncertainty Be Modeled?
A couple of weeks ago, we asked whether “stability” in finance is real or just a rented illusion sold through certain products. That piece was about guarantees – the kind you can buy in an annuity, a risk-managed portfolio, or a target-date fund. This week, we’re zooming out. Forget the products for a minute. The…
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How Financial Planning Got Crowded… and Confusing
Back in our July 28 issue, we talked about how every piece of your financial life connects -even when it doesn’t look that way on the surface. That was about your finances. Today, we’re taking a different angle: how the profession of financial planning has ballooned in scope, and why the way advice is delivered…
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Beyond Policies: Building a Real Long-Term Care Plan
Last week we looked directly at long-term care: what it really looks like, how much it costs, and the hidden burden on families. This week we’ve focused on how insurance connects to that reality – life insurance with its riders and cash value options, and disability insurance that protects income long before retirement. But here’s…
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The Hidden Price of Family Caregiving
When most people think about long-term care, they imagine bills from nursing homes or assisted living facilities. But in the United States, the majority of care is not provided by professionals. It is provided by family. According to AARP, nearly 38 million Americans serve as unpaid caregivers for an adult relative each year. Collectively, they…
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Why Quick Financial Fixes Feel Good – and Why Algorithms Keep Serving Them Up
If you’ve ever searched “how to get out of debt” or “best savings account,” you know what happens next. Your social media feed magically shifts. Suddenly the videos and ads look tailored to your situation: debt relief programs, credit repair offers, high-yield savings accounts, investing hacks. It feels like coincidence, but it isn’t. The algorithms…
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The Risks Your Portfolio Can’t Cover
A retirement plan can tell you how to replace a paycheck, cover your bills, and keep your investments on track. What it can’t do is make sure someone shows up when you need help getting dressed, recovering from surgery, or making it to a doctor’s appointment when you can no longer drive. We like to…
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Keeping Up Without Jumping First
Finance isn’t fashion. You don’t get points for being the first to try the newest thing, and rushing into untested strategies can do real damage. But pretending the landscape isn’t changing is just as risky. The challenge for professionals and do-it-yourselfers alike is knowing when to move from “watch and learn” to “time to act.”…
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Annuity Riders: What They Add, What They Cost, and Who They’re For
Annuity riders get pitched like optional upgrades – just add this feature and your contract does more. More income, more growth, more protection. But what they really do is add complexity and cost, and often shift the conversation from “What does this contract do?” to “What might this contract eventually do under specific conditions?” That’s…
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Mind the Healthcare Gap: Tools for Planning, Catching Up, or Hanging On
Healthcare in the U.S. is expensive, often unpredictable, and full of blind spots – even when you technically have coverage. For some, the challenge is figuring out how to prepare for the what-ifs. For others, it’s about staying afloat when you’re already facing bills and stress you didn’t plan for. Let’s walk through a few…
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Pre-IPO Scams: What Looks Exclusive Is Often Just Fraud
Pre-IPO investing has become a popular marketing pitch – especially over the last year. The idea is simple: get access to a company before it goes public. The SEC has issued repeated warnings about so-called “pre-IPO” opportunities being offered to individual investors. They’re still seeing complaints. And they’re still taking enforcement actions. These are not…
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Rethinking the Role of Housing in Retirement Planning
Many people think of their home as their biggest asset. It’s where a lot of their money has gone over the years, and in many cases, it’s appreciated in value. But it’s also different from other assets because you live in it. It’s one of the few things you can own that carries financial, emotional,…
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A Midyear Personal Assessment
How to Stay Financially Grounded When the Economy Won’t Sit Still We just spent time walking through what Wall Street sees ahead: slower growth, persistent inflation, market volatility, and no clear consensus on what comes next. But here’s the truth that rarely gets said out loud: It doesn’t take a market crash to throw off…
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