College savings strategies are a reality in my household. My youngest is a sophomore in high school and my oldest is already in college. He is a freshman at the University of Illinois. If you read last week's Blog, that should not surprise you because the brainwashing started early ... he had to listen to me sing to him the Illini war chat while he was still in the womb. Clients that work with Brian and me know that we are fans of 529 college savings plans, especially Michigan's (MESP) plan administered by TIAA-CREF. We advise clients to stay away from many other state sponsored plans that are broker-sold given higher costs and commissions that impede long term growth and performance. In any
Friends and family closest to me know that my passion for the Fighting Illini is borderline unhealthy, that I think Mr. T should have won an Oscar for his role as James “Clubber” Lang in Rocky III, and “retirement” may well have been a phenomenon of the 20th Century. My feelings about retirement are not mine alone. My generation, the so-called Generation X, has a dismal outlook on retirement. A recent Insured Retirement Institute (IRI) study finds that one-third (1/3) of us have nothing saved for retirement and only 8% of Gen Xers have enough saved to support themselves in retirement. What happened? First, retirement was invented. It’s this notion that at age 65 the rest of our time should b
The April 15, 2016 deadline to fund IRAs for 2015 is looming. If you think you are not eligible to fund a Roth IRA because you make too much money ... not so fast. Here's why. It’s not a new retirement savings concept as it’s been available to high wage earners and their spouses since 2010. But it’s a great funding tool for Roth IRAs that’s very commonly overlooked for retirement. Backdoor Roth IRAs are a planning technique that many financial advisors, banks and wealth managers don’t recommend for their clients unfortunately, either because they don’t understand it or worse, the financial professional may not even know about it. Some investment firms also don’t want to increase their admini
