Insights

For many Americans approaching retirement, Social Security represents one of the largest sources of lifetime income they will receive. Yet when couples begin planning their retirement strategy, many focus almost entirely on their own retirement benefit and overlook the rules surrounding spousal and survivor benefits. That oversight can be costly.

Federal employees have access to one of the best retirement packages in the country. Between a guaranteed pension, generous TSP matching, lifelong health coverage, and Social Security, it's an enviable foundation. And yet, a surprising number of federal employees arrive at retirement with less security than they could have had, not because of bad luck, but because of avoidable mistakes made years or decades earlier.

Most people think of Medicare and Social Security as two separate programs that happen to arrive at roughly the same stage of life. In practice, they are quite connected. The decisions you make about one will directly affect how you experience the other. Here is what that relationship actually looks like and why understanding it before you retire is worth your time.

Most people understand, at least in theory, that they should have an estate plan. They know they probably need a will and they may have heard the word "trust" mentioned in a financial article or across a dinner table. And yet the majority of American adults have never actually sat down and done the work.

If you earn a strong income, you may already know the sting of the Roth IRA income limit. You sit down to make your annual contribution and discover that the IRS has effectively locked the door due to your income being too high to contribute directly to a Roth IRA.

You spent decades building a federal retirement package that most workers would envy (a pension, a TSP, Social Security, and a FEHB health plan that follows you into retirement). What a lot of federal employees don't fully reckon with, though, is that the IRS is going to take a meaningful piece of that income.

Medicare enrollment is one of those topics that tends to get put off. The rules are specific, the terminology is unfamiliar to many, and there are enough moving parts that most people are not sure where to start. The good news is that once you understand the basic timelines and what drives them, the process is quite manageable. This post outlines the enrollment periods you need to be aware of, the consequences of missing them, and the process for signing up when the time arr

For pre-retirees in their 50s and 60s, a higher tax bill is sometimes the smartest move you can make. Here is why the conventional wisdom of always minimizing taxes may be working against you.