Personal Finance Advice and Commentary

A report points out that from 2007 to 2010, retirement risk jumped 9 percentage points.

For investors just learning about investing in their 401(k)s, getting started can be confusing.

Financial advisers say they need more education on retirement income planning. So where do we go for help?

The financial industry seems bent on shaming Americans about their retirement readiness — or lack thereof. About a half-dozen new retirement surveys were released this week alone. Fellow retirement blogger Jennie Phipps wrote about one by Ameriprise Financial yesterday and another by Wells Fargo on Wednesday, the latter of which revealed that a quarter of

What would you prefer: A financial product providing a 4 percent return guaranteed not to lose value? Or would you rather invest in a product with an 8 percent return that is subject to the whims of the market and may lose principal as a result? Three out of four Americans (76 percent) voted for

What’s worse? Dying young, or living well into a second century? Without question, the latter scenario presents a retirement planning conundrum. Last week, on April 14, Walter Breuning of Montana passed away. He had the distinction of being the world’s oldest man at age 114. His philosophy was to embrace change, according to a wonderful

At a recent editorial meeting here at Bankrate, one of my colleagues suggested we run a story challenging the rule that retirees withdraw no more than 4 percent from their portfolios during retirement. It seemed to him that the rule was too rigid and not applicable in every situation. For example, if a retiree’s portfolio

Minneapolis tops the list of the nation’s 30 largest metropolitan areas in terms of retirement readiness, according to a retirement planning survey released today by Ameriprise Financial. The survey measured the likelihood of residents in each metro area to have considered how much money they’ll need to save for retirement and how effective they say

Periodically, the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a think tank, puts out some report about how retirement incomes are going to be too low or health care costs  too high for retirees. The message seems to be that because of poor retirement planning, most of us are going to be living in cardboard boxes before all

It’s tough enough funding retirement and having to make decisions about how to invest during the so-called “accumulation” phase. But that ain’t nothin’ compared to converting your retirement savings into a lifelong stream of income during the so-called “distribution” phase. Recently, the Government Accountability Office outlined the challenges Americans face in this endeavor in an