While landing that formerly-elusive new job can be a relief, it is only the first step on the road to recovery from unemployment. This transition time is akin to breaking the surface after being underwater for several minutes. It’s a relief to be breathing again and feel the sun on your face, but it’s no time to relax. You must start swimming right away to get back to a healthy financial shore.

Valentine’s Day is a time for showing love and appreciation for someone special in your life. It’s also a good time to work on your relationship and work on issues that cause conflict. One of the biggest sources of conflict and disagreement in relationships is money. Money itself isn’t the cause of our disagreements; we fight over our divergent goals and priorities for money. Many fights arise out of the lack of communication about our wishes, hopes and dreams. If you and your partner are constantly squabbling about money and how you spend your household income, I have a fun Valentine’s Day solution for you.[...]

Financial life planning helps people do more than just focus on typical financial goals such as deciding when to retire, where they plan on living, and how much the expected lifestyle will cost. The life planning process allows us to examine our values and life visions. Rather than simply focus on money and wealth it helps participants decide what is really important in their lives. Life goals, vision, and values must be identified and addressed during the creation of a meaningful financial plan.[...]

Recently we talked about the spousal benefit for Social Security retirement benefits.  It is also important to note that similar benefits are available to divorced spouses.
A divorced spouse is eligible for a Social Security retirement benefit based upon the PIA (Primary Insurance Amount) of his or her ex-spouse under the following conditions:

he or she is [...]

If you made the decision to buy a long-term care insurance policy about a decade ago, you may be getting a big rate increase in premium this year.
Prudential insurance company anticipates increases in premiums between 18 and 25% for those policies issued between 1999 and 2003. MetLife anticipates increases of 18% on those policies with [...]

Financial professionals sometimes get wrapped up in the overly-complex – retirement projections, Monte Carlo analysis, trust and estate planning, and complicated portfolio design.  It often comes to mind that we need to stop and remember what the most important concepts are in successful financial planning, and that can be boiled down to a very simple [...]