Please enjoy this 1-minute video (for those receiving this by email: please click on the blog title line above). “Stacking” refers the the fact that each contribution you make, at different times, have different timeframes in which they grow by compounding. Thus, each contribution has different outcomes. This fact is rarely discussed so that people realize […]
1-minute video: About Better Financial Education
Please enjoy this 1-minute video (for those receiving this by email: please click on the blog title line above). More on the flying analogy in the video and how it, and my military flying experience, relates to planning and investing. // Larry’s Bio My 1-minute video series on YouTube. My Knowledge Center video library.

Q&A Spouse’s Social Security & Medicare
People hear or read about claiming strategies involving spousal benefits, and they want to make sure they are not missing out on these benefits. Here are some of the questions people often have about spousal benefits. Q: Can I claim my spousal benefit when my spouse turns Full Retirement Age (FRA)? A: You can claim your spousal […]

A Brief History of Doom.
Well written, easy to read, no financial background required, on why financial crises happen. The author puts together a very well-developed argument as what causes financial crises by looking at many historical events worldwide and piecing together the data to support this insight. Note: This post was written some months ago and scheduled to post […]

Choices – Should you consider Social Security Withdraw or Suspend?
Can, and how, do you do a Social Security Do-Over? What kind of do-overs can you do? What are your choices? In December 2010 the Social Security Administration abolished the strategy of applying for benefits at 62 and then, eight years later at age 70, withdrawing the application, repaying the benefits collected, reapplying to start […]

How Do You Know if Diminished Financial Capacity Has Crept in?
By definition, you don’t recognize the signs of diminished financial capacity. You need to rely on others for this. And as you’ll see below, relying on others presents a dilemma! This is not something to be ashamed of – it’s a natural order of aging. For some slowing down comes earlier, for others later. The […]

What is a Retirement Feasibility Timeline?
I define the Retirement Feasibility Timeline as a method to depict the transition between the working years (accumulation) and the retirement years (decumulation). You can visually see year by year (age by age) when retirement may be feasible without any changes to what you’re presently doing, and what meaningful changes may alter that outcome to […]

Americans lose trillions claiming Social Security at the wrong time!
The age at which most people claim Social Security (green line) is opposite to the age at which they SHOULD claim Social Security (purple line in graph above). According to The Retirement Solution Hiding in Plain Sight: How Much Retirees Would Gain by Improving Social Security Decisions, “retirees will collectively lose $3.4 trillion in potential income […]

Just Imagine Financial Planning Software … that does this …
Preface Financial planning software today is still a calculation-based approach that derives a supposed solution that most in the profession call a plan. Under the current paradigm, there is much more to be desired. Those desires are currently limited by the perspectives and interests within the software provider community that is also driven by the […]

House Stealing! Yes – that’s right – thieves steal ownership of your house!
“What do you get when you combine two popular rackets these days – identity theft and mortgage fraud? A totally new kind of crime: house stealing.” Quoted from the FBI’s website by the same title “House Stealing.” That’s right! You end up NOT owning your home! You may think this is an old story based […]