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Retirement Calculator, Inc. provides the tools and resources necessary to assist you in making critical economic decisions regarding your retirement future.

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Colleen's Corner

Asset Allocation

Often financial "experts" make asset allocation difficult to understand. My goal in this series of articles is for you to understand asset allocation thoroughly, in an easy to understand format.
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NATIONAL OVERNIGHT AVERAGESTODAY+/-LAST WEEK
30 yr fixed mtg 5.00% 5.03%
15 yr fixed mtg 4.35% 4.38%
5/1 ARM 3.87% 3.91%
30 yr fixed jumbo mtg 5.82% 5.87%
5/1 jumbo ARM 4.47% 4.49%
Rates may include points
NATIONAL OVERNIGHT AVERAGESTODAY+/-LAST WEEK
$30K HELOC 5.12% 5.13%
$50K HELOC 4.85% 4.85%
$30K home equity loan 7.82% 8.15%
$50K home equity loan 7.71% 8.10%
$75K home equity loan 7.73% 8.14%
Rates may include points
NATIONAL OVERNIGHT AVERAGESTODAY+/-LAST WEEK
36 month new car loan 6.64% 6.69%
48 month new car loan 6.77% 6.85%
60 month new car loan 6.83% 6.89%
72 month new car loan 6.03% 6.03%
36 month used car loan 7.00% 7.08%
Rates may include points
NATIONAL OVERNIGHT AVERAGESTODAY+/-LAST WEEK
6 month CD 0.80% 0.82%
1 yr CD 1.20% 1.24%
5 yr CD 2.57% 2.61%
1 yr IRA CD 1.07% 1.12%
5 yr IRA CD 2.16% 2.39%
Rates may include points

Introducing The Best Retirement Article You'll Ever Read

Retirement Calculator, Inc.
retirementarticle.com

Retirementarticle

When you set out to research your financial planning, you might read one retirement article after another.  The information that you read in one of those articles, you might find, will offer the same information as 10 others. What could be worse? What if you read three articles and in each retirement article the planning advice conflicted with what you had read in the others?

While you can get great information reading retirement articles, you won't always come away feeling like you learned something that you can really put to use. Though you might get one really great tip from an article in the financial section of your newspaper, it may not be something that will work for you.

If the only source of information that you use to guide your financial planning is retirement articles, you might not be able to plan your retirement as well as you could while using other sources as well. When you read a retirement article, the advice that it gives may be to take bigger risks than you are comfortable with.  If you follow that advice and it doesn't work, you may never get your retirement savings back on track.

So rather than only consulting a retirement article for investment suggestions many people also consult a financial advisor. When you consult someone to help you plan out your savings, you will get more personalized advice. 

But we think that there is something you can do that will give you more control of your financial planning than reading retirement articles and speaking with a financial advisor. We think that it's possible for you to research the way different investments work over time. We think it's possible to look into the future and determine how stocks, bonds and mutual funds can work together to build the income you need when you retire. We believe that you can look at your own savings strategy and find changes that you can make that will help your savings accrue even faster.

What you won't get from reading a retirement article is the chance to see your investments in action. You won't get the ability to know how interest rates and inflation will affect your savings. But you will get those things when you download and use our free retirement calculator.

We've done the research. We've looked at stocks, bonds and mutual funds. We've used the information we've found and applied it to projections for how those investments will act over the next 25 years. And we've made it possible for you to look at how changes to your investment strategy will affect your savings in the long run.

Even though we want you to use more than retirement articles to help you plan your financial strategy, we do want to encourage you to use a financial consultant, but not until after you've used the retirement calculator. To let you see the benefits of speaking with a retirement counselor for yourself, when you download our free retirement calculator we will set up a free one-on-one consultation. 

During that conversation, you'll be able to ask questions and get answers that you can use to help you plan your retirement. You'll be able to get guidance on how to set your plan into motion, guidance that retirement articles alone won't be able to give.

So why not take a few minutes and see for yourself? In no time at all, you'll learn about the best way to plan for your own retirement: By using our retirement calculator you'll find the plan that will work best for you. Set aside the retirement articles that you've been reading and click the red button to download the free retirement calculator. 

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Retirement Homes is a comprehensive directory of retirement homes, retirement communities, senior housing, long term care and elder care facilities. Retirement Homes will help you learn about all your retirement living, senior housing, and long term care options in the USA and Canada.

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Analysis of the Economics of Early Social Security Withdrawal

Robert J. Phillips
Chief Retirement Consultant

Deciding whether or not to take the early withdrawal of social security at age 62 can be difficult. If you need this income at 62 to fund your retirement the decision is fairly straightforward. Take it early! On the other hand, if you have another source of revenue to fund your retirement your decision will be primarily based on lifestyle, health and investment preferences.

Several factors can affect your decision. First is your life expectancy. If you are in good health and have a family history of living beyond 90 then waiting for full benefits may be best. Two other factors impact this decision. First and most important is the value of money or your expected return from your investments. If you are using other investments instead of social security to fund your retirement you should use the rate of return of these investments as your value of money. There is another way to look at the value of money. If you do not require the social security money to live, you can invest the distributions for the future. The rate of return of this investment is your value of money. If your investments will make larger returns such as stocks this would favor taking the early withdrawal.

The last factor impacting your decision is inflation. Social security includes an annual adjustment based on inflation. You cannot control this variable but you should be aware of its impact. If future inflation is significant it will favor a later full distribution

FREE Social Security Calculator:

Find Out Your Breakeven Age

We developed a calculator to assist in analyzing the impact of taking early benefits at age 62 or waiting for full benefits at age 66 to 67 depending on the year you were born...If you were born in 1960 or later your full benefits will begin at age 67 and your reduction for early benefits at age 62 will be 30%. If you were born between 1946 and 1960 your full benefits begin as early as age 66. We have included a chart that summarizes information.

To use the calculator you need to input your year of birth. You also need to input a value of money up to 10% and a projected inflation adjustment. The calculator analyzes income generated over time from both the early and full benefit investments. It calculates the age at which full social security will catch up and breakeven with the early withdrawal. If you were born before 1960 your breakeven age will be impacted by the year you were born. An early breakeven age favors waiting for full benefits.

The social security calculator is not the final answer whether to take an early withdrawal but it does give you additional economic data to assist in that decision. Ultimately you must balance income, investments and lifestyle to optimize your enjoyment during your retirement years.