Retirement

There is a good article in the Motley Fool that discusses using a reverse mortgage to generate retirement income . A home or principal residence is often one of the larger assets on a retirees' balance sheet. A reverse mortgage enables one to create a stream of income from what is otherwise an illiquid asset . "a reverse mortgage is one option to consider if you need to generate more income in retirement. Combined with managing your investments to maximize income, a reverse mortgage may give...

The Street reports that several states are working on initiatives that would provide broader access to retirement savings vehicles. Universal Voluntary Retirement Accounts would serve as inexpensive IRAs that are combined with a state's existing retirement system. One fundamental objective would involve increasing participation rates among parts of the population that have limited access to retirement plans: "According to the EOI, two out of three low-wage workers and one in four high-wage...

The hedging programs used by insurance companies to support the guaranteed living benefit features in their variable annuity products have held-up well recently. Milliman reports that insurance companies supported 94% of their guarantees for the six month period ending in March 2009. The success of the hedging programs and the highly volatile capital market environment have encouraged many insurers to increase their hedging efforts. As reported in an earlier post , the increase in hedging...

Minimizing large investment losses such as those experienced by many during the past two years can be a more important factor in one's financial health than large investment gains. Vanguard Founder John Bogle frequently discusses the importance of avoiding large losses: “People often don’t understand why they are still in a deep hole, even after they’ve had a year of great returns,” said John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard and the creator of the first index mutual fund...