Category Archives: Uncategorized

Is it safe to travel abroad?

I have no idea if you like to spend on travel. Patti and I really look forward to traveling, and it’s our biggest category of discretionary spending by far. It’s been 22 months since we traveled abroad, and we just got back from our trip

Do you want to buy an annuity to substitute for bonds in your portfolio?

You DO NOT want to buy an annuity to substitute for bonds in your portfolio! I read this article about a month ago, “Using Annuities During Retirement: When to consider annuities rather than bonds.” The article suggests that one should seriously consider buying an annuity

How do I best use my Roth account during retirement?

When Patti and I officially started our Nest Egg Care retirement plan in December 2014, I had no Roth IRA. All our retirement accounts were Traditional IRA, and most of our money was in retirement accounts. I posted here and here about the importance of

What changes in your financial retirement plan when a spouse dies?

What changes in your financial retirement plan and, most importantly, how is the surviving spouse’s financial well-being affected when one spouse dies? This purpose of this post is to describe the key changes as I see them. The key point is that the surviving spouse’s

How do we meet COVID-19 requirements to enter the UK and return to the US?

This post doesn’t have anything to do with financial retirement planning, but I thought I would describe the current COVID-19 requirements to travel to the UK and to return to the US – as best as I understand them. That’s because this was the all-consuming

Have you started on your tax planning for 2021?

My tickler file tells me that this is the week to take my first draft cut on my tax plan for 2021. This post is to describes my steps. I get three things from this process: 1) a rough guess of our Safe Spending Amount

Will we really be able to travel across the pond?

Patti and I traveled this week to Denver (Patti’s sister and family) and to St. Louis (my brother and his wife and family of Patti’s brother who died last spring). So, this post is far lighter than normal. The good news this week for Patti

What mix of stocks should you have before retirement?

How do you set your mix of stocks and bonds before the start date of your retirement? Patti and I officially started our retirement plan in December 2014. That was the first year we took a full withdrawal from our nest egg for our spending

How do Fidelity index funds compare to Vanguard’s?

Every January, I complete the Morningstar nine-box display of returns for segments of the market: the box is a matrix of annual returns by company size category (Large, Mid or Small Cap) and investment style (Value, Blend, or Growth). I did not realize that Fidelity

How many years does it take for you to pay out 100% of today’s portfolio value as fees?

Many of my friends don’t have the inclination, confidence or basic spreadsheet skills to be self-reliant investors. They hire a financial advisor so they don’t have to deal with what are very simple tasks for us nesteggers. The time they’d invest to gain modest skills

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