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About Retirement Calculator, Inc.

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.

Broker Dealer Advisors

Colleen Mulder-Seward, MBA
Retirement Calculator, Inc.
brokerdealeradvisors.com
If Your Advisor is a Broker/Dealer, How Can You Be Sure the Your Advisor is Only Acting in Your Best Interest?

A broker/dealer is an individual who sometimes makes deals for clients and who sometimes makes deals for the firm he or she works for. If people choose financial advisors who are also broker/dealers, how much confidence can be placed in the investment advice that is received?

Over time it has become common that people have evaluated their investments by giving their broker/dealers or financial advisors their permission to do the hard work for them; the broker/dealer advisors investigate the investment options, and then encourage their clients to takes action.

Sometimes, this proves to be enough to build a strong portfolio and to enable retirement goals to be achieved. But when financial advisors are also broker/dealers, how can anyone be sure that the broker/dealer advisors are acting in his or her best interest?

If you are in a position where you have a broker/dealer advisor, it is time to take back some control over your investments so that you can be sure that you reach your financial goals. If you are ready to take back that control, it is time for you to take the first step towards controlling your own financial planning.

The first step that you should take in order to have more of a say in your financial planning - and to be sure that your broker/dealer advisor is working to grow your portfolio - is to download the free retirement calculator (available with a click of the red button at the bottom of this page). The retirement calculator will change the way you look at financial planning. With it, will no longer believe that you cannot understand your own investments.

To begin with, when you use the retirement calculator, you will no longer have to take your broker/dealer advisor's word about how your portfolio is performing. Instead, after you enter some simple information about your savings and the stocks, bonds and mutual funds that you have invested in, you will be able to track how they have done in the past.

But you will also be able to look at projections for how those investments are expected to perform over the next twenty five years. And, you will be able to have some level of certainty that the amounts you see are the amounts that will be available to you. The projections provided by the retirement calculator take into consideration changing interest rates and inflation and the way that both affect the amount of savings that you will have available.

Not only will you be able to evaluate the investments that you already have, but also you will be able to evaluate the investments that you might make in order to see how making them will affect your retirement income. No longer will you need to rely on your broker/dealer advisor to tell you how a change to investment strategies would affect your savings; instead you will be able to see the outcome for yourself.

However even if you use the free retirement calculator to evaluate your investments, you still will not need to do all of your investing on your own. You will be able to take advantage of a free consultation with a financial advisor who is located in your area and who will be able to make sure that, if you have any questions you will get the answers that you need.

But even that does not mean that you cannot choose to stay with your broker/dealer as your financial advisor. The retirement calculator is not a tool that is meant to change whom you invest with; it is only meant to ensure that you are investing in a way that is right for you.

The benefit to using the retirement calculator is simple: you will be able to know what will come of the decisions that you make in your retirement planning - and therefore you will be able to be sure that you are prepared to reach all of your retirement goals. See for yourself the security that being prepared brings; 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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Retire In a Weekend

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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.