Retirement Insights

Review: Top 6 Common Retirement Mistakes

By McLean Asset Management

There’s some good advice in this article – with one glaring exception. Most of the article covers some of the common mistakes people make when retiring – things like not getting the most out of Social Security, missing Medicare deadlines, or not knowing what you actually want to do in retirement. Those are great reminders, but…

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Review: Hate Risk? You’ll Love These 2 Dividend Stocks

By McLean Asset Management

Articles like this one really bug me. They bug me because someone acted on what the author told them to do – and their retirement may very well depend on getting it right. This article is particularly egregious because both the presentation, as well as the actual content, are going to hurt people. Let’s start with…

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Building A Retirement Income TIPS Ladder

By McLean Asset Management

A TIPS ladder can be constructed similarly to a Treasury strips ladder, using the same date from the Wall Street Journal Market Data Center, which provides a daily report of wholesale prices from the secondary markets for all outstanding TIPS issues. On January 3, 2017, there were forty outstanding TIPS available, with maturity dates ranging…

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What Would A 30-Year Bond Ladder Cost A Retiree Today?

By McLean Asset Management

Building bond ladders for retirement income is an important but understudied topic. Especially since we are at a point in time when many are worried about future interest rate increases, bond mutual funds risk locking in capital losses when shares are sold to meet expenses, while a bond ladder will still provide the obligated cash…

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Review: Retirement planning is more than just saving money

By McLean Asset Management

All too often, when people think about retirement planning, they’re really thinking about investing. While investing is (often) a really important part of retirement planning, it’s only a piece of the puzzle. Retirement planning covers pretty much everything – it’s figuring out what you want to accomplish in retirement, and how you’re going to pay…

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Review: Aurinia’s stock plunges after big share offering at deep discount

By McLean Asset Management

It’s really easy to forget the underlying purpose of the stock market. Everyone always looks at it essentially as a horse race or a measure of how well a company is doing. But the reason the stock market exists is for companies to raise money. That’s the whole point of issuing (in other words, selling)…

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How To Buy Individual Bonds

By McLean Asset Management

Bonds can be purchased on both primary (when bonds are first issued) and secondary (subsequent trading) markets. There are wholesale markets for large institutions (with trades of at least $1 million) and retail markets for individual households. TreasuryDirect.gov is available for purchases of traditional U.S. Treasuries, TIPS, and I bonds, in taxable accounts, without any…

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Taxonomy Of Retirement Income Bond Ladders

By McLean Asset Management

When it comes to retirement income bond ladders, Joe Tomlinson created a taxonomy of different types in his 2014 Advisor Perspectives column, “Why the Risk Reduction Benefits of Bond Ladders Have Been Overstated.” His list inspired me to create a more extended version in Exhibit 1. Click here to download Wade’s fact sheet, “What Is…

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Understanding the Funded Ratio

By McLean Asset Management

Everyone wants to know where they stand with their finances – Will I be able to have the retirement I want? Do I have enough? Roughly how far do I have to go? Am I overfunded (believe me, it happens)? A funded ratio is a great tool for taking stock of your financial picture as…

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