The need for long-term care planning grows more and more pressing each year. The combination of people living longer and costs of such care rising rapidly have contributed to the growing need. Here are some bare facts:

• A healthy 65-year-old has at least a 40% chance of living into his or her 90s, according to AgeLab, a research program within MIT’s School of Engineering that works with business, government and NGOs to improve the quality of life of older people. And six in 10 men and eight in 10 women will need chronic care...

I often feel like most of what I bring to your attention tends to highlight more of what’s wrong with our retirement preparedness than what’s right. So to change things up a bit, here’s a great article from US News and World Report I wanted to share about how early retirement can make your life better.

Being able to help a client retire earlier than they originally planned is probably one of the most rewarding aspects of my job. Early retirement is not an impossible goal - the caveat, of course, is that achieving it takes a lot of saving, investment and planning discipline. If you’re able to achieve it, you’ll often find that retirement very rewarding...

I’ve been getting a few questions recently about Roth conversions, so I thought it would be a good idea to post this primer on the subject from Fidelity. They did a great job hitting some of the key questions and breaking down the pros and cons. Our view is that an ideal retirement strategy has multiple income sources that come from taxable, tax-deferred, and tax-free accounts. So if a Roth conversion is something that makes sense given your current tax situation, it’s not a bad idea to take advantage...

The National Association of Government Defined Contribution Administrators, Inc. (NAGDCA), recently released a new report that included a bevy of statistics that should strike a healthy dose of fear in those that have put retirement planning on the back burner. In the group’s estimation, “The unfortunate state of Americans’ financial preparedness for retirement is well-documented, and may be summed in two words: NOT READY.” (Quoted directly from their report’s opening sentence)...