Let’s be frank – nobody likes to think about the end of their life. It’s unpleasant and can put you in a real downer of a mood. This is probably why estate planning is the financial planning topic I’m least asked about. But just like your retirement and investments, estate planning also needs forethought and management when taking a comprehensive look at your personal finances...

An interesting tidbit I came across recently – as a recent study by the American Psychological Association shows, those who work past retirement age suffer 17% fewer major diseases and less physical decline than those who quit working and start taking life easy...

When William Bengen embarked on his study of safe withdrawal rates from a retiree’s portfolio in 1994, he operated on a couple of key assumptions – 1) that a 30-year time horizon seemed a conservatively long enough period to assume one would live in retirement and 2) past performance of the U.S. financial markets could reflect future probabilities...

Average hourly wages for American workers increased more in August than July — 0.3 percent, versus 0.2 percent the month before, according to the Labor Department. That pushed the yearly hourly wage increase to 2.2 percent from 2.0 percent....