25 Sep 2017

Changes to the Missouri Most 529 Plan

I received a package from Missouri Most last week highlighting a change to the college savings plan. For those investors, like me, that use the age-based options, Vanguard is expanding the stock/bond options to make the journey a little smoother for investors. Currently, there are five age categories, starting with zero to five years old, then six to ten years old, 11-15 years old, 16-18 years old and for 19-year… Read More

By David Ott Tags: , , , , , ,
17 Jul 2017

Retirement Spending Rules of Thumb

I suspect that, at some point, everyone has heard the old rule of thumb that retirees need to replace 80 percent of their income in retirement to continue to maintain their lifestyle. Although I think that the rule is conceptually reasonable, it’s imperfect and can be improved upon.  At the very least, spending in retirement isn’t fixed – it tends to decline over time as people age (for more on… Read More

By David Ott Tags: , , , ,
21 Feb 2017

The High Cost of Healthcare for Retirees

A study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) released in January estimates how much savings people need just to cover out of pocket healthcare expenses.  (You can see the entire study here) Like our retirement planning software, the EBRI conducted Monte Carlo simulations to estimate the effect of varying mortality rates and portfolio returns. The EBRI found that for a 65 year old man to have a 50/50 shot… Read More

By David Ott Tags: , , , , ,
8 Apr 2016

Healthy Aging: Building Your Social Network

This is the third part in a series on the successful transition to retirement. The first article addressed The Challenge of Leisure and was followed by Why Put Family First.  This one will expand from family to your broader social network. As a reminder, researchers have shown that strong social relationships keep us younger, healthier, and lower our mortality risk.  In addition to living longer, healthy people lead happier lives in… Read More

By Michael Lissner Tags: ,
29 Mar 2016

Healthy Aging: Why Put Family First

This is the second part in a series on the successful transition to retirement.  The first article addressed The Challenge of Leisure and this one will dive a little deeper into the family dynamic, which typically effects everyone in the house, not just the person retiring. My parents had close friends (whom I will call George and Martha).  My dad and George served in the Navy together.  George went on to… Read More

By Michael Lissner Tags: ,
22 Mar 2016

Healthy Aging: The Challenge of Leisure

The transition to retirement is a major milestone and Acropolis helps our clients make a successful transition.  Retiring is often equated with having more leisure time.  However, clients should have a strategy for healthy aging. Leisure is an important part of life which provides many benefits.  A few of these are: time to recharge our batteries, give us something to look forward to, and provides a change of pace in… Read More

By Michael Lissner Tags: ,
18 Nov 2015

What Retirees (and Pre-Retirees) Worry About

One of the interesting (but less than encouraging) data points in the inflation data is that medical care service costs increased 3.0 percent in the 12 months ending in October while core inflation was 1.9 percent (core inflation excludes volatile food and energy costs). Everyone at Acropolis knows that retirees and pre-retirees worry a lot about healthcare costs.  A recent UBS study of 1,849 high net worth individuals with an… Read More

By David Ott Tags: ,
2 Oct 2015

Best Cities to Retire

I recently stumbled upon a fascinating website, the Milken Institute’s Best Cities for Successful Aging. I was doing some research to try and determine whether moving to a state without income tax like Florida or Texas really made a difference to an overall retirement plan.  I created a hypothetical client and ran 10,000 scenarios that were identical other than the state where the client retired. As I expected, the difference… Read More

By David Ott Tags: ,
24 Jun 2015

Maximizing Social Security

It’s a little hard to believe, but I read more and more in the popular press about maximizing Social Security benefits.  One of the best-selling books this year is called ‘Get What’s Yours: The Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security’ by Laurence Kotlikoff.    I tried to read it earlier this year and admit that even I found it was pretty dry, and I think it’s fairly obvious that… Read More

By David Ott Tags: , ,
20 Nov 2014

How to Get a $200 million IRA (no joke)

When Mitt Romney ran for President in 2012, he was required to disclose information about his net worth, which was around $250 million. The most interesting element to me, though, was that he had more than $100 million in his IRA. IRAs are an important element of our clients IRAs and some have large balances, but nothing, obviously, like Romney’s. I don’t begrudge Romney and have no interest in getting… Read More

By David Ott Tags: , ,