Jay Abolofia, PhD, CFP® is a fee-only, fiduciary & independent financial planner in Waltham, MA serving clients in Greater Boston, New England & throughout the country. Lyon Financial Planning provides advice-only comprehensive financial planning for a flat fee to help clients in all financial situations.
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How to Build a TIPS ladder
Buying individual Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) can help you secure a stream of inflation-adjusted income in retirement. With real interest rates higher than they’ve been in years, now is a relatively good time to build your TIPS ladder.
What is a Safe Withdrawal Rate for Retirement?
Although fixed withdrawal strategies like the 4 percent rule are attractive in their simplicity, they fail nearly every financial criterion imaginable. A more practical approach is to adopt a straightforward dynamic withdrawal strategy that depends on your current age, health and level of savings.
How Social Security Works and What to Know About Its Future
Without reform, Social Security will soon be unable to fully meet its obligations to beneficiaries. Given the financial standing of the program, here is what you can expect in the future.
Should You Contribute to Traditional Or Roth Accounts?
The decision to contribute to Traditional or Roth accounts depends on comparing your current vs post-retirement income tax rates. In some cases this may be straightforward. In others, not so much.
How to Protect Your Plan From Inflation
Rising prices can rapidly erode the purchasing power of your money. Consider these strategies to protect your plan from the risks of high sustained inflation.
What to Know about Active Vs Passive Investing
Everyone wants to beat the market. However, when it comes to your investments, basic arithmetic and real world data confirm that it pays to be passive.
Is Real Estate a Good Investment?
Investing in real estate may seem like an attractive option. Reviewing the historical data can help you evaluate whether it’s the right decision for your financial situation.
The Cost of Children
Having a better understanding of how dependents impact your financial plan, including how much you can afford to spend and need to save, can give you a leg up when it comes to managing your finances.
Should You Pay Off Your Mortgage?
Prepaying your mortgage is like buying a risk-free bond with a guaranteed rate of return. Understanding how your mortgage works can help you make an informed decision about how best to pay it off.
How Much House Can You Afford?
Mapping out your financial future, by looking beyond the monthly payment and dubious advice from mortgage lenders, is key to understanding your budget and making the right decision when it comes to buying a home.
How to Choose a Cost-Effective Health Insurance Plan
Understanding how health insurance works and selecting a plan can be challenging. Using these straightforward criteria will allow you to select the most cost-effective plan possible.
What To Know About Working With a Stockbroker
A stockbroker is a professional salesperson, not a fiduciary. Here are the facts about the asset-based fees and major conflicts of interest you’ll face in working with a broker today.
How to Invest in Your 401k
Managing your retirement savings plan is a critical task for securing your financial future. Using these straightforward criteria for selecting among investment options in your plan, you’ll be able to construct a sophisticated, yet simple and inexpensive, portfolio you’ll be happy with for years.
Can You Afford to Maintain Your Living Standard?
Economics-based planning relies on facts and common sense to solve for how much spending is affordable. This approach allows you to answer what may be the most important question in your financial life - can you afford to maintain your living standard throughout retirement?
How to Enhance Your Finances During a Pandemic
The impacts of COVID-19 extend well beyond your finances. That said, there are a variety of things you can do now to improve your current and future financial situation. Here is a list of ideas to consider, along with relevant resources.
What to Know about Risk and Stock Market Volatility
The recent drop in the stock market has been a sobering reminder that stock returns are inherently uncertain and volatility is always lurking. To best prepare for the future, educate yourself about the fundamentals of investing and revisit your tolerance and capacity for risk regularly.
How to Create an Effective Estate Plan
An estate plan is used to organize your personal and financial affairs in order to prepare for the future, including the unexpected. Having a sound estate plan is both a gift to your future self and your loved ones. This process is important for everyone, no matter the size of your estate.
The Role of Insurance in Your Financial Plan
Your financial plan is only as good as it is secure. An efficient risk management strategy can help protect your plan in case of a high severity risk, like premature death, long-term disability, serious illness, expensive lawsuit or major property damage
How Conventional Planning Fails to Provide Sound Financial Advice
In financial planning, sometimes getting it right is more about not getting it wrong. This makes rules of thumb dangerous to your financial well-being. Nonetheless, that is exactly what conventional planning uses to generate its recommendations. Fortunately, economics-based planning offers a sound alternative.
Four Steps to Successful Long-term Investing
Investing can be counterintuitive. The more effort you put in, the more likely you are to underperform. Successful long-term investing is about creating a plan and sticking to it, not trying to outsmart the market.