Managing Money

So, I’m grabbing coffee with my friend Margaret last month. She’s this incredibly smart nurse who retired after 35 years of taking care of people. And she tells me something that made my jaw drop. She’d spent months calculating her retirement budget down to the penny. Social Security, pension, the whole nine yards…

Forty years ago, in the early years of my career as a funeral director – and after doing a little modeling on the side to make extra money — I accepted an offer to pose for Playboy. I was told my career would be over. The pronouncements weren’t quiet or subtle. They were direct. Colleagues and friends alike predicted that my life in funeral service would come to a screeching halt…

When I was growing up, retirement looked quite different. My parents’ generation expected to stop working in their mid-60s, collect a pension/Social Security and enjoy the years they had earned. Today, almost one fifth of Americans over the age of 65 are still working, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the majority of which work because they have no choice…

A common question when people are nearing retirement or in retirement is, “How much of my money should be in ____?” They may be referring to stocks, bonds, or cash. An alternative approach to developing a retirement investment strategy starts with your time horizon: When will you need to use the money?

If you’ve started to hear whispers in your head it’s time to get out of your business, time to exit, what’s holding you back from starting the exit journey? The following is a list of reasons I’ve heard from business owners over the years. How many of these…

There’s a particular kind of anxiety that can settle in later in life: quiet, persistent, and difficult to explain. It often sounds like this: I should be further along by now. Maybe you feel it when a friend talks about her investments over lunch. Or when someone mentions paying off their mortgage. Or when you hear about someone retiring early, downsizing comfortably…

After 32 years as an ICU nurse, Sharon faces a critical decision about early retirement and healthcare coverage. Sharon has been an ICU and step-down nurse for 32 years at a regional hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina. She’s 60, makes $78,000 a year, and she is tired. Like, genuinely running-on-fumes tired…

The Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) estimates that a “comfortable” retirement in the United Kingdom now costs £45,400 (US$60,000) a year for a single person and £62,700 (US$83,000) for a couple. For many people approaching retirement, those figures are sobering…

For many women, saying “no” to a financial request doesn’t feel like making a money decision. It feels like making a relationship decision. That’s part of what makes financial boundaries so difficult, especially with family. It’s rarely just about the money. It’s about love, loyalty, guilt, and the quiet fear…

For many, summer is when families come together. We check the more obvious things: flights, medications, hotel reservations, and maybe passports if it’s an international trip. But families often overlook another kind of preparedness. If something unplanned happens while traveling…