Press and Reviews

“They think they're going to make a killing in the market one day,” he said. “That's largely Wall Street convincing them that they need to leave it in there and the reward will come. It might. But you certainly can't count on the kind of return you get in Social Security checks for the rest of your life if you have the planning and patience to wait.”

An Economist's Look Into Personal Finance

Laurence Kotlikoff has another good example of pulling certain levers involving a couple that comes to him with their proposed retirement plan.

Figuring out when to collect your Social Security benefits is a personal decision. You'll want to account for factors like your current health status, spouse and additional sources of retirement income.

The Secure 2.0 Act gives savers 72 and under an extra year before you have to withdraw money from your retirement accounts. But just because you can postpone your required minimum distribution (RMD) doesn't mean you necessarily should, financial advisors say.

Let's start with regret. Kotlikoff worries that people will regret retiring early and then coming up a few dollars short. That may be a mistake. But so would working an extra decade to pad the portfolio, only to find yourself among the half of people who stop needing any money prior to average life expectancy.

Caution: Read this column only if the idea of “running out of money” in your lifetime (with the exception of Social Security) keeps you awake at night! Relying on conventional financial planning could give you a 20 percent likelihood of that result.

If inflation doesn't drop back to where it was before the pandemic, nearly every American-rich or poor-will see their spending power diminished, a new working paper finds.

While some people would only gain a few thousand dollars by delaying until age 70, those at the high end would gain about $900,000 over the course of their retirement by waiting, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research paper by authors at Boston University and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

Principles of economics-based financial planning provide an answer. Any change in taxes and benefits can be modeled and the effect, while measurable, is sensitive to the age and financial characteristics of the individual and the household.

Retirees can make their provisional income go up or down by changing how much they take each year in distributions from their retirement accounts.

Even sophisticated investors tend to be under-informed and overwhelmed by the complexity of Social Security claiming and how to choose (and time) the best strategy for their situation.

Each month, about 71 million Americans - retirees, disabled workers and others – receive checks from Social Security. But each year, about a million people get something else in the mail – a bill. They're told they owe the government money, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, because the Social Security Administration miscalculated their benefits and paid them too much.

The National Bureau of Economic Research study found that Social Security beneficiaries are missing out on receiving nearly $200,000 by claiming too early.

The need for financial planning guidance is vast, not limited to wealthy or high-income households. Colorado represents the many in the middle of the income distribution.

Filing for benefits before full retirement age is a gamble, say economists and financial advisers

Top economist and Wall Street gadfly Laurence J. Kotlikoff, PhD, believes that the way most of us go about planning our finances is all wrong.

Trump's policies would jeopardize Social Security, report finds. 'Beyond irresponsible,' says one expert.

For starters, Kotlikoff said, investing in the stock market is highly risky, and the risk of a very large decline in your assets increases over time.

David Goldstein was terminated from his job as an environmental consultant and learned he had terminal bone cancer in the same week last November.

A recent analysis from MaxiFi, a personal financial planning platform, found that the more assets a retiree couple has, the more their discretionary spending will increase in retirement by downsizing their home.