The morning after his 67th birthday, Marty McGowan filed for Social Security. That wasn’t his original plan. He had intended to wait until he was 70 to claim benefits, in exchange for a heftier payment that would have yielded an extra $800 a month. But like other retirees in recent months, he was watching the…
Marriage inevitably involves financial compromises both small and large. Joint or individual checking accounts? How much is too much to spend on a car? Name-brand or store-brand groceries? When a couple remarries late in life, the stakes get higher. How should the expenses for those bucket-list retirement trips be divided? Whose name goes on the…
Before Zygmund Furmaniuk’s aunt Mary died in 2023, she set up a trust to hold her assets and to distribute her estate, which was valued at nearly $1 million. A retired chemistry teacher, Mary Furmaniuk was single and had no children. Creating the trust, Mr. Furmaniuk said, was her way of making sure her assets…
“Inflation is a low drip, like boiling a frog: The impact kind of creeps up on you, but when it hits, it doesn’t feel good,” Mr. Haynes said. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you can bail out of stocks now, then jump back in when the market stabilizes. Gains historically have come in unpredictable spurts,…
In the past few months, some of the largest banks and asset managers in the United States have quit net zero networks, the climate groups that encourage their members to set ambitious carbon reduction targets and collaborate internationally on sustainability efforts. But the week after Donald J. Trump won re-election in November, NYCERS, a pension…
After the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s, Lars Staack decided to play it safe and invest his retirement savings in S&P 500 index funds, which are diversified and carry lower risk than owning individual stocks. It was a strategy that brought him peace of mind for more than two decades — until President…
Here’s a pop quiz for married couples. Do you know your spouse’s salary? What about the balance of your partner’s 401(k) — and credit card? Bonus points if you can cite how much your husband or wife thinks you need to live comfortably in retirement, or even what age he or she hopes that will…
When Nia Darville Stokes-Hicks and Armondi Stokes-Hicks married two years ago, they set up five bank accounts. Each had an individual bank account for personal spending, and they shared a checking account for paying household bills. They had a joint savings account. And they had yet another account for money the couple set aside to…
Vanguard, the large mutual fund company, has agreed to pay $106 million in restitution to settle a securities regulatory investigation into whether the firm misled retail investors about the tax implications of changes in some of its retirement funds. The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the settlement on Friday along with a flurry of other…
Prime Minister François Bayrou of France said on Tuesday that he was open to changing the country’s unpopular pension law, which raised the retirement age to 64 from 62, as he sought to build support in Parliament and keep his government afloat. The 2023 law was championed by President Emmanuel Macron in the name of…