Author: Money Mechanics

Every retirement plan is built around the same fear: Outliving your money. The industry has developed sophisticated tools to address it.Monte Carlo simulations model the probability that a portfolio will survive 30 years of withdrawalsSafe withdrawal rates are debated to the decimal pointLongevity risk is taken seriouslyThe research has identified a different risk, one that is statistically more common, demonstrably more devastating and absent from virtually every financial plan in circulation.The risk is outliving your mind. From just $107.88 $24.99 for Kiplinger Personal Finance Become a smarter, better informed investor. Subscribe from just $107.88 $24.99, plus get up to 4…

Retirement is supposed to be the reward for decades of disciplined saving. But for many retirees, a hidden tax problem quietly erodes what they’ve worked so hard to build — not through fraud or negligence, but through a lack of coordination between their income sources and their tax exposure.Most retirees don’t realize they’re overpaying until after the damage is done. In retirement, the biggest tax triggers aren’t wages — they’re the benefits and accounts you spent a lifetime accumulating.Understanding how they interact is what separates a tax-efficient retirement from an expensive one. From just $107.88 $24.99 for Kiplinger Personal Finance…

Keith Ward, 61, is proud of his son, who graduated from college in December of 2025 with a degree in information systems. His son was focused during his studies and worked hard to build skills he thought would lead to gainful employment.Instead, Ward’s son is living at home and struggling to find work.”He’s applied to more than 250 jobs, and I think has gotten seven interview requests,” Ward lamented. “Five years ago, employers would’ve been having fist fights to hire him.” From just $107.88 $24.99 for Kiplinger Personal Finance Become a smarter, better informed investor. Subscribe from just $107.88 $24.99,…

Welcome to Kiplinger’s My First $1 Million series, in which we hear from people who have made $1 million. They’re sharing how they did it and what they’re doing with it. This time, we hear from a 45-year-old married mental health professional in social services who lives in Arkansas. She reports that she and her husband have a combined annual salary of $250,000.See our earlier profiles, including a writer in New England, a literacy interventionist in Colorado, a semiretired entrepreneur in Nashville and an events industry CEO in Northern New Jersey. (See all of the profiles here.) From just $107.88…

Is the best way to invest in bonds to buy individual IOUs or shares in a bond fund? “We get this question all the time,” says Collin Martin, head of fixed-income strategy and research at the Schwab Center for Financial Research. “And every time, I give the same answer: It depends.”Mutual and exchange-traded funds certainly make bond investing easy. You pay an annual fee, of course, but the initial investment outlay is low, the fund offers instant diversification, and experts do all the work.But for investors who seek a specific level of income or who have cash needs at a…

Aeolus Capital Management Ltd., the specialist insurance-linked securities (ILS) and reinsurance investment manager, has announced a series of key promotions across its underwriting, reinsurance, retro, finance, legal, and operational teams.In underwriting, William Thuell has been promoted to Vice President, Underwriting at the ILS investment manager. Thuell brings deep sector expertise, including over four and a half years at ILS fund manager Elementum Advisors, and more than a year as a Bermuda-based underwriter for SIG Re, before joining Aeolus in 2024 as Assistant Vice President, Underwriting. Within finance and tax, Adam Lynch, an eight-year veteran at the company, has been named…

US President Donald Trump speaks at Wheeler High School, in Marietta, Georgia, on July 22, 2026. Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty ImagesU.S. trading partners from Canberra to Brasília have rejected the forced labor rationale behind President Donald Trump’s new global tariffs, while most signaled they would keep negotiating rather than retaliate. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative on Thursday took action under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, imposing tariffs on 60 economies for what Washington called their failure to impose and enforce bans on goods made with forced labor. The duties — 10% for partners…

LightFollow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.ZDNET’s key takeawaysLight just announced the Light Flip — a minimalist flip phone for $299.It has a slightly lower-end build compared to the Light Phone 3, but aims for a thoughtful design and striking colors.It comes with a nine-month “Flip Your Life” program that helps users prepare to ditch their smartphones for good. Light, the company that made the “premium dumbphone”, just announced the latest device to its lineup: the Light Flip, a $299 flip phone with the same minimal aesthetic but trade-offs in hardware and build. The Brooklyn-based company’s core ethos remains the…

(Oil & Gas 360) – Publisher’s Note: SLB will be a panel presenter and will host one-on-one meetings at EneCom Denver – The Energy Investment Conference at the Westin Downtown, August 17-19, 2026.  Register to attend. (World Oil) – SLB reported higher second-quarter revenue as broad-based international growth, led by offshore activity, more than offset continued disruptions across the Middle East. Second-quarter revenue increased 5% year over year to $8.97 billion, while net income attributable to SLB totaled $786 million. Adjusted EBITDA reached $1.90 billion, supported by higher offshore activity, stronger production systems demand and continued digital growth. CEO Olivier Le Peuch said sequential growth outside the Middle East was…

Some real estate agents count their days in closings. Neyshia Go counts hers in phone calls—sometimes as many as 140 in a single day.In the latest Realtor.com® video series, which follows a day in the life of top luxury agents, Go gets candid about what it’s like to work at the top end of the industry, where no two days look alike, even when the basic ingredients repeat: showings, calls, emails, negotiations.”The clients are different, the properties are different, people are different, and the problems are definitely different,” she says. That variety is exactly what keeps her hooked on the business. Since…