Author: Money Mechanics

Saving for retirement is hard. For many, investing that money may be even harder. Target-date funds have become a nearly $5 trillion industry by largely solving that problem.The “target date” is the year of an investor’s expected retirement (but it could apply to any other long-term savings goal, such as college tuition). The funds have a heavier weighting in stocks early on, when the investor is younger and can better weather losses. They shift gradually over time to bonds, when safety becomes more important.It’s investing on autopilot, so much so that many call the premise of the funds “set it…

Each week in our Ask the Editor series, Joy Taylor, The Kiplinger Tax Letter editor, answers questions on topics submitted by readers. This week, she’s looking at four tax questions from readers on the taxation of I bonds in various situations. (Get a free issue of The Kiplinger Tax Letter or subscribe.)1. Buying and owning I bondsQuestion: I am thinking about buying I bonds for the first time. I heard that holders of I bonds get generous tax breaks. What are the tax consequences of owning these bonds?Joy Taylor: I bond buyers have a choice when they acquire the savings…

If I pulled one of your advisers aside tomorrow and asked them to walk me through your sales process step by step, from start to finish, could they do it? Could they tell me what happens in the first appointment, what gets said, what questions get asked and exactly how a prospect moves from curious to committed?If the answer is “probably not,” you don’t have a sales process — you have a sales idea. And ideas, as good as they can be, don’t scale.I want to start there, because I believe the sales process is the single highest-leverage investment you…

My father was a general agent at Manulife when he was diagnosed with a rare neurological disease at 56. The disease progressed slowly, gradually taking his ability to write, then to speak. I attended his client meetings, became his hands and eventually his voice.Because he had disability insurance, my family never had to worry about money during the most difficult years of our lives. That is the story I carry into every client conversation.Campaigns like Disability Insurance Awareness Month serve as a useful reminder of when and how to introduce disability planning into client conversations. Of course, individual situations and…

When it comes to investing, most of us know that risk fundamentally shapes which investment options we should consider and frames our potential return profile. But how many truly understand the impact of time — or, more specifically, time horizon?In truth, investing strategies should reflect both aspects: Our preference for or against risk-taking and how long our investments will be allowed to work for us before being liquidated and eventually spent.Pink Floyd famously sang about the mindset of youth in the song “Time,” noting how we act as if “there is time to kill today” only to suddenly realize “you…

The financial professionals who contribute to Kiplinger’s Adviser Intel are always here to share expert insights on wealth building and preservation.They’ve recently written about the lessons in Belle Burden’s New York Times bestseller, Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage, and what can happen when a wife blindly trusts her spouse with the family finances.This quiz is designed to test how much you know. (And don’t worry if you miss an answer: You can follow the links below the quiz to brush up on your knowledge.) From just $107.88 $24.99 for Kiplinger Personal Finance Become a smarter, better informed investor. Subscribe from…

Investors tend to view dividends as a general signal of corporate financial quality. The logic is sound: Companies typically don’t pledge to pay their shareholders a regular, fixed sum unless they can afford it with plenty of room to spare. So where you find dividends, you’ll often find a healthy bottom line.But that assumption has its limits. As a dividend yield starts to climb well above market and sector norms, investors begin to wonder about that payout’s sustainability. It could be that the company is dedicating too high a percentage of its profits to maintaining that dividend. Or it could…

A new report from Fitch Ratings has suggested that insurance-linked securities (ILS), catastrophe bonds, and parametric insurance solutions can help re/insurers innovate in order to balance the conflicting goals of expanding access to affordable natural catastrophe cover, without impairing underwriting principles.In the report, the agency highlights how socioeconomic factors such as wealth creation and urbanisation, alongside climate change, have contributed towards higher economic and insured losses due to natural catastrophe events. The agency said that it expects losses to increase over the medium-to-long term, driven by more frequent and more severe nat cat events linked to wildfires or extreme precipitation.…

For months, AI giants have devised special vetted programs and strict guardrails to limit the use of their models by malicious hackers. But these limits are now hindering the work of legitimate network defenders, as well as that of offensive cybersecurity researchers.  In June, the U.S. government slapped export control restrictions on Anthropic’s much-hyped AI models Mythos and Fable. The move was prompted at least in part by a report that claimed it was possible to bypass the models’ guardrails designed to prevent users from using them to build and execute malicious cyberattacks. Regardless of whether the incident was really…

The allure of retiring to Florida can be strong. Palm trees, sandy beaches, warm weather and zero income tax drive retirees in droves.But for some of them, Florida isn’t what they expected. Sure, they save money on income taxes, but the hefty homeowners’ association fees and skyrocketing insurance premiums more than cancel that out. That doesn’t even include the hurricanes, persistent humidity, heavy traffic and overcrowding.These retirees want what Florida promised, but on a more manageable scale. They can get that from what is known as ‘half-back’ states. These are states that offer tax-friendly policies, mild weather, and a lower…