If you'd like your retirement years to be as happy as those of the nice ladies pictured at left, it pays to get your story straight on retirement vehicles. One area where confusion often reigns is...

I'm fortunate enough this year to have enough extra cash on hand to put some more money toward retirement, which will also let me pare down my 2006 tax bill. But I'm having a hard time...

I did a little profile of Zecco, the free stock trading service, back in September when it was first launching. I was a bit skeptical of its chances, and still am, but I think a new product introduced...

Got an e-mail last week about a new retirement tool from Nationwide Insurance and thought I'd give it a try and pass it along if you're interested. The tool is called the RetirAbility Check...

One of the questions for folks nearing retirement is how to balance their desire for growth with their need to protect their nest egg. This article from Terry Savage highlights an interesting...

My wife has a dream of a vacation home that is within driving distance, a place to spend the weekends in relaxation. I have a dream of warm weather, escaping the Cleveland winter for a sunny clime for...

The Wall Street Journal's CareerJournal columnist Perri Capell is "retiring" at age 55. I put "retiring" in quotes because in reality she is still going to freelance for WSJ...

As much as I love writing this blog, I often fantasize about leaving it and all work behind, preferably at a relatively young age. But what would I need in terms of net worth dollars in order to do...

The young man at left appears to be studying for a test. In reality, he is considering which mutual fund should be entrusted with his Roth IRA. Which would probably explain why he's in summer...

Like this fine lady to the left, we all want to be splashing around a pool in a funny hat when we retire. But the question of how to get there isn't always simple. For years now, a 401(k) has......

Look at this nice lady to your left. She looks sweet, doesn't she? What if I told you she was flat broke and that newspaper she's holding is the same one she slept under last night because she...

Congress thinks your piggy bank is lonely, so they're considering some forced savings, namely a 401(k) program that you opt out of instead of opt in. That means when you start a job, you'd...

In this Yahoo Finance column, Ken Dychtwald discusses laying the foundation for a secure financial future. He's addressing boomers and it's mostly cookie-cutter advice, but I liked his first...

There seems to be a lot of conflicting opinion on how much money you'll need in retirement in comparison to what you may need today. Is it 80%, or 50%, or even 100% because you're going to do...

I have a number of colleagues that have talked to me about moving south of the border and living an expat existence. They have had a lot of good things to say about it, but for me it isn't......

Here is a mistake that I've heard a couple of people make recently in reference to their IRA that I had to pass on to you. It's something I wouldn't have thought of because it's an...

The advent of the Roth 401(k) last month has started with a whimper instead of a roar. If you have more than a few years left before your retirement, you need to tell your place of work that you......

I like what Jane Bryant Quinn says in her book concerning the fact that investing should not be this exciting pastime. Rather it should be something that we do on automatic pilot, being disciplined...

We have been talking a lot lately about pensions and the 401(k) concerning whether one is superior to another. My take has been that there is not a great risk in transferring from the pension to the...

One of the illusions that are being thrown around a lot lately is that 401(k) accounts are much riskier than pensions. When I say that this is an illusion, it's really true. For example, just ask...

While the story about pensions isn't going to go away soon, I do want to make a couple of comments on some of the ideas about it being thrown around out there. You pretty much have three views...