When many people reach the age of 50 and have worked all their adult lives, they begin to think about that light at the end of the tunnel called retirement. And many of those individuals start to dream of retiring early.

A survey conducted in 2014 by the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America, a financial services provider, found that 37 percent of Americans plan to retire before age 65.

When I turned 50, retirement was not in my immediate plans. I had worked almost 30 years in education to that point in my life, but only 20 years in a pension system. I figured I could weather any employment storm and wait until I was 65 which, at the time, was the age you could collect full Social Security benefits.

But other factors came into play which changed my mind about retirement. On my 52nd birthday my wife, Maria, gave me a gift certificate for massage therapy. One of the ladies she swam with in the mornings was a licensed massage therapist and sold her the certificate. Well, I put it aside and forgot about it. About a year later, I was cleaning my desk and discovered the certificate. It had recently expired. But I contacted the lady and she agreed to honor it. So I went to my first session. I was anxious at first as is the case of many who had not yet had the experience. But I came away feeling refreshed and started to think about that particular profession. It fit in with my lifestyle of being physically fit and would provide me with the opportunity to educate others, which is what I had been doing as a teacher and school administrator. So with Marias blessing, I located a school that offered the requirements for a license.

I attended the Onondaga School of Therapeutic Massage in September 2000 which was in Rochester. I attended nights and weekends (22 hours a week) for a year. Upon completion, I took the New York State Board Examination and passed it.

A year later, at age of 55, I convinced Maria it would be financially feasible for me to retire and begin to collect my pension while I established a full-time practice.

I became part of that TIAA statistic of early retirees.

When it comes to retirement, not everyone will have a choice in the matter. Job loss, health problems or family responsibilities can disrupt the best-laid retirement plans, forcing people out of the workforce sooner than expected. According to 2016 reports from the Social Security Administration, the average age at which people retire today is 63.

If youre lucky enough to have control over when you retire, its worth thinking through the pros and cons before you make any rash decisions. Even if you can afford to retire early, you might not want to.

Favoring early retirement

Here are some arguments in favor of retiring early.

It could be good for your health. A British study in 2002 of British citizens with high-level jobs saw an improvement in mental health, possibly because they were no longer subject to work-related stress.

nYoull enjoy more time for travel. The earlier you retire, the more years youll have before health issues begin to limit your mobility.

nIts an opportunity to start a new career like I did. If you dream of switching fields or starting your own business, sooner may be better than later. Youll be a more desirable job candidate to many employers the more years you have ahead of you. And if you want to be your own boss, youll have more time to get your business off the ground. A business you launch at age 60, for example, could easily keep you intellectually challenged.

Waiting to retire

Here are a few arguments against retiring early:

nIt could prove to be bad for your health. A 2008 analysis from the National Bureau of Economic Research reported that retirement leads to declines in mental health and mobility, and increases in other poor health outcomes, such as heart disease and stroke. While thats one argument for delaying retirement, those problems arent inevitable. The report also concluded that retirees who remained physically active and socially connected were less likely to suffer any ill effects.

nYour Social Security benefits will be smaller. You can calculate the difference by contacting the Social Security website. It has a calculator you can use. The sooner you start to take Social Security, the lower your benefits will be. If you were born in 1960 or later, for example, and you start taking benefits at age 62, the earliest age at which youre eligible, your monthly benefits will be 30 percent less than if you wait until age 67, which Social Security refers to as your full retirement age. For each year you postpone from age 67 to 70, youll receive an additional 8 percent in your monthly benefit. After age 70, theres no further bonus for delaying.

nYour retirement savings will have to last for more years. If you retire at age 62 and live to 90, your IRAs and other savings will have to cover you for 28 years. If you retire at 70 and live for the same length of time, however, your savings will only have to last for 20 years. Working longer also means youll have more years to contribute to a 401(k) or other retirement plan, and the money in your plan will have more time to compound.

nYoull need to find health insurance. Unless your ex-employer provides it, youll have to pay for health insurance on your own until youre eligible for Medicare at age 65.

Fortunately for me, I negotiated with my last place of employment. As part of my retirement, they agreed to cover 70 percent of my health care benefits including my family.

Making the call

If you dont want to retire early because you are afraid that youll regret the decision but also dont want to wait so long that you miss out on the pleasures of retirement, there are ways to have the best of both worlds.

For example: you could do some of the traveling youve been saving for your retirement years while youre still working. Or, you might be able to negotiate a reduced work schedule with your employer and enjoy the life of a retiree on your days off. This is referred to as phased retirement.

The bottom line is that deciding when to retire is a difficult and complex decision. It isnt just a question of money. Other factors to take into consideration are your health, family obligations and individual temperament. Perhaps most important is thinking about what you plan to do with your retirement years, however many of them lie ahead.

Lou Lombardo is a state licensed massage therapist, nationally certified and certified in orthopedic massage. For questions, comments or more information you can contact him at (585) 734-2200 or at lombardolm@aol.com.

The fork ratings are based primarily on food quality and preparation, with service and atmosphere factored into the final decision. Reviews are based on one unsolicited, unannounced visit to the restaurant.

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Healing Hands: Thinking of retirement? Consider these options - The Livingston County News

Time and again we hear people say that their biggest retirement fear is running out of money. Its an understandable concern. With increasing lifespans and higher health care costs, retirement is often longerand more expensivethan it used to be.

Planning ahead will go a long way in feeling more confident to take on a retirement that may last upwards of three decades. If youre thinking about retiring within the next few years, now is the time to get your financial ducks in a row. Here are our top tips to help ensure youre prepared.

Taking the time to think through the realities of your retirement lifestyle helps you align your values (whats most important to you) with your financial goals. If your ideal retirement consists of living in your current home, tending to your garden and volunteering at your local library, your financial needs will likely be very different from someone who seeks to spend their retirement visiting the worlds best 5-star resorts. Your financial plan should be constructed to reflect those differences in lifestyle.

We encourage you to scrutinize your employer benefits in the years leading up to retirement. Items to consider: Have you updated your 401(k) to include the Catch-up provision that allows workers 50+ to contribute an extra $6,000? Does your company offer special post-employment benefits (airline, retail discounts)? Are your employer-sponsored insurance policies portable? Are they worth the additional expense?

Over last 15 years, the S&P 500 returned 8.19 percent annually. If you invested $100,000 and earned that 8.19 percent, youd have over $325,000. The average equity investor over the same period only earned 4.67 percent, giving them $198,000 if they invested the same $100,000. Why are they underperforming? There are a number of excuses, such as loss aversion, denial and falling under the spell of media influence. We believe the best way to avoid behavioral mistakes is to offload investment management to an objective and professional third party like a financial adviser.

To avoid running out of money, its important to not only reach a savings goal, but also chart out what your spending may look like. This is where the value of a financial adviser with expertise in retirement income planning comes in. Based on your family history, health, savings, and other factors, we can help determine an appropriate time horizon and average withdrawal rate for you and we can suggest small changes that may extend your savings.

One of the surest ways to keep more of your hard-earned money is to employ tax planning. If your savings and investments arent divided into taxable, tax-deferred and tax-free categories, you probably arent minimizing your tax burden which means you could end up paying more in taxes than you really need to. Enlisting the expertise of a tax planner could help make the most of your money.

Youve worked hard for your retirement; you deserve to enjoy it. Following these five points will not only help you seek a more comfortable retirement, itll also help assuage any concerns you have about a lack of preparedness.

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results. All indexes are unmanaged and may not be invested into directly.

Bruce Helmer and Peg Webb are financial advisers at Wealth Enhancement Group and co-hosts of Your Money on News Radio 830 WCCO on Sunday mornings. Email Bruce and Peg at yourmoney@wealthenhancement.com. Securities offered through LPL Financial, Member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory services offered through Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Wealth Enhancement Group and Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services are separate entities from LPL Financial.

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Your Money: Your easy 5-point retirement checklist - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press

We hear a lot about the importance of saving for retirement, and this applies whether you're a salaried employee or the owner of a small mom-and-pop store that's been in your family for years. Yet a surprising number of small-business owners aren't preparing adequately for the future. According to Manta, one-third of small-business owners don't have a retirement savings plan in place.

If you own a small business, it's critical that you establish some sort of long-term plan, whether on your own, or with the help of a trusted financial advisor. Here are a few ways to get started.

IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.

Though it's not always easy to predict how much you'll wind up spending in retirement, the sooner you get a sense of how much income you'll need to stay afloat, the more accurate a goal you'll have to work toward. Since you're self-employed, your business might be offsetting some of your existing living costs. For example, you might currently be leasing your personal car for your business, or taking a home-office deduction if you conduct business out of the house. But these benefits won't be available once you're no longer generating an income, so keep them in mind as you attempt to map out your future budget.

Small business owners have several options when it comes to saving for retirement -- options that salaried workers don't have access to. The first one you might consider is the solo 401(k), which works just like a regular 401(k), only with one added benefit -- the ability to contribute up to 25% of your business earnings for a total annual limit of $54,000 if you're under 50, or $60,000 if you're 50 or older. Like a regular 401(k), solo 401(k) contributions are tax-deductible unless you opt for a Roth account, in which case you'll pay taxes now, but enjoy tax-free withdrawals in retirement.

Then there's the SIMPLE IRA, which, if you're self-employed, allows you to contribute up to $12,500 per year if you're under 50, or $15,500 per year if you're 50 or older. Furthermore, with a SIMPLE IRA, employers must make contributions on behalf of participating workers, either by matching employee contributions up to a maximum of 3% of salary, or contributing 2% of employees' salaries up to a maximum of $5,400. If you don't have many (or any) employees, a SIMPLE IRA could be an effective means of saving for retirement, but if you have a large number of people who work for you, it could get expensive.

Finally, there's the SEP IRA, which, if you're self-employed, lets you contribute up to 25% of your net business income per year, up to a maximum of $54,000. The one drawback to the SEP is that, as a small business owner, you're required to contribute the same amount to your employees' accounts as you do to your own. But if you don't have any employees and want to save in an IRA, you'll get more flexibility with a SEP than you will with a SIMPLE.

Once you figure out where you're going to put your money, your next move is to work on increasing your savings rate to give your nest egg a decent amount of time to grow. Even if you start out with relatively small contributions, by steadily increasing the amount you put into your savings plan, you'll have a good chance to make up for lost time -- especially if you're eventually able to max out a plan with a generous limit to begin with, like a Solo 401(k), or a SEP IRA.

Of course, the challenge many small-business owners face in saving for retirement is that they prefer to reinvest their earnings in their companies rather than set that money aside for the future -- so you'll need to work on striking a balance. That might involve pumping more cash into your business during its early years to build it up, and then boosting your retirement savings rate once your company is well established. Or it might mean taking advantage of years with better profits and socking away the difference for the future.

If you're a small business owner, it's critical to take retirement planning into your own hands. The sooner you begin focusing on the future, the better equipped you'll be to make smart decisions for yourself and your business in the present.

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2. Find the right retirement savings plan - Motley Fool

If you hope to build a seven-figure retirement nest egg starting from scratch in your mid-40s, you've got some heavy-duty saving ahead of you. Is it possible? Sure, theoretically. As a practical matter, though, I'd have to say that for many, if not most people in your situation, it's a long shot.

Fortunately, there's a better way for people who are getting a late start to go about preparing for retirement than shooting for a big round, but essentially arbitrary, number. I'll get to that in a minute.

But since you asked, let's first look at what you would have to do to accumulate a million bucks by the time you hit retirement.

Related: 4 questions to ask before you retire

For the purposes of this exercise, I'm going to assume you're 45, have nothing saved and would like to retire at 67, the age at which anyone born in 1960 or later becomes eligible for full Social Security benefits. That gives you 22 years to build your nest egg. If you start immediately, you would need to save about $1,875 a month to have $1 million at retirement, assuming a 6% annual return.

I think by most people's standards, $1,875 a month, or $22,500 a year, is a prodigious amount to devote to savings. If you earn $50,000 a year, you're talking about setting aside 45% of salary. Even if you pull down $100,000 a year, that's still 22.5% of earnings, well above what most people manage to save.

You can lower that monthly savings nut a bit by extending your time in the workforce. (You can also lower it by shooting for a higher rate of return, but I don't think that would be realistic or prudent.)

For example, if you're able to work to age 70 -- hardly a given, as many people find themselves forced to retire earlier than they'd planned) -- that gives you three more years to save, lowering the amount you'd have to put away each month by $400 to about $1,475, or $17,700 a year. That may be a bit more manageable, but I think most people would still find $1,475 a month a tough target to meet. Indeed, for many people it's beyond their reach.

Which brings me to that better way of preparing for retirement that I mentioned earlier. Rather than picking a number that looms large in the popular imagination and then seeing if you can save enough to hit it, you're better off doing a more comprehensive and nuanced analysis that will help you determine how much you ought to be saving for a secure retirement -- and then allow you to track your progress toward that goal.

One way to do that is to go to a good retirement income calculator, which can give you an estimate of how much of your pre-retirement income you'll need to replace to maintain something close to your standard of living once you've retired (70% to 80% is a decent estimate for starters; you can always refine that figure as you get closer to retirement). The calculator will automatically estimate the amount you'll receive from Social Security, or you can get a more customized estimate based on your work history and projected earnings by going to Social Security's Retirement Estimator.

Next, enter the percentage of salary that you think you'll be able to devote to savings each year. Don't go too easy on yourself. Remember, you've got some catching up to do. So at the very least, you'll want to try to save 15%, and 20% or more would be even better.

Whatever figure you start with, you can always build to a higher percentage by increasing your savings rate by a percentage or so each year. To the extent you can do your saving through a workplace plan like a 401(k), so much the better, as your employer may also help your effort by kicking in some matching funds. But one way or another you need to get in the habit of saving on a regular basis.

Once you've entered all this info, the calculator will use computerized Monte Carlo simulations to estimate your chances of being able to retire at the age you wish with the income you'll need. Ideally, you'd like your chances to be roughly 80% or higher.

But for someone getting a late start, they'll likely be lower, often much lower. Whatever the initial assessment, don't get discouraged. If you're diligent about saving, your retirement prospects should improve.

Related: I'm 60 with little saved -- what do I need to do to retire?

Going through this exercise won't guarantee success. But at least you'll have a plan based on your actual circumstances, not an arbitrary number. What's more, by going through this process every year or so, you'll be able to track your progress and, if you're not making enough headway, see how various adjustments -- saving more, postponing retirement a few years, spending a bit less after you retire -- may be able to boost your chances of achieving a secure retirement.

If it turns out that, despite your best efforts, you still fall short of accumulating a large-enough nest egg, there are some moves you can consider after you retire that may be able to improve your post-career life, including working part-time, downsizing, taking out a reverse mortgage or squeezing more out of your savings by relocating to an area with lower living costs.

I'm not saying this will be easy. Far from it. If you haven't been saving on a regular basis, that means your lifestyle is based on spending 100% of what you earn (aside from taxes). So shifting from saving little or nothing up to this point in your life to saving anything, let alone a sizable percentage of your salary, means you'll likely have to make some radical adjustments to the way you live.

But by setting up a plan that reflects your circumstances, monitoring your progress, investing sensibly and fine tuning when necessary will certainly give you a better shot at achieving a secure retirement than aiming at a big round number plucked from thin air.

CNNMoney (New York) First published August 9, 2017: 10:28 AM ET

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How do I retire with $1 million? - Aug. 9, 2017 - CNN Money - CNNMoney

Many people who have saved millions of dollars to retire comfortably are now scared to spend it.

A recently retired client, a woman with approximately $1 million in savings, was asked to join a group of friends on a girls' getaway vacation costing approximately $3,000. Even though she had plenty of money to take the trip, she felt uneasy because it meant breaking her lifetime habit of saving for the future. She's lived a financially disciplined life for so long that she didn't know how to handle this expense without any earnings to pay for it.

Despite sobering statistics about most Americans' lack of retirement savings, many people have done an admirable job of socking away enough money. Through a combination of disciplined savings habits, moderate lifestyles and maybe a little luck, they find themselves able to retire comfortably. For these individuals, the move from saver to spender can feel like an abandonment of all of the principles they have known for more than 30 years.

Additionally, many retirees can seem paralyzed by what I call the "what if" syndrome. Some are uncomfortable spending money unless all of the possible calamitous outcomes, regardless of how remote, are considered. They live in a prison of fear of what might happen, building a wide moat of protection around themselves and their money. In all likelihood, they will come to the end of their days with an abundance of caution, wealth and unfulfilled dreams.

More from Advice and the Advisor:7 retirement-planning mistakes to avoidHow to avoid costly 401(k) rollover mistakes7 ways to make sure you don't outlive your savings

Yet retirees do not have to be undisciplined in their approach to money or live irresponsibly to enjoy their retirement years to the fullest. Here are some steps that people can take to have a fulfilling retirement while staying true to who they are.

Retirement spending requires discipline. Start by understanding what is important to you so you can make wise decisions. What inspires you? What relationships are the most fulfilling? What brings you joy? Over my nearly 20 years' working with clients, most answers revolve around a combination of family relationships, ongoing personal growth, making an impact in the world and leisure activities.

Take time to think about personal goals, the legacy you'd like to leave your family and how to enjoy the second half of your life. This exercise will help you put a finer point on your retirement cash-flow planning.

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Now that you're finally retired, don't be afraid to spend money - CNBC

In response to the Department of Labors conflict-of-interest rule aka the fiduciary rule firms in the financial services industry are rolling out two new classes for mutual fund shares: T shares and clean shares.

These new shares are designed to help advisers comply with the requirements of the fiduciary rule which will start being enforced unless something happens in the meanwhile on Jan. 1, 2018. The fiduciary rule requires, among other things, that financial advisers to put their clients best interest ahead of their own compensation when selling investments and products inside a retirement accounts such as an IRA.

Read: The fiduciary rule is about more than adviser pay. Heres why that matters

Read: 6 key points on the fiduciary rule

Read: Morningstar comment letter on COI examination

And that means financial advisers would be hard-pressed to comply with the Labor Departments (DoL) rule given that the earn commission and 12b-1 fees on the load class of shares they often sell to clients for their retirement accounts. Those would include according to the 2017 Investment Company (ICI) Fact Book:

Front-end load shares, which are predominantly Class A shares, and were the traditional way investors compensated financial professionals for assistance;

Back-end load shares, often called Class B shares, where investors pay for services provided by financial professionals through a combination of an annual 12b-1 fee and a contingent deferred sales load (CDSL); and

Level-load shares, which include Class C shares, where investors compensate financial professionals with an annual 12b-1 fee (typically 1%) and a CDSL (also typically 1%) that shareholders pay if they sell their shares within a year of purchase.

Enter T shares and clean shares

T shares (or transactional shares) will help financial advisers maintain their traditional business modelselling mutual funds on commissionwhile complying with new rules, according to a paper published by Morningstar in April. The second new share class, clean shares, could help financial services companies that wish to shift to a level fee model in which advisers compensation only comes from a level charge on a clients assets and not from any varying third-party payments.

And the early evidence is that these new share classes should reduce conflicted advice and likely improve outcomes for investors, according to the Morningstar report.

T shares eliminate some but not all conflicts

T was originally said to stand for transactional, and then later, transitional, and we think there is truth in both those claims, said Paul Ellenbogen, head of global regulatory solutions at Morningstar and co-author of the report, Early Evidence on the Department of Labor Conflict of Interest Rule.

The T share, he said, is designed to replace the A share, which had become the workhorse of retail brokerage, but has two fatal flaws in the post-DOL, or best-interest world: its load structure, and varying revenue sharing arrangements. The load structure, which can vary across funds, fund companies, and investors, creates an incentive for an adviser to choose one fund over another based on their own interest, rather than the best interest of the client, Ellenbogen said. Revenue-sharing arrangements, which are more opaque, put certain fund families ahead of others, again based on the business interests of the provider and not the financial interests of the investor.

The T shares address these two challenges, he said, by levelizing loads (generally, at 2.5%), and otherwise removing inducements to offer one fund versus another. So far, our database shows nearly 1,000 T shares registered, but only about 125 actually operating, that is, holding assets and posting a daily price, said Ellenbogen. From the perspective of a broker-dealer, T shares have some operational advantages. As with A shares, the fees charged to the investor are collected by the fund company. Then, one part the management fee is kept by the asset manager, another part generally the 12b-1 fee is paid to the distributor; and some goes to the transfer agency and the sub-transfer agent. This collection and reallocation of fees is compatible with the business models of most brokerages.

However, T shares still include inducements that make them more attractive to brokers than other investments, said Ellenbogen. Specifically, all of the other fees beyond investment management included in the expense ratio, and paid by the investor, go to pay for some elements of the brokerage business, he said. Hence, funds with these other non-management fees serve the interest of the broker but not necessarily the investor.

To be fair, Ellenbogen and his co-author, Aron Szapiro, director of policy research, noted in their paper that that the move to T shares from A shares may not only reduce what some investors pay directly for advice in the form of commissions, but could also reduce other costs of investing, including fees for asset management and other services.

They estimated a savings of 50 basis points (one-half of 1%) to investors from reduced conflicted advice. Precisely how much T shares will save investors is an open question that we will be able to address more authoritatively after we have some experience with the new regime, they wrote.

Clean designed to eliminate conflicts

Clean shares, which are coming to market slowly, are meant to eliminate conflicts of interest altogether, said Ellenbogen. In our view, a clean share has fees only for investment management, he said. The investors money goes straight to the asset manager; no fees are redistributed to the broker. Of course, there are still fees that an investor has to pay, for administration, operations, distribution, and perhaps financial advice. But with a clean share these expenses are externalized, not part of the expense ratio, but billed separately and paid directly by the investor to the service provider.

Given that, Ellenbogen said clean shares have the advantage of being lowest cost, and being directly comparable to other investment only options, such as ETFs. That said, investors still need to consider the total costs of ownership: transactions, account fees, custodial charges, and the cost of financial advice still fall to the investor, he said. While T shares offer the convenience of all-in-one pricing; clean shares enable clearer disclosure of who pays how much to whom for what.

Advice worth more than the cost of the advice?

To be sure, its worth discussing the fees and commissions that come with T and clean shares. But its just, if not more important, to consider the quality of the financial advice retirement account owners receive.

The implementation of the fiduciary rule should focus on what kind of advice individuals will receive and whether it is reasonably priced, Ellenbogen and Szapiro wrote. We do not believe that fees are inherently problematic, as long as investors get advice that is worth more than the cost of the advice.

In fact, Morningstar research into the value of high-quality financial advice finds that it can improve a retirement savers financial well-being by as much as the equivalent of a 23% increase in lifetime income.

To the extent that the shift to T or clean share classes enhances fee transparency for investors by making it clear what they are paying for advice, it should encourage financial advisers to provide high-quality advice to remain competitive, Ellenbogen and Szapiro wrote. Shifting to a T share structure could potentially align advisers incentives with investors interests, particularly compared to the uneven and opaque fee structure we observe with A share classes.

In the long term, however, they wrote that clean share classes represent the best way to enhance transparency, which is why countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia have moved toward a clean share model.

Although T shares are a step in the right direction, the authors noted that the loads could induce advisers to rebalance unnecessarily. Further, they wrote that T shares impede advisers from trying innovative ways to charge for advice. Using a clean share model, advisers can align the level of advice they provide to their fee, and clients can choose how they would prefer to pay for advice: a flat dollar amount, a commission, or a level fee on assets under management, wrote Ellenbogen and Szapiro.

So, what do others say? Should investors use T or clean shares or something else in their retirement accounts if thats what their financial adviser recommends?

Well, for starters, there is much uncertainty with T shares as well as the future of the Labor Departments fiduciary rule right now, according to Avi Nachmany, an independent consultant and author of A Perspective on Mutual Fund Share Class Development.

Investors will be offered T shares in a wrap account

But assuming T and clean shares and the Labor Departments fiduciary rule are here to stay, Nachmany said its worth noting that the great majority of fund purchases today are inside some sort of asset allocation construct: a mutual fund wrap account, for instance, where there is a fee-for-service relationship, or a single balanced fund including target-date funds and their many permutations.

Given that, and given that financial advisers earn money on the wrapper fee, then actively managed mutual funds need to be entered into such wrappers at the lowest fee, said Nachmany. Thus, the shifts to lower fee classes and the early interest in clean, he said.

In other words, its likely most retirement account owners will find themselves being offered not just one clean share fund, but many clean share funds inside a mutual fund wrap account or target-date or target-risk fund.

T shares in a holding period

Its also likely that investors wont have much chance to invest in T shares. According to Nachmany, commissionable classes of shares represent less than 10% of fund transactions today. Ts are addressing the DoL conflicts, he said. But naturally until you get a critical mass of participation and DoL uncertainties settle down we are in the holding period.

Others take a different approach

While many firms are going down the T and clean shares route, some are taking a different approach to complying with the Labor Departments fiduciary rule, which among other things suggests that advisers receive levelized or standardized compensation on the products they recommend to retirement account owners.

For instance, LPL Financial announced in July plans to roll out its Mutual Fund Only (MFO) platform, a platform designed to improve the way advisers offer mutual funds in brokerage accounts with participating fund companies, according to a release.

The platform includes load-waived shares from 20 mutual-fund companies, a consistent trail commission, and free exchangeability across fund companies. According to LPL, MFO accounts will be subject to a maximum upfront commission of 3.5% and a 0.25% trail payment. Investors will be eligible for discounts based on the combined amount of brokerage assets held at LPL that are invested in MFO-eligible mutual funds.

The most unique aspect of the mutual fund only platform is the ability to exchange across funds and fund families without transaction fees, said Rob Pettman, an executive vice president with LPL Financial. This means that investors wont be charged for activities like regular rebalancing, changes to improve performance, and reallocations if their needs change or they decide to go to cash temporarily.

In addition to the cost savings for transactions, Pettman said the platform also offers quantity-based discounts, no IRA maintenance fees or ticket charges.

Finally, investors can move existing A share positions from participating companies into the account at no charge, he said. This movement adds incremental value given it expands their investment choice from one to 20 fund companies. It also does not require the use of a new share class which may result in the confusion of having different share classes of the same fund within one account.

Time to address pros and cons in public way

Other experts, meanwhile, say retirement account owners should approach T and clean shares with caution. Theres always two questions for miracle solutions, said David Snowball, publisher of Mutual Fund Observer. One, do they address the underlying forces that led to the original problem? And, two, what the likely cost of their unintended consequences? Theres so much cheerleading for the new share classes that Im not sure those questions have been much addressed, in public anyway.

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Are 'clean' shares best for your retirement account? - MarketWatch

Netflix just announced the latest addition to its roster of originals: a longform talk show from David Letterman. The six-episode series, which doesnt yet have a name, will feature Letterman having lengthy conversations with people he admires. Hell also leave the studio and do some real-world reporting, according to Netflix.

Letterman retired from hosting The Late Show in 2015, and has managed to stay relatively under the radar since then. But one of Netflixs go-to moves, at least when it comes to comedy, seems to be bringing A-listers back into the spotlight they once avoided. Dave Chapelles recent standup specials for Netflix were his first in more than a decade, and this past winter, the company announced that it was working on a stand-up special from Ellen DeGeneres. Jerry Seinfelds web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee is also leaving Crackle this year for Netflix.

I feel excited and lucky to be working on this project for Netflix, Letterman said in a statement. Heres what I have learned, if you retire to spend more time with your family, check with your family first. Thanks for watching, drive safely.

Lettermans series is set to premiere sometime in 2018.

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David Letterman is leaving retirement to host a Netflix series - The Verge

NerdWallet Published 10:00 a.m. ET Aug. 8, 2017

Millennials, this is how you can fix your YOLO financial mindset. USA TODAY

At the risk of sounding like a Facebook friend trying to fold you into my latest direct sales venture: Early retirement is possible.

If you read the Internet, you might already know this is true. Its been done; in fact, retirement at age 30 or 40 has become a trend of sorts, largely led by financial bloggers. But you might not know what it takes. Do you need a blog? To live with your parents for the next 10 or 15 years? To join a direct sales company yourself and pitch life-changing leggings, essential oils or protein shakes?

The answers are pretty much across-the-board maybes. Retiring at a young age takes a commitment; how you make that commitment can vary. One thing you need for sure: money. Heres how to figure out how much, where to find it and what to do with it.

When youre sweating your way through another nine to five, sitting around watching Real World reruns sounds pretty ideal. After a few days of watching drunken teenage fights, you might find those reruns arent as fulfilling as you expected.

Retirement means something a little different to everyone, so the first stop on the early retirement journey is to figure out what youre after. If your goal really is to lounge for 50 or 60 years, no judgment here but youre going to need more money. If your goal is to travel work-free, you probably need even more.

More: Here's what Social Security pays the average American

On the other hand, you might be looking for something a little less drastic. Maybe you still plan to work but on your own terms, or you want to travel but plan to pick up work at each stop. In that case, you may be able to retire on less because youll have a continued source of income.

Knowing how you plan to spend retirement will give you an idea of how much of your current income you need to replace.

The general retirement rule of thumb is to replace 80% of your pre-retirement income. That 20% reduction accounts for payroll taxes youll no longer have to pay and the 10% to 15% of your income you were presumably saving for retirement. Early retirement shakes up that math. As youll find out in a minute, youll need to save much, much more pre-retirement, which means youll be accustomed to living on much less than 80% of your income.

Lets say youre 25 now, earn $50,000 a year and want to retire by age 40. According to NerdWallets retirement calculator, you can do that if youre willing, and able, to save 48% of your income for the next 15 years. That will give you roughly $1,333 a month in retirement, which is your current income adjusted down for taxes, savings and those general work-related expenses that will disappear.

More: 5 top habits of the best retirement savers

If youre doing one of those half laughing-half crying things right now, you might want to adjust your plans push out that retirement age a little bit or plan to continue bringing in some kind of income in retirement.

In other words, brush off your blogging skills. Everyone loves a good early retirement story.

Saving 15% of your income is hard. Saving close to half of it is a different game entirely. It requires major cuts to your spending.

To make those cuts, start with the big things. Can you lower your rent or mortgage payments by refinancing or moving or, yes, living with your parents, though be sure they understand the impact of a long-term houseguest on their own retirement. Can you trade in your car for a cheaper version that still gets you from point A to point B?

Then look at smaller, recurring expenses. The cable goes. (I did this and found it completely painless, thanks mostly to the Bravo app.) The internet speed gets downgraded. Running outside replaces the gym. Any debt that can be refinanced student loans, credit card balance transfers should be. And yes, you will probably never eat avocado toast or drink a latte again.

We are living in a time when its relatively easy to pull in money on the side. There are those direct sales jobs mentioned earlier, though the jury is out on how much they actually bring in for the people at the bottom of the pyramid. There are side gigs like renting out a room on Airbnb, dog sitting through a site like Rover, folding laundry via TaskRabbit or freelancing on Upwork.

More: Her parents taught her to save, now she plans to retire at 40

Also, consider whether youre being paid fairly at your day job and if the time is right to ask for a raise or to start shopping around for a company that pays more. No matter how the money comes in, the more you earn, the more you save. Every extra dollar goes toward retirement.

Finally, you need to make the most of the money you save. That means putting it into your 401(k), if your employer offers a match, so you can grab that free money. If you dont have a 401(k), max out an individual retirement account like a Roth IRA, then shovel money into brokerage accounts.

It also means investing. Millennials seem loath to jump into the stock market, but doing so is the way to build real wealth. A recent NerdWallet analysis found that avoiding the market could lead to $3.3 million in lost retirement savings over 40 years. Over a shorter time horizon, that number would be smaller but still significant.

More on retirement

This article was written by NerdWallet and was originally published by Forbes.

The article Millennials, Heres How to Retire By 40 originally appeared on NerdWallet.

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Millennials, here's how to retire by age 40 - USA TODAY

Former San Diego Chargers and Kansas City Chiefs cornerback Brandon Flowers announced his retirement Tuesday.

He thanked the owners of the Chiefs and Chargers in an Instagram post and wrote that he's ready "for this next chapter in my life."

Flowers, who turned 31 in February, played the past three seasons with the Chargers but was placed on injured reserve in December 2016 after suffering a concussion in Week 10 against the Dolphins. In six games (all starts) last season, he finished with one interception and five passes defensed.

Flowers started 30 of the 31 games he appeared in with the Chargers, but was released by the team on March 7, freeing up $7 million in cap space.

Flowers had a tryout with the Arizona Cardinals recently, but the team decided to sign cornerback Tramon Williams instead.

He spent the first six seasons of his career with the Chiefs and was selected to his only Pro Bowl in 2013. He had 17 interceptions and 92 passes defensed in his time in Kansas City.

Original post:
Veteran CB Flowers says he is retiring from NFL - ESPN

Theres no shortage of retirement advice from financial professionals to regular folk whove retired and are now sharing their perspective on retired life.

5 ill-conceived pieces of retirement advice

With These Two Moves, You Can Retire Well No Matter What the Market Does

But heres the thing to keep in mind as you consider retirement recommendations. What seems perfectly logical on paper doesnt necessarily play out in person.

Thats the point Paul B. Brown of the New York Times makes in a recent post: Three Things I Should Have Said About Retirement Planning

I had co-authored a couple of books on the subject one when I was in my 30s and another in my 40s but now that I am north of 60 and retirement is a far less abstract concept, I look back on what I wrote in a different light, Brown wrote.

Hes got more perspective, he says. Hes more empathetic. Typical advice: You can work longer to save more. Browns take now: I wrote it was just a no-brainer to work until age 70, if you can. While my math was right, what I now realize is just how hard it is to keep working as you age.

Typical advice: Once you eliminate the expenses for raising your children, you can save more for retirement. Browns take now: I used to believe that people edging closer to retirement usually had the ability to save more, since child-rearing expenses were no longer a factor. So, I blithely wrote, you could take all that money you had been putting toward college, for example, and invest it for retirement. Well, our baby graduated five years ago, and now all that tuition money is going to home repair.

Typical advice: Spend on the big things now before you retire and transition to a fixed income. Browns take now: Our oldest got married 3,000 miles away in Sonoma Valley, Calif., a couple of years ago, and not only did we fly in various family members who would have otherwise been unable to attend, but we rented a huge house for a week and hosted anyone and everyone who wanted to come by. I wouldnt have had it any other way.

I loved that Brown revisited his advice acknowledging that life can get in the way of the best of plans. So as you prepare for retirement, factor in a lot of what ifs.

What if you cant or dont want to work until youre 70? I dont want to be tied down to a job until my 70s. Id like to spend my 60s, traveling and doing financial ministry work at my church and in prisons.

My husband and I are in our preretirement planning phase and have realized that our children are still going to need some financial assistance beyond the undergraduate college expenses weve saved. Starting this fall, we are covering graduate school for our oldest. Yes, thats money we could put toward our retirement, but we want to make sure she and her siblings should they also decide to go to graduate school dont start their young adult life off with debt.

When it comes to advice, I tend to put more weight on the wisdom from people whove been there and done that and have come out okay. So with that perspective, read this from NerdWallets Liz Weston: Retirement Advice From Retired Financial Experts

Retirement rants and ravesIm interested in your experiences or concerns about retirement. Did you retire early and if so, how did you do it?

Is retirement everything you hoped for? Are you scared youll run out of money?

Sharing your storymight help others. So send your comments to colorofmoney@washpost.com. Please include your name, city and state. In the subject line put Retirement Rants and Raves.

I heard from a lot of you who were forced to retire.

Catherine C. from Gaithersburg, Md., wrote, I retired early at age 58 due to my mothers failing health stroke and Parkinsons disease. I was the only one of her four children who lived near her and could help. She had been widowed at age 50 and went back to work as a legal secretary after having been a homemaker for 20-plus years. I had planned to go back to work once my mother was stabilized in a continuing care facility. However, her health was precarious and it fell to me to take her to medical appointments, fill her pill dispensers (morning, afternoon and evening), keep her apartment stocked with the foods she liked and wash and iron her clothes. I did this for 16 years. She died 1 week shy of her 97th birthday. I do not regret one moment of this. She was a spectacular mother who put four kids through college and encouraged each of us to follow our dreams.

Catherine and her husband saved well enough that retiring early didnt impact their retirement.

We consider ourselves fortunate, she wrote. We learned a lot from our parents. My mother was Michelle Singletary before there was a Michelle Singletary! She believed in living below your means. We have followed in her steps in our home for 30 years, older cars on the driveway, no bling, no designer clothes. We do splurge on trips to see friends around the country and the occasional dinner out. We are in pretty good health, but we know that could change in a second. My husband retired four years ago at 63. His company was going through a reorganization and he took a buyout. We are enjoying retirement, but we keep a close watch on our pennies. Its wonderful to get up in the morning and have the day unfurling before us. We both do volunteer work, which keeps us busy and connected to our community. We have a dog and walk her several times a day. Have found some amazing parks that way. We are reconnecting with old friends from college and other volunteer work we have done in the past. At some point, we will downsize to a smaller place in a lower cost area ,but were not there yet.

Chuck Butler of Fenton, Mo.,was forced to retire. Hes 62.

The company that I helped start in 1999 was bought out and the deal closed this year, Butler wrote. I was told I was to retire the day the deal closed. I was no more ready to retire than the man on the moon, but I had prepared, savings and investments wise for this day for years, and I do not have a fear of running out of money before Im 95. I doubt I live that long, as I was diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic renal cell cancer 10 years ago. I have battled cancer for 10 years, all the while working. I was given a fair severance that included some payment for continued insurance through COBRA. But that runs out in a year. The main problem I have is that at 62, my COBRA insurance will run out before I hit 65, and be eligible for Medicare. I have about a year of private insurance that Ill have to pay for my wife, and me and youngest son that is in college. And THAT is something I did not plan for. So, I would warn all people that are getting ready to retire early, to check out the cost of insurance before they make that move. Its an eye opener.

Retirement blog I believe that wealth happens intentionally and that means for me reading as much as I can about all things financial, especially retirement. In this section of the newsletter, Ill feature postings from various retirement blogs.

This post caught my eye: 5 Countries Where You Can Retire for $1,000 a Month

As my husband and I plan for retirement, we havent considered whether we would be willing to move overseas.

Id like to hear from any readers who have made the move to live abroad. Hows it working out for you? Or are you planning to retire overseas? Tell me about it.

Send your comments to colorofmoney@washpost.com

Newsletter comments policyPlease note it is my personal policy to identify readers who respond to questions I ask in my newsletters. I find it encourages thoughtful and civil conversation. I want my newsletters to be a safe place to express your opinion. On sensitive matters or upon request, Im happy to include just your first name and/or last initial. But I prefer not to post anonymous comments (I do make exceptions when Im asking questions that might reveal sensitive information or cause conflict.)

Have a question about your finances? Michelle Singletary has a weekly live chat every Thursday at noon where she discusses financial dilemmas with readers. You can also write to Michelle directly by sending an email to michelle.singletary@washpost.com. Personal responses may not be possible, and comments or questions may be used in a future column, with the writers name, unless otherwise requested. To read more Color of Money columns, go here.

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What if the retirement advice you're getting isn't quite right? - Washington Post