(MoneyWatch) Continuing our look at how to assess your future retirement income, let's turn our attention to "systematic withdrawals," which are one of three ways to generate a paycheck from what you have stashed away. Note: In previous posts, I've called this method "managed payouts," but the term "systematic withdrawals" is more descriptive and won't cause confusion between the term "managed payout fund" used by some mutual fund families. For more background on the three methods, you may want to review my recent post, "My four favorite ways to generate retirement income."

Financial planners and writers will often tell you something along these lines: If you invest in a portfolio balanced between stocks and bonds, withdraw four percent each year for retirement income, and give yourself an annual raise to account for inflation, there's a roughly 90 percent chance that your money will last for at least 30 years. Hence, the justification for the so-called four percent rule.

My four favorite ways to generate retirement income Retirement income scorecard: Interest and dividends IRAs and 401k: 3 ways to generate retirement income

Method #2: Systematic withdrawals

The four percent rule is actually a good starting point for considering an appropriate withdrawal rate. But if you fall into one of the following two categories, you might want to consider withdrawing amounts of lower than four percent:

-- If your retirement investments are actively managed and incur investment expenses of more than 50 basis points (0.50 percent), over the long run you may fall short of the net rates of return that justify the four percent rule.

-- If you're married, both you and your spouse are healthy, and you retire in your early to mid sixties, there's a good chance that one of you will live for more than 30 years.

If either of these statements applies to you, you may want to consider payout rates on your retirement income of 3 or 3.5 percent.

In addition, there's a point of view emerging from some financial analysts, such as Dr. Wade Pfau, that the analyses supporting the four percent rule are based on a period of U.S. history that may have been a remarkably good time for stock and bond returns. It may be that future returns on stocks and bonds won't be able to support a four percent withdrawal rate. If you believe this, you may want to use a lower withdrawal rate.

In spite of the above thoughts, you might consider a higher withdrawal rate if you're willing to accept some chance of running out of money before you die, or if you're willing to curb your withdrawals down the road if your investments sour. In short, setting the appropriate withdrawal rate is both art and science.

Read the original:
Retirement income scorecard: Systematic withdrawals

Each day brings new challenges that threaten us, and the Internet often resembles an enormous social megaphone with the volume cranked all the way up. So it's understandably hard to square this persistent outpouring of threats and unhappiness with the reality that the inhabitants of planet earth are living longer than ever before and inflicting less physical violence on one another. What if, God forbid, these turn out to be the best of times?

[Find the Best Fund for You.]

So it is with the torrent of negative retirement news. Bad as things often look, people will continue to retire, and many of them will enjoy terrific lives in their later years. They will join millions of other Americans who have managed to do the same. What are their secrets? Here, culled from research studies and retirement experts, are 10 essentials for a successful retirement.

1. Planning. Successful retirements rarely happen by accident. They require planning, and it should begin well before retirement begins. Younger people do not need to have any detailed plan for their later years. Heck, many probably don't know what they'll be doing next year. But they should set up tax-favored retirement investments, contribute enough to trigger the top employer match, and place their money in stable and safe investments. Older people should begin in their 50s to ask questions about the adequacy of their retirement funds. They also should attack some of the big retirement issues: where they want to live, how they want to spend their time, and the like. At whatever age retirement becomes financially viable or physically necessary, they should have a more detailed plan and ways to achieve it.

2. Budgeting. Most people overestimate their retirement income and underestimate their retirement expenses. Well before the regular paychecks stop, many successful retirees will have taken a hard-nosed look at their retirement income and expense needs. Expense budgeting is crucial. Once the income and expense sides of your personal ledger have been completed, you can see if there's a gap that needs to be closed. Most likely, it will be closed by trimming expenses. Many experts say it's a good idea to look at your locked-in sources of retirement income--Social Security and traditional pensions--and match this amount to your fixed expenses: mortgage, utilities, insurance, fixed debt payments, operating expenses for your car, and basic household costs for food and other necessities. Then, look at the likely income stream from your investments and use those funds for discretionary spending on vacations, restaurants, and the like. This way, if returns on your investments don't fare as well as you thought, you won't have to eat into your investment accounts to pay expenses. When markets recover, you can resume your spending.

3. Homework. Retirement is many things, but a life of leisure usually must be preceded by a lot of homework. This is particularly true when it comes to healthcare costs. The average 65-year-old couple will spend more than $250,000 on out-of-pocket healthcare during the rest of their lives--the single largest unknown expense for most people. Medicare was complicated enough before health reform was enacted. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the law, anyone planning to retire in the next several years should spend time understanding how it will affect them. Other questions you should answer include: how healthy is the economy of the area you're thinking of choosing for your retirement home; what are the state and local tax rates in that area; what are state estate taxes like; do you have a good approach to spending down your assets in retirement, and what is the best strategy for you about when to begin claiming Social Security benefits?

[See Can You Manage Your Future?]

4. Realism. None of the planning, budgeting, and homework you do will provide the basis for a successful retirement unless you're realistic in your assessments and assumptions. Most people, for example, actually retire several years before they earlier said they would. Likewise, they say they will continue to work well past their 65th birthday. Careers do seem to be trending longer since the recession, but there is still a mismatch between plans and actions. Be honest with yourself.

5. Balance. The key to a lot of good things in life is a sense of balance. Successful retirements involve a good balance between expectations and reality. This doesn't mean sacrificing your dreams. It does mean road-testing your dreams to see what it would take to make them possible.

6. Health. No surprise here. Good health is the "knock on wood" wish of every retiree. What's different today than a generation ago is the widespread recognition that good health is no accident, but the probable result of good diet and exercise habits. These habits need to start now, not when you're 70 (although it's never too late to begin). It's been proven that strenuous exercise, with heavy weights and sweat-inducing cardiovascular workouts, can help even people in their 80s and 90s. Investing in good health is as important as socking money away in retirement accounts.

The rest is here:
10 Must-Have Retirement Needs

(NAPSW)Retirement is a concept thats constantly being reinvented. A comfortable retirement wasnt even a widespread economic goal until after World War IIand its changing again, as the economy is making that goal more difficult to reach. Fortunately, seniors do have options.

According to executives at The Lifeline Program, seniors must now look well beyond traditional tools if they want some sort of retirement.

For most seniors, the notion of ending their work life at age 65 with a golf course membership and a gold watch is no longer the norm. Recent studies show that most seniors are working longer with little hope of an idyllic retirement.

Traditional sources of retirement income can no longer be relied on. Pensions have become rare and many seniors have not saved enough. The recession and housing crash have hurt retirement accounts and housing values.

Financial-planning experts suggest saving more, but thats not always possible. Other options do exist, though, and its important to do your research. For example, performing a reverse mortgage on a home, selling a life insurance policy through a life settlement and exploring alternative investments are all tactics that can add financial security and help seniors realize some of their dreams for retirement.

For Joan Clary (age 70), a substitute schoolteacher from Oakhurst, Calif., the dream was to meet actress Betty White. Fortunately, Clary won the recent Lifeline Meet Betty White Facebook contest and was flown to Los Angeles to meet the actress. Clary was thrilled to win. As I turn 70, I realize Betty is one of my last role models. Its a joy to meet her after admiring her for so many years, said Clary.

Founded in 1989, The Lifeline Program offers life settlements as a new financial planning option to baby boomers and retirees. The company partners with insurance agents, broker dealers and financial planners to establish life settlement business lines. For more information, visit http://www.thelifeline.com, follow the company on Facebook at Facebook.com/LifelineProgram, on Twitter at twitter.com/LifelineProgram or on YouTube at youtube.com/user/TheLifelineProgram. You can also call 855-GO-BETTY (855-462-3889).

Photos/MultimediaGallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=50330509&lang=en

MULTIMEDIA AVAILABLE:http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=50330509&lang=en

See original here:
Retirement In Need Of Reinvention

UpdatedJul 3, 2012 11:53 AM ET

Baseball had much to celebrate Sunday: Fan voting for the All-Star Game reached a new high, with an astounding 40.2 million ballots cast. Texas Rangers hero Josh Hamilton set a new single-season record with 11 million votes. Mike Trout, the Los Angeles Angels rookie sensation, will make the first of what should be many All-Star appearances.

Yet the most-talked-about person in baseball was a 67-year-old with a .199 career batting average who is no longer an active player, coach or manager.

Really, though, who expected Tony La Russa to stay in the background?

However you interpreted his snubs of Johnny Cueto and Brandon Phillips I, for one, believe spite was part of the motivation they underscored the enduring romance of La Russas career: Tony loves the spotlight, and the spotlight loves Tony.

La Russa is at once the most successful and conspicuous manager of our lifetime. He won 2,728 games and three World Series titles because he has hard-boiled ideas about how baseball ought to be played. And he will take every opportunity to remind us of that, before and during what could be his final meaningful appearance in uniform.

Lets be clear: La Russa has every right to do so. He will manage the National League during the All-Star Game on July 10 (MLB on FOX, 7:30 p.m. ET). He earned the assignment because his St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series last year. Thats how the system works. In this context, it hardly matters that La Russa announced his retirement shortly after the parade.

La Russa may have only one game on his 2012 schedule, but already hes in midseason form. Hes been known to teach (and occasionally preach) the games finer points. This time, Cueto and Phillips were the unwitting pupils.

You may remember the history: Two years ago, in advance of an August showdown between the Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds, Phillips referred to the Cardinals as little bitches in an interview with Hall of Fame writer Hal McCoy. A benches-clearing brawl erupted during the series. Cueto kicked Cardinals catcher Jason LaRue in the head during the melee; LaRue sustained a concussion and never played in the major leagues again.

Read more:
Were All-Star snubs innocent or personal?

A person who worked for Mitt Romney at the consulting firm Bain and Co. in 1977 remembers him with mixed feelings. Mitt was a really wonderful boss, the former employee says. He was nice, he was fair, he was logical, he said what he wanted he was really encouraging. But Bain and Co., the person recalls, pushed employees to find out secret revenue and sales data on its clients competitors. Romney, the person says, suggested falsifying who they were to get such information, by pretending to be a graduate student working on a project at Harvard. (The person, in fact, was a Harvard student, at Bain for the summer, but not working on any such projects.) Mitt said to me something like We wont ask you to lie. I am not going to tell you to do this, but [it is] a really good way to get the information. I would not have had anything in my analysis if I had not pretended.

It was a strange atmosphere. It did leave a bad taste in your mouth, the former employee recalls.

This unsettling account suggests the young Romneyat that point only two years out of Harvard Business Schoolwas willing to push into gray areas when it came to business. More than three decades later, as he tried to nail down the Republican nomination for president of the United States, Romneys gray areas were again an issue when he repeatedly resisted calls to release more details of his net worth, his tax returns, and the large investments and assets held by him and his wife, Ann. Finally the other Republican candidates forced him to do so, but only highly selective disclosures were forthcoming.

Even so, these provided a lavish smorgasbord for Romneys critics. Particularly jarring were the Romneys many offshore accounts. As Newt Gingrich put it during the primary season, I dont know of any American president who has had a Swiss bank account. But Romney has, as well as other interests in such tax havens as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

To give but one example, there is a Bermuda-based entity called Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd., which has been described in securities filings as a Bermuda corporation wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney. It could be that Sankaty is an old vehicle with little importance, but Romney appears to have treated it rather carefully. He set it up in 1997, then transferred it to his wifes newly created blind trust on January 1, 2003, the day before he was inaugurated as Massachusettss governor. The director and president of this entity is R. Bradford Malt, the trustee of the blind trust and Romneys personal lawyer. Romney failed to list this entity on several financial disclosures, even though such a closely held entity would not qualify as an excepted investment fund that would not need to be on his disclosure forms. He finally included it on his 2010 tax return. Even after examining that return, we have no idea what is in this company, but it could be valuable, meaning that it is possible Romneys wealth is even greater than previous estimates. While the Romneys spokespeople insist that the couple has paid all the taxes required by law, investments in tax havens such as Bermuda raise many questions, because they are in jurisdictions where there is virtually no tax and virtually no compliance, as one Miami-based offshore lawyer put it.

Thats not the only money Romney has in tax havens. Because of his retirement deal with Bain Capital, his finances are still deeply entangled with the private-equity firm that he founded and spun off from Bain and Co. in 1984. Though he left the firm in 1999, Romney has continued to receive large payments from itin early June he revealed more than $2 million in new Bain income. The firm today has at least 138 funds organized in the Cayman Islands, and Romney himself has personal interests in at least 12, worth as much as $30 million, hidden behind controversial confidentiality disclaimers. Again, the Romney campaign insists he saves no tax by using them, but there is no way to check this.

Bain Capital is the heart of Romneys fortune: it was the financial engine that created it. The mantra of his campaign is that he was a businessman who created tens of thousands of jobs, and Bain certainly did bring useful operational skills to many companies it bought. But his critics point to several cases where Bain bought companies, loaded them with debt, and paid itself extravagant fees, thereby bankrupting the companies and destroying tens of thousands of jobs.

Come August, Romney, with an estimated net worth as high as $250 million (he wont reveal the exact amount), will be one of the richest people ever to be nominated for president. Given his reticence to discuss his wealth, its only natural to wonder how he got it, how he invests it, and if he pays all his taxes on it.

Ironically, it was Mitts father, George Romney, who released 12 years of tax returns, in November 1967, just ahead of his presidential campaign, thereby setting a precedent that nearly every presidential candidate since has either willingly or unwillingly been subject to. George, then the governor of Michigan, explained why he was releasing so many years worth, saying, One year could be a fluke, perhaps done for show.

But his son declined to release any returns through one unsuccessful race for the U.S. Senate, in 1994, one successful run for Massachusetts governor, in 2002, and an aborted bid for the Republican Party presidential nomination, in 2008. Just before the Iowa caucus last December, Mitt told MSNBC, I dont intend to release the tax returns. I dont, but finally, on January 24, 2012after intense goading by fellow Republican candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Perryhe released his 2010 tax return and an estimate for 2011.

See original here:
The Murky World of Mitt Romney's Personal Finances

Businesses missing opportunity to increase loyalty as less than 40 per cent see expectations met

TORONTO, July 3, 2012 /CNW/ - The vast majority of Canadians (73%) say that when they give a company personal information, such as their age, email address, income or birth date, they expect the company to tailor offerings and deals in return. Unfortunately, only 37 per cent of those who reveal personal information say they get more personalized marketing as a result. These are just some of the findings of a SAS/Leger Marketing survey of 1,511 Canadians conducted earlier this spring.

"Canadians expect organizations to be relevant in how they talk to them. It's a give and get. If I provide you with some key personal information, use what I give you to send me offers which align to my interests, and serve me in a way that makes sense. When companies don't do that they lose the privilege of having that customer and our communications are relegated to "junk mail," and we don't get share of mind, never mind wallet," said Lori Bieda, Executive Lead for Customer Intelligence, SAS Americas. "Analyzing customer purchasing habits and matching promotional offerings to their needs is one of the best ways to increase customer loyalty."

Not meeting customer expectations can be risky business for Canadian companies. Half of those surveyed say they have actually stopped doing business with a company because of a bad marketing experience, men being more unforgiving than women (55 per cent versus 49 per cent.)

Regardless, the desire is there to engage more deeply with businesses of choice. Sixty per cent of Canadians say they would like to receive more personalized marketing material and half of Canadians say they would be more likely to buy from a company that personalizes their marketing. In addition, 46 per cent say they would be willing to give up personal information in return for more personalized offerings.

If a company does decide to personalize its marketing, it should be aware that Canadians are acutely aware of the efforts being made. Two thirds say they can tell when a company has done their research and tailored their marketing to them.

"It is essential that companies not only understand their customer expectations regarding the use of personal information, but also how best to communicate with each individual to offer tailored deals," Bieda said.

When asked how their favourite companies communicated with them, email was the top choice (73 per cent), followed by mail (47 per cent) and social channels (13 per cent.) The latter, perhaps not surprisingly, was much higher for 18-34 year olds (25 per cent), but it should be noted that even among that demographic, of which 93 per cent say they use social media, email was still the preferred means of communication.

Canadians not having their marketing expectations met may also be impacting the degree to which we divulge personal information: 18 per cent said they give away more personal information than they did five years ago, while 27 per cent said they now give away less. 93 per cent of Canadians say they have divulged personal information to companies.

Some additional stats

See the original post:
Three in four Canadians expect customized offers in return for their personal information

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBAlKj6UXiY

02-07-2012 11:06 This is a REAL MLM...stay at home opportunity. The programs work! You are just sharing your own personal success story. Come along or contact me direct

Go here to read the rest:
Beachbody and P90X Business Opportunity Success Stories - Video

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw9tJLfpHdM

03-07-2012 00:45 Combining fitness and personal development is the ultimate solution for career success for personal trainers, life coaches, fitness experts, weight loss coaches, body and life transformation specialists and other professionals offering fitness, nutrition, coaching and success programs. John Spencer Ellis gives you a complete training course to rapidly accelerate your career.

Read this article:
Fitness

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCu3melg01Y

03-07-2012 01:29 JT Joy Project

The rest is here:
Well-Defined Solutions, Success Story: JT, Personal Trainer - Video

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC-Z75dem5U

03-07-2012 09:46 http://www.ymcaywca.ca. At the Y, we inspire personal success by providing access to essential training and resources. This Y Story features EJ, a staff member at the YMCA-YWCA of the National Capital Region, as he shares his experiences of coming to Canada and discovering the Y's Power of Trades program.

The rest is here:
Y Story: Inspiring Personal Success - Video