Every week I find a few great articles I feel are especially valuable. Following are this week’s best. I hope you find them as useful as I did.
This week’s favorites include the cost of waiting to buy disability insurance, a love letter to your spouse so he/she will know what to do with the family finances if you die first, saving for financial independence instead of retirement, managing elderly parents’ finances when they can’t, and which order to take money out of accounts in retirement.
Happy reading!
Protecting our family should be one of our highest priorities. We are seven times more likely to become disabled than to die during our working years. Disability insurance is a very important part of protecting our family from financial disaster. But when is the optimum time to begin your disability policy? During residency? As a young attending? After you have your first child? The Physician Philosopher shares with us a guest post from Larry Keller, the insurance agent who had the honor of being the inaugural advertiser on my website. He shares with us The Cost of Waiting to Buy Disability Insurance. His article describes the best time for us to get disability insurance.
No one wants to think about the date of their demise, and no one knows when it will occur. But when it happens, there will be a lot of things for the surviving spouse to do. We helped my mother-in-law attend to putting her finances in order when she recently lost her husband, my father-in-law. Wouldn’t it be nice if your spouse had everything they needed to do listed in one document? Budgets are Sexy did it for us with Dear Wife, Here’s How to FIRE If I Die Early. This makes a great template for you to list everything in one place. What a great gift to leave behind. However, I disagree with what he advised his wife to do with their cash flowing rentals. Do you agree with everything?
When I was in medical school I set up a plan to be able to retire by age 50. I didn’t know it then, but it wasn’t retirement that I was seeking, it was financial independence. The ability to work on my terms and not needing a job in order to eat. Upon reaching my goal, I found I still wanted to be productive in some way. Dividend Strategy covers this topic with Stop Saving For Retirement and Start Saving for Financial Independence. There is a fine line between the two, but today, I love being financially independent. The first article I wrote that went viral and totally swamped my website server was Stop Putting Money in Your Retirement Plans which has a related message.
The primary relationship in a family is for the parents to care for their children. But as parents age, there comes a time when the children become involved in the care of their parents. I have been involved this for four different aging parent and grandparent households. It really helps if they trust you with their financial information. One Frugal Girl helps us get our act together to help our aging parents with Managing and Protecting My Elderly Parents’ Finances. You may not need this information now but you will someday, so I encourage you to save this article in a file on your computer to refer to in the future.
I am often asked what order to spend the money in one’s retirement accounts. The answer is different for every person because everyone has their money invested in different types of accounts. FIPhysician helps set the record straight with Asset Withdrawals in Retirement: Optimal Strategies. There is no one size fits all for this question so be sure you have a good CPA to help you navigate this issue. I know I missed a great opportunity that caught me by surprise when I had a zero tax bill my first year of retirement. Don’t let this catch you by surprise.
I hope you enjoy these articles as much as I did. I look forward to updating you again next week with a few more articles I find especially interesting. If you read an especially good article, send me the link so I can share it with others.
