When a hard-won historic milestone is achieved, it’s usually front-page news: Apollo 11’s “one giant leap for mankind.” The fall of the Berlin Wall. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream.” … Last month’s fiduciary ruling by the Department of Labor (DOL).

If you think it through, there are three essential variables that determine the total return on nearly any given investment:

 1. Interest or dividends paid out or reinvested along the way

2. The increase or decrease in underlying share value: how much you paid per share versus how much those shares are now worth

In Part I of our three-part series on investing for retirement income in low-rate environments, we explained why we don’t advise bulking up on dividend-yielding stocks as a reliable way to generate retirement cash flow. Like the Three Little Pigs’ straw house, dividend-yielding stocks can disappoint you by exhibiting inherent risks just when you most need dependability instead.

If ever there were an appropriate analogy for how to invest for retirement, it would be the classic fable of The Three Little Pigs. As you may recall, those three little pigs tried three different structures to protect against the Big Bad Wolf.

It has only been since the Baby Boomer generation began to cross the retirement threshold that we’ve had to seriously confront the new challenge of our longevity.

Welcome to Tax Day!  We all pay federal taxes under the same rules, but the state regimes are wildly different, and there are a lot of moving parts that make up the cost to live in a state.  Which of them take the most money out of the pockets of their residents, and where is living cheapest, from a tax standpoint?

As our lives become more intertwined with the Internet it may be only a matter of time before all of our important data is stored in this vast “cloud” of bits and bytes.  Most people are well on their way with online banking and bill paying, e-tax filing, email, document storage vaults, Social Security information, and soon we will be making payments using our smart phones.&nbs

We all know that money can’t buy you happiness, right?  As it turns out, this is not exactly true.

There have been studies showing that financial issues are one of the primary reasons why married couples fall apart.  A recent article in Market Watch suggests that the biggest reason for these significant disagreements is a failure to create a unified view of the financial future that both parties have agreed to.  In many cases, one dominant spouse will make decisions on behalf of th

You read a lot about job creation and governmental policies, especially in this era of lingering, lagging economic growth, especially from political figures who are hoping to get elected based on their policy prescriptions.  Republican candidates like to talk about the growth of jobs during Ronald Regan’s presidency, while Democrats tout the presidential terms of Bill Clinton.