6 Ways to Make Your Retirement Accounts Last Longer

asset allocation

As retirement draws closer in this environment, own your age in investment grade bond funds with decent dividend return. Reinvest dividends. In this beat up real estate market shop for the distressed or repossesed bank owned property. Negotiate the best deal. Transfer IRA funds to an instution that allows you to hold rental real estate as an asset. Take money out of the IRA tax free to buy and refurb the home, get it rentable. Then take the rents, put them back in to the IRA. Very easy process once you find the right IRa administrator that allows the asset in the account. When the real estate market comes back, which in all liklihood it will once the natonal liquidity problem improves, real estate markets should improve, providing upside potential. This takes some planning and work to get the rehab stuff done but is well worth the effort. In leu of renting if you don't have the nerve for that, just put the RE on the market, price it a little below market value, take the profit, put it back in the IRA. Ten percent max in qualty stocks. Keep an eye on interst rates in relation to the bond fund holdings because of the inverse relationship between the two.

Brian of IN @ Mar 19, 2009 08:46:07 AM

Retirement accounts

There are so many people who are to busy working to even allow themselves to look at what is left of their retirement accounts. My husband turned 50 years old in April of last year and suffered a heartattack in October. He was laid off in January of this year, just as he started his cardiac rehab. I am 51 years old and work in nursing, an industry were I cannot even call in sick a day as there are to few nurses to see my patients. Half of my patients are on charity, dying at home on hospice. My spouse and I have 4 grown children and 6 grandchildren under 5 years of age. The only ones with actual healthcare and not being treated at a county hospital are my daughter's family, thank God her spouse was able to join the Army and will be deploying to Afganistan this year. You literally have to lay your life on the line to get health insurance in this country. My spouse could go back to school and retrain but for the cost of his cardiac medication and treatment which in one month alone could wipe out any savings and put us in bankrupcy no matter how much I work overtime, and at 51 years of age I don't know how long I can physicaly keep up the pace, not to mention the mental toll of working hospice cases that make my life seem like Cinderella after the ball. The only people who say retirement should be fun work for advertisement companies with clients in the financial and insurance fields. Reality never has made such promises. The highlight of my day is free; watching my grandchildren play, learn and laugh. The real question should be not what will our retirement be but what will their day to day reality be.

J. Ponce of TX @ Mar 10, 2009 08:06:17 AM