by Michele Cagan | Aug 13, 2026 | Protect Your Financial Future, Retirement Planning
Retirement doesn’t happen all at once, at least not in the way most people picture. It happens in stages, and those stages look very different from each other. But they all play into how to plan to make your money last as long as possible. For most Americans,...
by Michele Cagan | Jul 16, 2026 | Protect Your Financial Future, Retirement Planning, Saving and Investing, You Need to Know This
Americans hold more than $19.2 trillion in IRAs (individual retirement accounts). So it’s likely you’ll end up inheriting one. And that’s definitely good news. The catch: In most cases, you have to completely empty the account within ten years. And depending on the...
by Michele Cagan | Sep 4, 2025 | Charitable Giving, Do Your Own Taxes, Retirement Planning
This blog post has been recently updated to include new information from the 2025 tax bill relevant to how your charitable donations affect your tax bill. **Please Note: This content does contain affiliate links where I may profit from a sale. The Tax...
by Michele Cagan | Aug 21, 2025 | Building a Nest, Personal Finance, Retirement Planning, Saving and Investing, You Need to Know This
I get this question regularly. The answer is, “Not nearly as much as you think.” A lot of people put off saving for retirement because they feel like they can’t put enough in. They feel like they don’t have a big enough “down payment” to get started. But the...
by Michele Cagan | Jul 17, 2025 | Get Help When You Need It, Making Ends Meet, Personal Finance, Protect Your Financial Future, Retirement Planning, You Need to Know This
When you’re dealing with financial struggles, you might need to tap into all of your resources. It can feel really uncomfortable to drain your emergency savings, max out your credit cards, and… finally… start pulling money out of your retirement accounts. That’s the...
by Michele Cagan | Jun 12, 2025 | Getting Divorced?, Personal Finance, Retirement Planning, Saving and Investing, You Need to Know This
Along with causing emotional and financial upset, divorce can also have an enormous effect on retirement savings. That’s especially true if, within the marriage, there was a significant earnings imbalance. For example, if one spouse earned substantially more than the...
