Page 18 - Gary Silverman News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Compared to a pension, a 401(k) (or its cousin the 403(b)) puts the onus on the employee to do the investing.

Last week, we started a series of articles looking at retirement planning in America. Today, we’ll begin to talk specifics.

Gary Silverman If you’ve been following this column for a while, you may remember that two years ago I moved from my home of over 26 years to the retirement community of Rolling Meadows. I’ve never regretted the move. I do, however, regret the timing—but not for the reason you might think. What I failed to predict was the pandemic. Had I waited until now for the move, my house would have netted an extra 15-25% more than what I sold it for. But how was I to know there was going to be a pandemic a year after my move and how was I to know that real estate prices would soar as a result?

Gary Silverman Getting rich quick is a topic that sells many books, empties magazine shelves, packs seminars, and drives web traffic. Yet, with the exception of picking the winning lottery ticket or being the favorite niece of some rich uncle, there’s just no short-cut. Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Andrew Carnegie, none of these nor the countless like them were overnight successes. It took good ideas, some luck, excellent decision making, some luck, perseverance, hard work, and some luck, for them to become rich. Why folks think there is some shortcut with all the examples of what...

Gary Silverman Recently, the questions I’m getting from folks about “what to do about the stock market” have shifted into an interesting dichotomy. Seems that about half want to know if this is a good time to put more money into equities since COVID is getting under control and the economy should start recovering. The other half want to know if this is a good time to get out of the market since the economy has been hurt badly and the market has been climbing so high that something must break soon. If you’ve read my columns over the years, you know that I don’t like making prediction...