Email Michelle Singletary the financial questions you want answered
But even without that yearly reminder, you can make your birthday an occasion to reflect on how you handle your money. What should you do in your twenties? When you get to your 40s, ask if Retirement savings is on track. hit 60? the Late or early discussion About taking Social Security you face this contract. She is 80 years old You still don’t have a will. What is this about?
To help guide you through your financial self-examination, I’ve created an interactive guide with the amazing team at The Washington Post – Financial Milestones for All Ages. You can find it at wapo.st/financial-birthdays.
I’ve received hundreds of questions over the years from readers across the country. I’ve collected the most frequently cited ones in the guide, from credit to wealth creation to housing and health care.
There are tips for every decade of your financial life, from twenties just starting out to retirees enjoying the fruits of their smart planning.
There is, too Podcast “Publish Reports” It includes a conversation with my twenty-year-old daughter. We talked about their suffering with the adults. They have some stories. Prepare to laugh and cry as I discuss the money issues that dominate our lives.
I wrote this project with you in mind. Whenever I read a survey or study that says Americans are financially illiterate, I want to exclaim “It’s not their fault!”
Yes, some people screw up because of bad choices. But the decisions you have to make about your money can be overwhelming, and it’s hard to know who to trust to help you make the right decisions.
said the youngest, Jillian, during Podcast. “Do I want to stay in this job? Do I want to move to a different country? Do I want to stay in the region? They are all big question marks. That is what scares me about adults.”
This is saying a lot, considering her mom has spent much of her career writing about personal finance and an equally astute financial manager dad.
What we’ve done is put together a roundup of important financial questions in one place, paired with links to my columns over the years and other articles as resources. But when I put this project together, I realized that I couldn’t solve every problem at first. So this is where I need your help.
To improve the project, we will add questions from our readers. What’s on your mind about your money?
Jim Ward emails from Alexandria, Va.: “In the excellent financial milestones column, I didn’t see anything about funerals. Should I prepay my funeral?”
I will update the project next month and add an incoming question.
Many people believe that they have paid for their funerals through burial contracts and paid funerals, only for their families to discover after their death that there is more to be paid. That is if they can find the information for “pre-arrangement,” as they are sometimes called.
“I have just buried my brother,” Ward wrote, “whose grave I paid in advance, but whose funeral was not given.” “My brother had talked about pre-planning, but after reviewing his papers, we didn’t find anything.”
What happened next was a search for the policy they thought was in effect.
“We called the funeral home used by his church and found no arrangements had been made,” Ward said. “The funeral home called the church cemetery, and we found out he had bought a plot of land.”
Ward ended up paying the cost of the funeral out of pocket.
A friend pointed out something else absent from the project – a section dedicated to people in the ’90s and beyond.
There are 2.4 million people in the United States who are 90 or older, including 2.3 million people between the ages of 90 and 99 and nearly 98,000 centenarians, according to the Census Bureau. Age estimates for one year of 2021.
in 2011 editiona demographer at the bureau said: “Traditionally, the cut-off age for those considered ‘older’ was 85, but increasingly people are living longer and the older population is getting older. Due to the region’s rapid growth, the population over the age of 90 years old deserve a closer look.”
In 2016, there were 81,000 centenarians in the United States. That number is expected to rise to 589,000 by 2060, according to census estimates. By 2050, people aged 90 and older are expected to reach 10 percent of the population aged 65 and older.
We discontinued the advice for people in their 80s. My reasoning was that Americans over 80 would benefit from the same advice given in the past decade. But they deserve their own section, which will be combined with centenarians.
As with any endeavor of this depth and breadth, there is something unavoidable went out. But I will do my best to address more, more pressing financial questions. And you may disagree with my advice, but the goal is to facilitate the conversation so that you can be intentional about your money. I hope I did, and that you would be an active participant in helping me identify topics to add to this project.