From financial literacy to budgeting, debt management and insurance, I sat down with the team at Modern Professional to discuss how you should handle your finances to achieve your goals. If you want to get your financial planning situation in order, start here.

Is there a right economic time to buy life insurance? I recently shared insights with Insurance News Net about the best types of life insurance to buy during a bad economy, as well as why you might want to reconsider the value of your current policies.

“When should I start saving for retirement?”

To kick off my new Question Mark video series on retirement planning, I’m starting with one of the most common questions I hear.

What questions do you have about retirement? I sat down to answer the most common questions people ask about retirement planning, for the first Question Mark video series.

How much should you save for retirement? There’s not a one-size-fits-all answer, unfortunately. It depends on your current financial situation and your long-term financial goals.

If you’ve been diligently saving money throughout your career, hopefully you’ve built up a nice nest egg to draw down from throughout your golden years. But your retirement savings are finite — you want to make sure your funds are able to support you throughout your whole retirement, not run out within the first few years. So for many people, a very pressing first question following retirement is, “How much should I take out each year?”

So I’m often asked, “When should I start taking my retirement income?” It’s a really great question.

So first, let me share with you, never if you don’t need it!

If you have to dip into a retirement account, where can you do that? So well, for one case, a very good option, many for one case allow for what’s called a hardship withdrawal.

So when should I take my Social Security? I get that question quite a bit, and it’s actually a quite a complicated one.

Social Security, although it’s there, it’s going to change. In fact, we’re seeing that now the age for eligibility of Social Security is increasing, and there’s more and more people taking the Social Security benefits that are paying in.

Once you’re starting to take it out or annuities, which is where it gets its name, that paycheck will come to you on a regular basis. It will never go up. It will never go down. It’s not affected by interest rates or the stock market. You’ll receive that paycheck until the day you die and possibly past.

I love annuities; I think they’re significantly underused in individuals’ retirement strategies. But if you’re asking, “What is an annuity?” I’ve got the answer right here.