Article Archive
George Gagliardi was the Personal Finance contributor to the Lexington Minuteman for 12 years. Here are some of the articles he wrote on a range of financial topics:
Education Financing
- College Financial Aid: Show me the money!
- For the Best 529 Plans, Skip Town
- Retirement vs. college: Is it a fair fight?
- Solving the College Cost Blues
Estate Planning
- Beware of beneficiary designation boo-boos
- Planning for When You’re Gone
- Preventing second home family feuds
- Protecting your digital legacy
Investing
- Absolute Return Funds: Absolutely Misleading
- Advisor fees: Getting Your Financial Money’s Worth
- Alts: The expensive way to diversify your portfolio
- Avoid most bond index funds like the plague
- Behavioral investing: How not to be your own worst enemy
- Better Returns with Less Risk
- Bitcoin and the GFT
- Building your financial fallout shelter
- Cash is trash and other investing myths
- Cryptocurrencies are NOT investments
- Dealing with a market meltdown
- Do not confuse collectibles with investments
- Do not ignore investing’s only “free lunch”
- If the market is making you nervous, use Buckets
- Inflation: A few TIPS
- Resolve to put your investment fees on a diet
- Rightsizing your portfolio risk
- Save money by building your own bond ladder
- Steer clear of high-risk bonds
- Target Date Funds: Is Yours Missing the Mark
- Why Indexing Doesn’t Always Work
- Winning the game of Risk
- With Index Funds, Look Beyond Vanilla
Medicare/Social Security
- Honey, they shrunk our Social Security options
- Learn to love Medicare Open Enrollment
- Long Term Care: The Elephant in the Room (Part-1)
- Long Term Care: Paying for The Elephant (Part-2)
- Medicare Open Enrollment Questions You Need to Ask
- Medicare options: Are you Mediconfused (Part-1)
- Further adventures in Medicare Land (Part-2)
- Social Security: Blaise Pascal and your prepaid annuity
Personal Finance
- 401(k)s: Beware the Killer Fees
- Claim your forgotten assets before your state does
- Financial literacy: Why Johnny can’t save
- Health Savings Accounts: Win the Tax trifecta
- In financial planning, its all about the tools
- Insurance: Don’t gamble away your retirement
- It’s Not Your Father’s Retirement
- Lump Sum Payouts: Just Say No
- Nest egg economics
- Reverse Mortgages: Is it Time to break the glass?
- Reverse Mortgages: Retirement cash hiding right under your nose
- The Magic of Compounding
- Why is the SEC redefining “Fiduciary”
- Women Need Financial Plans, Too
Retirement
- Annuities-When to hold ’em, when to fold ’em
- If You are Planning to Retire Elsewhere, Develop a Flight Plan
- Inflation: The Stealth Enemy of Retirement
- Managing the challenge of longevity
- On your mark… Get set… Ready to retire?
- Optimizing Your Retirement Withdrawals
- Protecting Your Retirement Against a Declining Dollar
- The good and bad news: We’re living a lot longer
- When Can I Afford to Retire
Taxes (Incl. IRAs, 401(k)s
- Are you getting Tax Alpha?
- Don’t miss this new Backdoor Roth IRA
- Fixing what the SECURE Act broke
- If You are Feeling Charitable, Use QCDs ASAP
- Last-minute actions to save on your taxes
- Mind the gap and reduce your taxes
- Self-directed IRAs: Caveat Investor
- Taxing Times
- The Demise of the Stretch IRA
- The Taxman cometh, but there’s still time
- To Roth or not to Roth?: It depends
