Most of us have read about the benefits of diversifying our investments. The key benefit, in theory, is that when some assets decline, others will go up at least partially reducing the pain of a serious market downturn.

Spend enough time on personal finance web sites and you can start to feel like tax-avoidance strategies are THE most important factor in coming up with a successful financial plan. (In fact, they're not--saving as much money as possible in low-cost index funds is.) We don't want to pile on, but we do have another piece to consider: Social Security taxation, and what can be done to minimize it.

Believe it or not, we might have a bipartisan bill pass through Congress that would likely signed by the president. This one involves saving for retirement. It is becoming widely recognized that most people are not prepared to retire at a reasonable age. In fact, many people in this country will have to work pretty much their entire lives.

Phased retirement, rather than traditional, stop-work-entirely-at-a-certain-date retirement, is a common way to ease into retirement. We discuss how to model it here.

Deferred compensation plans are becoming more popular for higher-income earners. These types of plan are non-qualified tax-deferred plans, which means that they are allowed to grow tax-free before the money is withdrawn. When the money is withdrawn, it is taxed at the owner’s income tax rate.