Durable Earnings

Building income that lasts in a world that’s changing fast.

Category: Retirement Resilience

  • Required Minimum Distributions After 73: What Late-Career Workers Need to Plan for Now

    Required Minimum Distributions After 73: What Late-Career Workers Need to Plan for Now

    RMD age 73 retirement planning is the sort of phrase nobody grows up dreaming about. Then you hit your 60s, the retirement accounts finally look like real money, and suddenly the government would like a schedule for when that money starts coming back out. That’s the part many late-career workers miss. They know required minimum…

  • Roth Conversion Strategies for Late-Career Workers: A Practical Guide

    Roth Conversion Strategies for Late-Career Workers: A Practical Guide

    If you’re in your late 50s or early 60s, retirement planning gets weird fast. You’re close enough that the numbers matter now, but still far enough out that a bad tax move can echo for years. That is exactly why Roth conversion strategies for late-career workers deserve real attention instead of the usual personal-finance fog…

  • Bond Laddering for Late-Career Investors: A Plain-English Introduction

    Bond Laddering for Late-Career Investors: A Plain-English Introduction

    Retirement investing gets described in two equally unhelpful ways. One camp talks like everybody should stay calm, own broad funds, and ignore the noise forever. The other acts like you need a Bloomberg terminal, a CFA, and a minor in Greek letters just to protect next year’s grocery money. Neither approach is much comfort if…

  • How to Use Morningstar to Compare Target-Date Funds for Late-Stage Savers

    How to Use Morningstar to Compare Target-Date Funds for Late-Stage Savers

    If you’re 58, still working, and staring at a 401(k) menu full of target-date funds, here’s the annoying part: the names all sound like they were generated by the same committee. “Retirement 2030.” “Freedom 2035.” “LifePath 2030.” Very clean. Very reassuring. Also not very helpful when the next bad market hits. This is why Morningstar…

  • How to Build a Retirement Withdrawal Strategy That Survives an Early Layoff

    How to Build a Retirement Withdrawal Strategy That Survives an Early Layoff

    You can do everything the grown-up money columns told you to do, then still get blindsided at 54 by a layoff and a bad market showing up together like a pair of unpaid interns with access to your future. That’s why a retirement withdrawal strategy after a layoff in your 50s has to be different…

  • Required Minimum Distributions: What Workers 50+ Need to Plan For Now

    Required Minimum Distributions: What Workers 50+ Need to Plan For Now

    Retirement planning has a bad habit of sounding tidy right up until the tax bill arrives. That’s especially true with RMD planning for workers over 50. You can spend decades doing the allegedly responsible things, build a decent 401(k) or IRA, and still get blindsided by the part where the IRS eventually wants its turn.…

  • Roth Conversion Strategies for Mid-Career Workers: What to Know Before You Convert

    Roth Conversion Strategies for Mid-Career Workers: What to Know Before You Convert

    If you’re in your 50s, a Roth conversion can look like the rare financial move that actually gives you more control instead of less. That’s the appeal. You pay tax now, move money from a traditional IRA or 401(k) into a Roth account, and buy yourself tax-free withdrawals later. Clean, simple, done. Except it isn’t…

  • What the SECURE 2.0 Act Changed About Retirement Planning in 2026

    What the SECURE 2.0 Act Changed About Retirement Planning in 2026

    Retirement rules used to change slowly enough that a normal person could ignore them for a few years and still catch up over coffee on a Saturday morning. SECURE 2.0 ruined that arrangement. The SECURE 2.0 retirement changes 2026 workers need to care about affect how much can go into a plan, whether catch-up money…

  • How to Use Morningstar to Stress-Test Your Retirement Withdrawal Strategy

    How to Use Morningstar to Stress-Test Your Retirement Withdrawal Strategy

    Most retirement advice still acts like the hard part is saving the money. It isn’t. The hard part is deciding how much you can take out without turning your 70s into a long argument with a spreadsheet. That’s why Morningstar stress-test retirement withdrawals matters. It forces the real question: not whether your portfolio looks respectable…

  • Social Security and AI disruption: what workers need to know now

    Social Security and AI disruption: what workers need to know now

    If you’re in your 40s, 50s, or early 60s, the old retirement script looks shakier than it did five years ago. Social Security still matters. Your paycheck still matters. The problem is that those two things are now tied together in a nastier way than most people want to admit. Social security AI disruption workers…