FREE: Expert Retirement Planning Advice

Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine and the National Association of Personal Finance Advisors (NAPFA) are joining forces to offer free one-on-one retirement planning advice on their "Jump-Start Your Retirement Planning Days."

Folks who call this toll-free number – 888-919-2345 – on Tuesday, January 16th, and Friday, January 26th, from 9 AM to 6 PM EST will receive answers to their retirement questions from fee-only financial advisers. There will be no cost to callers, even though the advice they receive will come from pros who normally charge between $100 to $250 an hour. (On past "Jump-Start Your Retirement Planning Days," over 25,000 people received more than 4,000 hours worth of free financial advice.)

The fee-only financial planners who belong to NAPFA don't earn commissions for recommending products or services – and they pledge to put their clients' needs first when offering advice. Therefore, most personal finance authorities recommend them over planners who can benefit personally from the advice they give.

Mark Your Calendar and Pick a Topic
To jump-start your retirement, why not plan to give a call on January 16th or 26th? You might want to ask about one or another of these topics:

• The latest IRA and 401(k) regulations.
• Estate planning.
• Insurance.
• Taxes.
• The amount to save for a comfortable retirement.
• The ways to cope with competing goals, such as saving for retirement vs. saving for college.
• Target-retirement funds (aka life-cycle funds), which allocate the stock/bond/cash ratio in portfolios based on when the investors will be retiring.
• Reverse mortgages.

Prepare Yourself
Choose one of these topics, and then do a little reading on it during the next week. That way, you'll have a leg up when you call the retirement planning hotline. Here are two good places to start:

1. Kiplinger's already has its February, 2007 cover story,  "Retirement Savings Made Easy," available for free on its Web site.
2. Credit.com offers a lot of free retirement advice and tools.

Check them out before you call!

Details, Details.
The more detailed the information at your fingertips when you call, the more personalized the answers will be. Kiplinger's recommends, "If you want to ask about your investment allocation, for example, you'll need to give the planner a quick overview of how your portfolio is invested." Similarly, if you've been automatically enrolled in the 401(k) plan at work, and you have some questions about it, make sure you have the paperwork handy when you call.

Important: The "Jump-Start Your Retirement Planning" hotline is free to all. You don't need to be a Kiplinger's subscriber to benefit.

What are you doing to jump-start your retirement? Discuss it with us here, and don't forget to call the experts on Tuesday, January 16th and Friday, January 26th, between 9 AM to 6 PM EST, at this toll-free number: 888-919-2345.

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