The Social Security numbers of some 158 million Americans are vulnerable to identity theft.
And there's one disturbing reason why susceptible citizens in this group can't fight back for the sake of their own security.
Are you among them? If you're not sure, here's how to find out and what to do to protect yourself...
Last year, baby boomers donated $58.6 billion to charitable causes.
Indeed, they're the most giving American generation today.
Nonetheless, Uncle Sam is slighting them what's rightfully theirs.
The Social Security Administration paid millions to dead people last year.
And the kicker is: Uncle Sam knew these people were dead.
Saving for retirement is a difficult endeavor, especially for people struggling every month to pay their bills. If you're having trouble trying to boost your retirement income, you're not alone.
It's actually rather shocking just how many people are not financially ready to retire. A majority of Americans have less than $1,000 saved up. And according to the Economic Policy Institute, almost half of all families have no retirement account savings at all.
That's why we're bringing readers five ways to supplement your retirement income.
A whopping 1.2 million Americans won't be receiving Social Security benefits.
If you're not one of them, you know someone who is.
And this crisis is just the tip of the iceberg...
I caught an interesting shareholders' meeting last week - the Daily Journal Corp.
If you haven't heard of it, I'm not surprised. It's a sleepy little company, pulls in just $50 million a year in revenue selling newspapers and software products for the legal profession out in California and Arizona.
In other words, Daily Journal is about as far from the flashy FANGs or flavor-of-the-moment Dow movers as you can get and still be a listed company in the United States of America.
The meeting was packed to the rafters. A standing-room crowd of 1,000 people crammed into the hall.
Why such a crowd at a meeting like this?
Well, because the chair of Daily Journal is none other than Charlie Munger himself - the No. 2 guy at Berkshire Hathaway.
Easily one of the world's shrewdest, most successful investors, he's been Warren Buffett's compadre and partner in crime for decades now.
And I think every investor in America could make a mint if they heard what he had to say...
Retirement in the year 2050 looks an awful lot like full-time employment.
Thanks to shortfalls in pension funding and a lack of personal retirement savings, four in five Americans won't have saved enough to retire at all.
But by following these steps, you won't be one of them...
Most Americans don't think they can afford a normal retirement.
But with these three simple steps to maximize your 401(k), you can.
Plus, our "Ultimate Retirement Plan" offers you the chance to pull in $162,000 a year, for life...
Are you part of the majority of Americans who know less than they should about retirement?
Take our short retirement quiz to see just how much you know...
If you're at or near retirement age, you might be looking for some extra income to pad your nest egg.
One of the best ways to add a little extra income to your retirement is with stable, high-dividend stocks.
Although the markets have recovered, average Americans are still suffering from the 2007 housing bubble.
As a result, many are worrying if they'll ever be able to retire.
The most common retirement strategy advisors still give today is "buy a good index mutual fund and hold it forever." That aged approach has been around since I got my start in the markets in the mid-1980s.
Sure, buy and hold is the easiest strategy for a client to follow. After selecting a fund, there is nothing more to do.
That's why it's great for advisors and mutual funds. Keeping your money is their top priority because they get paid based on assets under management, not performance. Plus, redemptions cost funds money and time. For every "sale," they have to deal with paperwork and transaction costs when they sell shares to raise cash for the redemption.
But as investors, taking a buy-and-hold approach with all your retirement assets can be one of the biggest financial mistakes you make.
Recently, the Social Security Administration announced that more than 65 million recipients will get a 2% cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) in 2018.
But a Medicare quirk will keep 70% of beneficiaries from seeing that extra cash.
If you're at or near retirement age, you might be looking for some extra income to pad your nest egg.
One of the best ways to add a little extra income to your retirement is with stable, high-dividend stocks.
There's no polite way to say it: Americans are over a barrel when it comes to retirement.
Two decades of slow-rolling growth and the worst crisis since the Great Depression mean around 40% of today's workforce has nothing saved for retirement.
Too many people have too little money and too little time. And too many of them don't even realize it.
There's no big conspiracy, no giant hose job going on; it's a tragedy of errors. People are settling for subpar returns...
...and it's dooming them to a dismal retirement.
This is a grim picture, sure, but I'm not finished yet.
