retirement

Tokyo, December 28 -- Japanese Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii was admitted to hospital early Monday, as he was exhausted due to weeks of hard work compiling the national budget for fiscal year 2010.

Cost reduction increases efficiency and profits, especially in troubled financial times like the present. However, some businesses compromise on quality of products and services to achieve this. This is not the right approach. One must understand how and when to cut costs.

Last October, as the financial world was spiraling toward all-out Armageddon, Tim and I were doing what every other investor on Earth probably wished they could be doing at that moment ...

Do you have a "very best" stock? A stock that brings you closer to retirement year in and year out? One like Kraft Foods (NYSE: KFT), which -- tracked by Jeremy Siegel, author of Stocks for the Long Run-- turned $1,000 into more than $2 million over 53 years with dividend reinvestment? In terms of returns, Kraft has been one of the very best stocks of the past half-century.

Warren Buffett once said, “If you don’t feel comfortable owning something for 10 years, then don’t own it for 10 minutes.”

A study states that the average woman works for 12 years fewer than the average man, makes $300,000 less than the average man in a lifetime and lives six years longer than the average man. All combined, it means that women have to plan for a longer retirement with less money.

For some, the ideal retirement may be sitting near the door steps of their house and watching the grandchildren play, for others it might be traveling around the world. Or it may be somewhere between these two extremes.

Washington -- A larger than expected number of U.S. residents are retiring early, many of them believed to be laid-off workers, analysts said.