There's legislation wending its way through congress that could have a big effect on savers and retirees. One of the changes proposed is to make it easier for annuities to be part of an employer's retirement plan options (its 401(k) plan, usually).

If you don’t take enough risk when you’re young, you might not be able to retire when you want.. If you take too much risk when you’re older, you can be hurt badly by a serious market downturn. Diversification still works and is most important when you’re older.

The pace of increase in health care expenses is slowing for now, which is good news. But the trend is definitely still upward, and the uncertainty surrounding the topic isn't going away.

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.