Personal Finance

The long travel to retirement is about to end. You're ready to begin new journeys, hit the open road, ditch the bricks and sticks -- RV speak for a traditional house -- and travel the blue highways in a recreational vehicle.

And why not? You've earned it, with a comfortable cushion of retirement income and a yearning to see the country, camp, maybe glamp, and visit the scattered and grown kids and grandchildren in between sightseeing stops. You know you'll have fellow travelers. Approximately 10 million U.S. households own RVs, according to the RV Industry Association, and roughly 1 million Americans are living full-time in them.

But is an RV in retirement really right for you? We checked in with retirees who spend much of their time in recreational vehicles for their guidance on the pros of RV living in retirement. Here's what they had to say about the upsides of life on the road in an RV.

Read more: https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/retirement/T037-S001-8-reasons-to-retire-in-an-rv-motorhome-fifth-wheel/index.html

You may be wondering about your odds of an IRS audit. Most people can breathe easy. The vast majority of individual returns escape the IRS audit machine. In 2018, the Internal Revenue Service audited only 0.59% of all individual tax returns, and 81% of these exams were conducted by mail, meaning most taxpayers never met with an IRS agent in person. So the odds are generally pretty low that your return will be picked for review.

That said, your chances of being audited or otherwise hearing from the IRS escalate depending on various factors. Math errors may draw IRS inquiry, but they'll rarely lead to a full-blown exam. Check out these 10 red flags that could increase the chances that the IRS will give the return of a retired taxpayer special, and probably unwelcome, attention.

Read more: https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/retirement/T056-S011-10-irs-audit-red-flags-for-retirees/index.html

Investors in even the best bond funds that Wall Street has to offer might be in for a difficult 2020.

Much of the bond market, in my view, is in a bubble - just as tech stocks were in 1999. And bubbles always end badly.

Consider that in November 2019, $12.5 trillion was invested globally in bonds that have negative yields. That's down from a peak of $17 trillion in August, but that's still an absurd amount of money invested globally in bonds that have negative yields. That means investors are paying interest to a borrower to lend the borrower money -- which is just as crazy as it sounds. Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, notes that a bond with a negative yield is worth less than "a bag of dirt in your basement."

What's more, at various points recently, long-term bonds have been paying lower yields to investors than short-term bonds - a phenomenon known as a negative yield curve, which is typically predictive of a recession sometime down the road.

The lesson is to keep bond maturities short. With bond yields so low, they almost have to rise unless we're entering a period of serious deflation, which seems a remote possibility. And when bond yields rise, total returns on shorter-duration funds will sparkle compared to likely losses on long-term bond funds.

Here are my seven best bond funds to buy for 2020, from least to most risky. Bonds are primarily intended to add stability and a bit of income to your portfolio - not to take big risks in search of huge profits. For bonds, 2020 likely will be a year to be concerned not so much with return on capital but with return of capital.

Read more: https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/investing/T041-S001-7-best-bond-funds-for-retirement-savers-in-2020/index.html

Read more: https://www.kiplinger.com/article/taxes/T056-C005-S001-year-end-tax-tip-renew-expiring-irs-itin-numbers.html

Read more: https://www.kiplinger.com/article/retirement/T055-C032-S014-should-you-defer-your-taxes-until-retirement.html