Retirement Watch Weekly
The “Financial Emergency Kit” and Documents Every Estate Planning Strategy Needs (Part 2)
In Part 1 of this article I talked about the importance of having a Financial Emergency Kit, along with a few of its essential elements. So this week, let’s continue the discussion and review the other important elements that make up your Financial Emergency Kit, starting with: A letter of instruction, which can be valuable […]
Alternative Uses of 529 Plans
Suppose you set up a 529 college savings plan for a child or grandchild, and now the youngster doesn’t need it. Maybe the child received a full scholarship or won’t be attending college. This article explains that you have several option. The most logical is to change the beneficiary to another child or grandchild, or […]
5 Ways the Financial Services Industry Comes Up Short: How to Make the Most of Your Wealth
In my new Retirement Watch Spotlight Series, I’ll share my newest breakthrough strategies for protecting your assets and growing your portfolio, including how to prepare for the next market downturn. Click here now to learn more. […]
Bob’s Journal
Investors in index funds might want to consider moving to funds that equally weight each stock. The major stock indexes are capitalization-weighted, or cap-weighted. That means each stock’s weight in the index is determined by its market capitalization, which is the value of its outstanding shares of stock. The greater the fund’s capitalization, the larger […]
What’s Holding Down the Gold Price?
The price of gold has been tumbling most of this year. This article offers some explanations and also compares gold to TIPS, pointing out that most of the time there’s a high correlation between the two. His basic argument is that strong economic growth is bad for both gold and TIPS. For the past 5 […]
ETF Wars Heating Up
Major providers of ETFs spent the last few years competing by steadily lowering fees on select ETFs. It’s about the only way to compete, since most ETFs are index funds. As this article reports, Fidelity made the lowest move by offering ETFs with no fees. These are new funds, and only two are available initially. […]
Some Common Retirement Misconceptions
Most people aren’t experts on retirement, so it’s understandable that they have some misunderstanding about retirement finances. This article reviews some of the more common misunderstandings people have about their retirement finances, and explains how they can lead to trouble. High Yield Is Better Than Low Yield Well duh. How can 5 percent interest not […]
The Financial Emergency Kit: How to Build a Complete Estate Planning Strategy and Document File
Many people think they have estate plans… but oftentimes it turns out they really don’t. I’m not talking about those who haven’t done any planning and don’t even have a basic will. I’m talking about people who have taken action on their estate plans — and yet have plans that are woefully incomplete. You see, […]
