Retirement Watch Weekly
The Competition Between Growth and Value Stocks
The second edition of The New Rules of Retirement continues to rise on Amazon.com’s rankings, though it won’t be available for another 10 days or so. The pre-publication interest and orders are gratifying. This significant rewriting of the first edition covers all the financial aspects of retirement, and then some. You can learn more about the […]
You Can’t Always Believe What You See
Recently I was talking with someone who worked for a national business group. He explained how one of their recent events attracted some protestors, but that they weren’t real protestors. Instead, he identified the leader of the group, someone he’d encountered several times at similar events. And he knew that the man hired most of […]
Coping with Stock Market Losses
This post is from a venture capital investor, but it has good points for most investors. The piece starts with the author being told early in his career that if he didn’t have any losses in his portfolio he wasn’t taking enough risk. Since then, he’s incurred many losses, but he’s still doing well on […]
Data Points to Improved Labor Market
It won’t be published officially for a few more weeks, but the revised edition of my book, “The New Rules of Retirement,” is rising in popularity on Amazon.com thanks to your interest and pre-publication orders. The changes from the first edition are significant. I had to almost completely re-write the book. It covers all the […]
The Bankrupt U.S. Government Pension System
There have been many reports of the perilous financial state of state and local pension funds and of Social Security. Overlooked in all the analyses is the terrible condition of the retirement system the U.S. governments offers for its own employees. The system was reformed somewhat in the 1980s to a hybrid system. Long-time employees […]
Avoiding Expensive IRA Mistakes
IRA rules and strategies can be more complicated once the early contribution and accumulation years are behind us. There are various tricks and traps in the IRA rules, and there are strategies for maximizing IRA values that aren’t intuitive. […]
Annuities – Safe, Guaranteed Income
Protect my principal, and guarantee my income. Those are the goals of many investors today, especially those in or nearing their post-career years. Now that the equity markets no longer are rising steadily upward, investors aren’t looking for ways to match or beat the indexes. They’re looking to protect the nest eggs they’ve worked hard […]
Nuts & Bolts of Estate Planning – The Basics
Most discussions of estate planning, including in this newsletter, focus on discrete topics and strategies. Once in a while, especially early in the year, it is good idea to step back and look at the broader picture. There are concepts and strategies common to every estate plan and estate owner. Use these concepts and strategies […]
