Retirement Watch Weekly
Reducing Taxes on Mutual Funds
Mutual funds seem easy, and most investors believe they understand funds. But the income tax rules for funds are more involved than many people realize. Knowing the nuances of the rules is important. Taking different actions or changing their timing could improve your after-tax returns by a significant amount and preserve more of your nest […]
You Won’t Retire When You Expect
Most people expect either to retire early or not at all, it seems. Since the crisis of 2008, more people have said they’ll delay retirement or not retire. But the fact is most people don’t retire when they planned. Illness, injury, family situations, and lay offs cause many people to leave work never to return. […]
A Changing Tune from Warren Buffett?
Warren Buffett took some heat recently for publicly objecting to Coca-Cola’s new executive pay plan but abstaining from the vote with Berkshire-Hathaway’s shares instead of voting no. He also appears to be changing his tune on a few other issues on which he was once very vocal and political. Read the new interview with Fortune. […]
Why Aren’t There More Value Funds
Even advocates of efficient markets and index funds acknowledge that value stocks perform better over time than the indexes and growth stocks. This isn’t a secret. Yet, investors don’t flock to value stock funds. This essay offers a number of reasons why, but the bottom line is that investors aren’t always rational and don’ always […]
Estimating Longevity
A major mistake in most retirement plans is underestimating how long retirement will last. Most people routinely underestimate the life expectancy for people their age. More importantly, life expectancy varies with income level. The higher your income in your 50s, the longer you are likely to live, and life expectancy has increased more for higher […]
Where Your Medicare Dollars Go
The recent release of Medicare data continues to reveal valuable new information. The latest is that Medicare pays $5 billion annually for ambulance services, more than is paid to cancer doctors. More importantly, a portion of these ambulance payments go to what are essentially taxi services that are transporting patients who can drive themselves or […]
Worst States for Retirement
Some states are better for retirees than others. Each retiree is different, of course, and I’ve long discouraged people from simply going by a list of which states are best and worst for retirement. The features that are most important to you might be different from those preferred by the raters. But ratings and surveys […]
The Law of Unintended Consequences
Any time a policy, especially a government policy, is considered, it is important to consider the second and third level consequences of the proposal. Often, a policy generates some unexpected and unintended negative consequences. Here’s a simple example of school systems banning chocolate milk in their cafeterias. People assume that if chocolate milk is banned […]
