Retirement Watch Weekly
Achieving Better Investment Results
Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital has one of the best investment records. In his shareholder letters, he’s frequently willing to reveal some of the steps an investor needs to take to achieve such results. He’s willing to give the advice, because he knows few people will take it. In this shareholder letter, he explains that […]
Kind Words About Variable Annuities
I’ve been among those critical of variable annuities over the years. Many of them have high fees and expenses, plus they convert tax-favored capital gains and dividends into ordinary income. But there’s something different about many variable annuities sold in recent years. After the stock market crash following 1999, insurers have to sell something more […]
Diving Into the Medicare Data
Recently the Center for Medicare and Medicaid released a bunch of data that various people have been pouring through. Here’s an interesting post pointing out how much Medicare paid for chiropractic treatments and asserting all this is wasted money. I’ve never had a chiropractic treatment, but I know people who have. They say it works, […]
U.K. Government Helps with Retirement Planning
The U.K. government recently liberalized national pension rules to allow retirees to take their benefits in a lump sum instead of being required to take them as a life annuity. The latest move they’re considering is to tell people how long they are likely to live and will need their nest eggs to last. The […]
Why Most People Shouldn’t Manage Their Money
Each year the research firm Dalbar issues a study of how the returns investors actually earned differ from the returns of popular indexes. The firm measures flows in and out of mutual funds to see when people actually were holding shares of the funds and earning the market returns. The results always are dismal for […]
Everyone Needs an Estate Plan, and It’s Not About Taxes
Mickey Rooney passed away last week. He was a fabulously successful movie star in his prime and continued to perform most of his life. He was pitching products through infomercials the last few years. Yet, he apparently died with few assets to his name. This report alleges that he was abused and his money pilfered […]
Avoiding the Grandparent Scams
There’s a range of scams that specifically target grandparents. It’s not clear how the perpetrators find their information, but they have people’s names and numbers and the name of at least one grandchild. Then they call, pretending to be a grandchild in distress and in need of money. You can find details here, including what […]
Where Medicare Dollars Go
As the Center for Medicare and Medicaid has become more open with data, we’ve learned more about government medical spending. A few years ago we learned that treatments for what appear to be the same conditions vary greatly around the country, as do the costs and the results. This week we learned that a small […]
