Retirement Watch Weekly
Medicare Advantage Cuts, Round Two
Members of Medicare Advantage plans can expect a new round of premium increases or reduced benefits or both. The plans are very popular with their beneficiaries, and they’ve been growing as a percentage of the Medicare population. But the current administration in Washington doesn’t like them at all. Money put into the plans was reduced […]
A Depressing Look at U.S. Retirement
Americans have less and less confidence that they will be able to fund a comfortable retirement, according to the latest annual Retirement Confidence Survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. (See some media coverage here.) For many years, the survey indicated that Americans were very confident of having comfortable retirements but pointed out that most […]
Manipulating the Gold Market
I’ve long advised investors that gold is a thinly–traded market and is prone to sharp moves by a relatively small amount of money. But I haven’t considered how easy it might be for the market to manipulated on a regular basis. And gold isn’t the only asset that can be manipulated by governments, banks, or […]
Stocks at Bargain Levels
Bloomberg.com caught a lot of attention yesterday with a somewhat misleading headline, “Record U.S. Stocks at Lowest Valuation since 1980.” You might ask, how can that be when most analysts say the stock indexes are somewhere near fairly valued. Reading the article further reveals that the real point is that the price-earnings ratios are the […]
Get Ready for Medicare Rationing, Restrictions
Paying for medical care promises to gobble much greater shares of federal and state government budgets. Medicare will come to dominate the federal budget. But what’s the cause of the rise? Many discussions would have you believe that rising prices or high medical inflation are the cause. That would lead to a conclusion that we […]
The Positive Side of the Boomers’ Retirement
Most of the financial media is filled with articles about how poorly prepared the Baby Boomers are prepared for retirement. Here’s a different take. It cites several studies that crunched the data and concluded that the early Baby Boomers are in pretty good shape. They had significant home equity before the housing crash (because they […]
Where to Grow Older
Success in most things in life often can be accomplished largely on our own. But successful aging requires some help and a proper environment. You’ll find a lot of surveys of best places to retire. But the Milken Institute offers a unique approach with its Best Cities for Successful Aging. The institute set five goals […]
March 2013
March 29, 2013 12:00 p.m. Your Retirement Finance Week in Review You still can attend my upcoming presentations in May. The first is one of our regular free online investment presentations. This one is May 1 at 3:30 p.m. eastern time. I’ll discuss “Adjusting Your Investments for 2013’s Second Half.” You can register at this […]
