Retirement Watch Weekly
Why Buy-and-Hold Investing Doesn’t Work
Andrew Lo is a bright economist at MIT who also is involved with several financial firms. A few years ago he coined the term adaptive markets to explain something we’ve been saying for years. Markets are composed of people, and people don’t react the same way to the same stimulus every time. They learn, or […]
Estimating Life Expectancy – Some New Data
You can’t do a retirement planning without an estimate of how long retirement will last. There’s no way, of course, to know how long you’ll live. But you can establish some probabilities. Interestingly there’s some new data on life expectancy and death rates as we age. For about a couple of centuries, statisticians believed death […]
March 2012
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Seeking Higher Yields for Your Safe Cash
The Federal Re-serve recently said it would continue its zero interest rate policy through late 2014. The SEC also is about to propose new regulations on money market funds. This combination of actions will keep short-term yields as low as a snake’s belly and make it harder to earn a positive real yield or even […]
How Safe Is Your Brokerage Account?
The safety of brokerage accounts is front and center for the first time since 2008, thanks to the bankruptcy of MF Global. News stories indicate that about $1.6 billion of customer funds disappeared from MF Global accounts. Customers are denied access to all or part of their account balances and many won’t be made whole. […]
How to Avoid the Worst Estate Plan Mistakes
Taxes no longer are the main focus of Estate Planning, and they really never should have been. The broad goals of an estate plan should be to avoid chaos and discord among beneficiaries; to avoid or minimize probate; to protect assets from mismanagement by the children; and to protect assets from creditors and others. Many […]
Evaluating the Long Term Care Insurance Decision
Most people don’t buy long-term care insurance, and they also aren’t prepared to pay for long-term care needs. In general, Americans also aren’t well-informed about either long-term care or insurance to cover it. Let’s debunk some myths and then take a rational look at the decision of whether or not to buy LTCI. What’s the […]
Roth IRAs as Estate Planning Tools
Many people focus on the retirement and income tax aspects of Roth IRAs. Not enough people consider the Estate Planning benefits they could reap by converting a traditional IRA (or a 401(k) plan) into a Roth IRA. Your loved ones could receive more after-tax wealth from the Roth IRA, whether or not your estate is […]
