From the monthly archives:

December 2009

2010: Hope for a Decade Lost

December 29, 2009

Perhaps the best way to find out whether there is any validity in these sorts of year-end predictions is to look at the one made about this time a year hence. I referred to 2009 as an “Even Tempered Reconciliation”.  Wondering how we might survive was not the issue.  I knew we all would just [...]

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Mutual Funds Comparisons: The Manager

December 18, 2009

We have been looking at the tool we most often use for retirement, be it in your 401k or in an Individual Retirement Account (IRA): the mutual fund.  We have explored fees and performance earlier this month and found that there are more elements for confusion than there are clarity.  Now we delve into the [...]

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Once Upon a Time, Investors Panicked

December 16, 2009

Seems so long ago.  Markets were tumbling. People who owned stocks were selling and running for bonds. People who owned actively managed mutual funds were moving everything they had left to the uncharted and unproven territories that are target date funds or balanced offerings. No one seemed to know what to do or worse, how [...]

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It’s Not How Educated You Are…

December 15, 2009

It’s not how educated you are that determines how will you use your 401k. In fact, it is how smart you are. As I was working on step five for the book, I wrote the following: (Book excerpt from Target2025) The effect of lower wages for similar work will plague the average worker well into [...]

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The Rollover Question: Should I Stay or Should I Go?

December 14, 2009

There a quite a few things to consider before rolling over your 401(k).  First of which is the concept of the rollover in the first place. The scenario is always the same: You have left an employer for whatever reason. You have invested money in the former’s defined contribution plan.  For the vast majority of [...]

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Dividends Tell All

December 10, 2009

We have been discussing dividends on MomsMakingaMillion Radio for the last several weeks. In this segment, we discuss dividends in mutual funds. Could you recap briefly for our listeners what we have already discussed? Our discussion about dividends has offered a brief overview of what they are: profits paid back to the shareholder of record, [...]

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401(k)s: The Information Excuse

December 9, 2009

If you are like so many people I know, the amount of information streaming into your life is amazing.  Your iPhone has a thousand apps to choose from, you watch television with your laptop propped open, you talk and drive.  You can do so many diverse things at once, and even though studies have shown [...]

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Mutual Fund Comparison: Fees

December 7, 2009

In our first discussion about performance comparisons for mutual funds, we looked at the downside of simply comparing side-by-side an actively managed fund with one of the indexes that are published.  These indexes span a wide variety of categories in order to help investors understand how the broader market has done in relation to the [...]

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The Curious Case of Mutual Fund Comparison: Performance

December 6, 2009

The last lines of Matthew P. Fink’s book, “The Rise of the Mutual Fund” suggest that although he is a “worrier; nonetheless, I am optimistic”.  This speaks volumes to the “extraordinary success of mutual funds”.  Mr. Fink believes that despite the speculation about the maturity of the industry, it is far from falling from its [...]

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Inflection Point: The Recovered 401(k)

December 3, 2009

If you are young(er), if your company continued to match your 401(k) contributions, if you kept your contributions intact, your defined contribution plan has now begun to look as it did before this whole unraveling mess began in 2008.  Over the past week, both Fidelity (who suggested that the one-year rate of return of its [...]

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