From the category archives:

Repercussions: A Retirement Review

Retirement Planning and Mortgages

September 3, 2010

The question of paying off your mortgage comes up quite often as folks wonder whether the monthly burden of a mortgage payment is worth the effort.  Some have asked if they should use their retirement accounts to do so.  Here’s why one shouldn’t pay for the other and both are bargains worth holding on to [...]

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Retirement Planning: When Women Make Dangerous Assumptions

September 2, 2010

The excuse that you will simply work longer has taken  a dangerous position in the retirement plan for women that a recent TransAmerica Retirement Survey recently revealed.  Granted, this is the new recovery plan among a great deal of respondents, of both sexes.  But for the female worker, this can be the wrong approach to [...]

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The Language of Investing for Retirement or Why We don’t Listen

September 1, 2010

Back in 2002 I had the pleasure of working with my first editor.  He knew I had never written a book before and was patient enough to edit more book than he asked for and along the way, give me some insights on the reading public. Online and in the short form of articles and [...]

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Insuring the Downturn

August 31, 2010

With all of the pressures on your already squeezed paychecks, insurers are worried that their profits will be impacted by the latest round of predictions that the economy is not recovery at the sped many had hoped, even anticipated it would.  In the near-term, they worry about the lack of products they are selling to [...]

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REITs aren’t Real Estate; It’s a Stock

August 30, 2010

What looks like a mutual fund, pays dividends like a mutual fund, is compared to a mutual fund and most recently, up against the S&P 500 index, actually has performed better, yet isn’t one?  REITs, which stands for real estate investment trust is often confused by investors as a mutual fund.  As as to the [...]

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Tell Me What I Want To Hear

August 29, 2010

Imagine a new mutual fund with the appealing name of “No-Worries”.  It might get your attention.  You might look to the mission statement and find some suggestion that upon investing you would not be guaranteed anything because investment involves risk. But on the other hand, you will have nothing to worry about, your money is [...]

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The Sliced and Diced Retirement Plan

August 28, 2010

Certified Financial Planners are dicing your lifetime into five categories these days, even as psychologists spend decades trying to do the same. A recent issue of the magazine sought to describe the 20-somethings as a segment of life all their own calling them pre-adults, suggesting that they live in a time “what one sociologist calls [...]

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The Overly Prescribed Retirement: When Advice is Unsolicited

August 26, 2010

I should point out that above all, I’m an optimist! But I am also a realist.  I understand the uncertainty of our newly redefined futures based on the foibles of our past and the pressures of our present. We are faced with the potential of longer lives, underfunded retirement goals and the very possible chance [...]

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Bond Funds vs Equity Funds

August 25, 2010

The world of conservative investing that has developed over the last couple of years has done so with sound reasoning.  People who buy fixed income believe that in doing so they are protecting their investments in the safety of debt.  That debt, be it from Treasuries or corporate bond issues has seen prices rise while [...]

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The Early Retirement Conundrum: Take it Now or Hope it will be there

August 24, 2010

Never one to shy away from jumping into the fray, which is a little different than jumping to conclusions, I have bumped into more than one conversation about the wisdom of drawing on retirement income too soon.  These folks argue that everyone should plan on working longer (and not just to rebuild retirement accounts – [...]

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