Posts tagged as:

portfolios

Personalizing Personal Finance: Retirement Goals

August 16, 2010

We have discussed taxes and investments, protection, financial goals, and  accumulation goals in your quest to develop a solid, manageable personal finance plan. Now it is time to take a look at retirement planning.  We did touch on this in each of the previous segments, in part because the overall goal of a good financial plan is not only [...]

Read the full article →

What Happens When ETFs are Actively Managed?

July 13, 2010

For most of us, the exchange traded fund is an index fund dressed up like a stock.  It trades actively on the exchange.  Investors can purchase the fund throughout the day and many of these ame investors have found this security a good place to follow trends.  My only real concern with ETFs as they [...]

Read the full article →

Making the Financially Clueless More So

June 29, 2010

By now, most of my regular readers know what I do not like in the world of financial products. The annuity galls me (a mix of insurance and mutual funds that doesn’t do either well), the ETF (which mimics the indexed mutual fund but allows you to trade it just like a stock and pay [...]

Read the full article →

The Lazy Investor: Can Transparency change Your Retirement Plan?

June 23, 2010

“To live is to choose,” writes Kofi Annan adding that “to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there”.  No, Mr. Annan wasn’t trying to offer suggestions on how to run a 401(k) plan for his employees or [...]

Read the full article →

Retirement: What Can We Learn From Ken Griffey Junior?

June 6, 2010

Even if you live outside of the baseball world, even if you live far from the Pacific Northwest, even if you don’t follow sports, the name Ken Griffey Jr. is recognizable. His announced retirement from the Seattle Mariners this week was really not so much of a surprise. The Kid had a brilliant career, is [...]

Read the full article →

ETFs: The Big Maybe in Retirement Planning

June 3, 2010

There is no doubt that ETFs are less expensive than mutual funds. They are a great many other things that mutual funds are not as well and investors who may now find this tool in their 401(k) plan should know what these big “maybes” are. An ETFs acts like a mutual fund index. In fact, [...]

Read the full article →

Retirement Planning and the Recency Effect

May 20, 2010

We remember the recent events that shape our lives while foregoing the events that could matter more. This is often called the recency bias or effect. And when it comes to retirement planning, the results are more likely to have long-term repercussions. We are only Human The recency effect of bias is well documented as [...]

Read the full article →

An Unfair Comparison: ETFs and Mutual Funds

April 29, 2010

If you wonder whether the comparisons most often made between ETFs (exchange traded funds) and mutual funds are done without bias, you would be wrong.  To understand why these traded index funds continue sell their attributes based on cost alone is to miss the point.  While they do have very low fees, as all passively [...]

Read the full article →

Some Quick Retirement Questions, Answered Differently

April 14, 2010

We all know who Jill Schlesinger is, the columnist for CBS MoneyWatch. These play-it-safe authorities on money often steer people in the direction of further help rather than answer their questions. Retirement is always a tricky subject and investing is treacherous. But so often, folks seem to approach both subjects as neophytes, unable to navigate [...]

Read the full article →

Better Muni-Bond Ratings: Cloaking Possibilities

March 26, 2010

We are far from free of the clutches of the Great Recession.  The hold that the recent economic downturn has had on numerous types of investment portfolios will continue, even if, one the surface, it seems to abated somewhat in the equities markets.  The recent decision by Fitch, a bond ratings company, to revisit their [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries