Avoid the Ultimate R.I.P.-Off
Many estate planners advise their clients to complete a useful, albeit sobering, exercise. The exercise calls for the client to assume they have died, and that their beneficiaries are gathered around the dining room table dealing with the aftermath. The...
Your Genes Impact Your Investment Decisions
The sharp market decline in January has raised the anxiety level of investors everywhere and brought out the worst in the financial media. Many investors are asking the wrong questions, like these: 1. Is this the beginning of a market...
Good Looks, Bad Advice
In a recent blog post for Pragmatic Capitalism, Ben Carlson did an excellent job of putting the recent surge of money into passively managed funds in context. The shift to passive funds is still modest The shift from active to...
Dumb Investing Ideas
No wonder the average investor significantly underperforms market returns that are theirs for the taking. After all, the financial media and the securities industry inundate investors with a daily barrage of new products and misleading information. Here are some recent...
A Powerful Force Is Killing Your Retirement
Investment “professionals” could be killing your chances of retiring with dignity, if at all. This extract, from one of America’s most respected financial journalists, William Bernstein, should be read and reread by every investor: “There are two kinds of investors,...
Investing Facts You Probably Don’t Know
Intelligent and responsible investing can be simple and uncomplicated. It involves buying a globally diversified portfolio of low management fee index funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or passively managed funds in an appropriate asset allocation. After the initial purchase, there is...
Investing Headlines: The Good, Bad and Ugly
You can learn a lot if you read the financial headlines with the right perspective. It’s unfortunate that most provide misinformation designed to encourage trading, increase anxiety and otherwise foster bad investing behavior. There are some notable exceptions, but finding...
Try This Revolutionary Approach to Investing
As an investor, you are probably concerned about “uncertainty” in the market. Sometimes it may feel like you are just waiting for the other shoe to drop. It probably doesn’t help that the financial media appears so vocally divided between...
A Surefire Way to Make Money in 2015
I have a surefire way for you to make money in 2015. It’s disarmingly simple, and I’m not even going to keep you waiting. Here’s what I want you to do: Get into the business of managing other people’s money....
Don’t Repeat the Same Investing Mistakes Next Year
It was a great year for stock market returns. According to data from Morningstar, as of Dec. 24 stocks representing the U.S. market returned 13.95 percent. Morningstar’s intermediate core bond index returned 5.16 percent over the same period. Even with...
