Earlier this week my wife and I were discussing the stock market events that were taking place in front of us; markets gripped by political intrigue, both domestic and overseas, violent swings in volatility, slowing economic growth, and lots of uncertainty. I then started telling her about what my plan Read more…
How are the majority of retirees getting by? Do they have enough in savings and investments to make ends meet or live the lifestyles they want? This is a topic I think about a lot. Being on the road full-time and living the RV lifestyle my wife and I meet Read more…
There was a recent post at the Times’ Bucks Blog about Longevity Insurance that caught my attention. I decided to run some numbers to see what returns are implied in the current prices of longevity insurance and compare that to the risks, and the alternative of just keeping your money Read more…
Investment fees are such a detriment to future wealth that literally investors should flee from them like their lives depended on it. I’ve touched on the topic of investment fees before using hypothetical fees and looked at their long term impact. It’s awful. But it looks even worse when fees Read more…
The 4% rule of thumb for retirement savings is under threat. After 10 years of retirement, through the end of 2009, individuals who retired at the beginning of the year 2000 are potentially on a path to run out of money before the end of their 30 year retirement period. Read more…
There are lots of lies in finance or more subtly put, a lot of things wrong with conventional wisdom. I have trouble deciding which lie is the biggest but definitely one of the candidates is ‘Stocks for the Long Run’ which usually means that buying and holding the market index Read more…
Cash is the best asset class for diversifying your portfolio. This goes against a lot of the traditional investment advice which most of the time recommends bonds as the diversifying asset class. This is particularly true for retirement portfolios. In this post I want to take a look at bonds Read more…
Well, its finally time to put it out there. Since I started blogging I’ve been trying to build a base of background posts to get me to this point. Today, I want to share with you the retirement model that I am using to fund my retirement. I think I Read more…
I’ve had a lot of trouble thinking about investing these past few days. In the past 15 years or so I’ve traveled to and done business in Japan many a time. I have many friends there. My wife and I have enjoyed some great vacations there. I even experienced a Read more…
I’m not a huge fan of investing in bonds, although I do invest in them from time to time. In general, their prospective returns are lower than stocks, they’re taxed at marginal income rates, and individual bond issues are harder to research/buy/trade than individual stocks. However, the most surprising reasons Read more…
I’ve talked a lot about how much it takes to retire and safe withdrawal rates and ways to increase safe withdrawal rates. See the series of posts here. All of these discussions and studies I reference are based on a certain retirement model. Lets call it the portfolio value retirement Read more…