After market-risk and inflation-risk, which investors take great strides to mitigate through sound investment practices, taxation-risk presents the biggest obstacle to building wealth. A sound investment strategy not only seeks to generate returns on your capital, it also seeks to preserve as much of your capital as possible to keep it working for you. One of the surest ways to...
It should not take the filing of a tax return or a death in the family to finally create order out of paper chaos so you are not forced to scramble in those critical circumstances. The chances of making costly errors are too great not to take some very simple, albeit essential, measures to get and stay organized all year...
In my opinion, it is impossible to predict future stock market returns. Investment models can produce hypothetical returns but they can’t account for future events. So, in my opinion, investors who manage their investments based on market performance or what they perceive as opportunities for better returns have very little control over the outcome. On the other hand, there may...
For many people, life insurance forms the security foundation of their financial plan. While most financial planners recommend that life insurance be purchased for its protection, and not as a primary savings vehicle, few would argue that cash value life insurance doesn’t have some fairly unique and attractive savings features. When these are considered in the context of a person’s...
It’s tax season again, and a question we get from a number of clients after receiving their yearend statements is, “Are my investment advisory fees tax deductible?” And the answer is an equivocal, “It depends.” Congress did grant a tax deduction for certain investment expenses, but with anything to do with the tax code, the devil’s is in the details...
Perhaps the most important factor in formulating your investment plan is your risk tolerance; that is, the amount of risk you’re willing to assume in order to achieve your most important objectives. More precisely, your risk tolerance is based on the your financial and emotional ability to withstand negative returns on your investment portfolio. Before embarking on any investment strategy...
The need for retirement planning didn’t really exist until well into the 1970s. Up to that point, people worked until age 65, spent a few years in leisure through their life expectancy which was about 69. Many retirees of that era were able to coast into retirement with a cushy pension plan. Over the next few decades, as life expectancy...
Young families with an eye to the future are faced with a daunting choice – to save earnestly for a secure retirement or to save for their children’s education. Can you do both? Certainly it is possible; however, with the cost of a college education and retirement (thanks to health care costs) rising faster than the rate of inflation, just...
After costs, the return on the average actively managed dollar will be less than the return on the average passively managed dollar for any time period. —William F. Sharpe, 1990 Nobel Laureate The efficient markets hypothesis implies that no active investor can consistently beat the market over long periods of time, except by chance. Yet active managers continue to test...
The saving versus paying off debt is an age-old quandary that has plagued people since the advent of consumer debt. Pose this question to a group of financial planners and the responses will be split, roughly down the middle. While there might be as many advocates for savings as there would be for paying down debt, the broad consensus will...
The current economic environment has caused most everyone to reconsider their personal finances with many people having to drastically change their spending and savings habits. Out of this economic malaise may come an opportunity to finally instill the right habits in your teens that can carry them into adulthood on the right financial footing. Just as our parents and grandparents...
This isn’t our parents’ or grandparents’ retirement anymore. Just a few decades ago, many retirees enjoyed the full benefits of the “three-legged stool” of retirement provide by guaranteed pension payments, savings, and Social Security. In addition, they didn’t have to be very concerned with how much of their income translated into actual purchasing power because, except for the mid to...