Retirement Watch Weekly
The New Look in Obituaries
If you don’t prepare an obituary as part of your estate planning package, your heirs might have a bit of fun with it, according to The Wall Street Journal (subscription might be required). The article says that funeral home directors noticed that in recent years survivors have been willing to point out that no one […]
Defending Investment Management Fees
The Yale University Endowment Fund doesn’t follow the low-cost, index investing strategy of portfolio management. Instead, it owns a lot of hedge funds, private equity funds, and similar investments. The endowment pays a lot of fees to the managers of these funds, and it thinks that’s a good idea. In its annual report the endowment […]
Why Active Investment Management is So Hard
It’s not costs and fees. The problem also isn’t that managers are dumb, according to this article. It summarizes some academic research that largely has been ignored but does a better job of explaining how hard active management is than other approaches. The problem is that stocks actually are a bad long-term investment. A small […]
An Alternative to Assisted Living
This article argues that the zoning patterns after World War II should be reformed. In particular, families should be encouraged to have multiple generations in the same house or on the same property. It compares today’s animosity toward multiple generations in the same house to the practice not long ago for grandparents to live with […]
The Art Investing Portfolio
Some economists decided to measures the returns on art and compare them to other investments. One way they did that was to take the collection of John Maynard Keynes that he bequeathed to a college and follow it over the years. The results of the study aren’t favorable for those who view art as a […]
Reverse Mortgage Strategies to Avoid
I’ve discussed in Retirement Watch some situations in which a reverse mortgage can be a good financial tool. But there are other situations in which reverse mortgages aren’t appropriate. A recent settlement reported in the Boston Globe describes one of those cases. A couple was urged to take out a reverse mortgage and use the […]
Insights on Thefts from Seniors
Financial advisors are becoming more aggressive about protecting senior citizens from financial fraud and abuse. They’re being trained to recognize the warning signs and are urged to be proactive when they see something wrong. The larger financial firms train their financial advisors on the issue and have some staff members dedicated to following up and […]
Disadvantages of the Bucket Investing Method
Some investment advisors favor what’s called the “bucket method” of investing. Academic types call it “time segmentation.” Basically, in this method you divide the future into time periods and assign different amounts of money to each period. Money you need in the nearest time period is invested in liquid, conservative assets. Money that is needed […]
