Retirement Watch Weekly
Rules-Based Investing
What are the traits of a successful investor. I’ve tried to make clear in Retirement Watch that in all your financial decisions you need a process. People make mistakes when they don’t have a process. They use rules of thumb, short cuts, intuition, or whatever bit of information they recently encountered. This article explains from […]
The Pension Fund Dilemma of Low Interest Rates
While individual investors fret about zero interest rates around the globe, the low rates also are creating substantial problems for pension funds, life insurers, and an array of other entities that depend on investment returns. This article in The Wall Street Journal delves into detail how bad zero interest rates are making pension funding. (Subscription […]
The Election and Your Portfolio
The election everyone said they hated is behind us. Now we plan for the results. Post-election forecasts are as precarious as pre-election forecasts. I remember after Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, the consensus was that stocks of “green companies” would do well and defense stocks would do poorly. There even were newsletters and mutual […]
Navigating an Improbable Year and Preparing for More Surprises to Come
Don’t fall into the extrapolation trap that snares most investors. Too many investors extrapo- late the recent past into the indefinite future. They believe whatever has happened in the economy and markets recently will continue to happen. Behavioral finance economists and psychologists call this “recency” bias. (I know most dictionaries don’t accept “recency” as a […]
Use Retirement Planning Software with Care
You can find plenty of no-cost and low-cost retirement calculators on the Web. The software helps you determine if you have saved enough money for retirement. My advice always has been that it’s best to use several programs, compare the results from the different programs, and prefer programs that let you change all or most […]
Could You Be Saving Too Much for Retirement?
The media regularly run headlines about how Americans are unprepared for retirement, primarily because they haven’t saved enough. But there’s another view that doesn’t receive as much attention. In this view, many people might be saving too much for retirement. That could be good news for their heirs, but they could be shortchanging themselves. Using […]
New Rulings Show Importance of Checking IRA Beneficiaries
A series of recent IRS rulings shows how important it is to review carefully your IRA beneficiary designations. The rulings show that your will and other documents don’t matter. Only the beneficiary designation form on file with the IRS custodian or trustee matters to the IRS. In the rulings, an IRA owner had IRAs at […]
Weighing the Pros and Cons of IRA Conversions
Forget all you’ve heard about converting traditional IRAs into Roth IRAs. There are too many rules of thumb, shortcuts and plain misinformation floating around. Also, circumstances change. You might have evaluated the conversion option a few years ago and reached a decision. You should re-evaluate that decision regularly, because important factors might be different now. […]
