Retirement Watch Weekly
What the Super Rich Do Right, and Wrong
A new study obtained data from a firm that consolidates information on a number of superwealthy families (average net worth is $90 million) and tabulated their holdings and trades. You can find a summary here (subscription might be required). The good things the rich do is they don’t trade much, invest in vehicles open only […]
Evaluating Combination Long-Term Care Policies
Most people say their biggest fear in retirement is a need for long-term care that exhausts their savings. Yet, most people don’t have long-term care insurance. The biggest reasons given for not having LTCI is that it’s expensive and people are concerned about paying all the premiums and never claiming benefits. In response, insurers created […]
Safe Investments and Annuities — Another View
Many people are seeking safe investments and only safe investments. That’s understandable given the events since 2000 and how unprepared many people were for them. The interest in safe money certainly is helping annuity salespeople. Here’s an alternative view. Keep in mind that I regularly advise people use annuities in their retirement portfolios. But I […]
Help Figuring, Fighting Your Medical Bills
It shouldn’t have to be this way, but some people need to hire someone to figure out their medical bills and fight the charges. Medical bills are designed for the bureaucrats and computers at insurance companies, Medicare, and Medicaid, not for the actual consumers of medical care. So when a patient has care that isn’t […]
Bearish on Gold
That’s the view in an article on Bloomberg.com. It quotes a number of analysts about Gold’s recent plummet into a bear market and the potential for an end to its long streak of annual price increases. Gold’s a tricky investment. It’s still a fairly thin market, so the price can be moved by extra buying […]
Another Stock Market Myth Exposed
Part of my book Invest Like a Fox…Not Like a Hedgehog is devoted to teaching that there are a lot of market myths that are widely-held despite the lack of data to support them. Here’s evidence of one. Some people are worried about the stock market, because the sectors considered to be defensive have been […]
Retired at 30
Apparently there’s a guy in Colorado who, along with his wife, retired by the time he was 30. He also has a blog that attracted a fair amount of attention. You can read his story in this article. His story supports a conversation I’ve had many times. Someone will ask me, “When can I retire.” […]
Medicare’s Dumping a Program That Works
Though the federal government’s various medical payment programs are regimented and uniform, they do allow various pilot or test programs. The pilot programs start small and sometimes expand when they really work. Yet, here’s a report that Medicare is phasing out a pilot program that has fantastic results. The program is directed at people with […]
