Retirement Watch Weekly
Looking for a Part-Time Job in Retirement?
Many people report that they don’t really want to retire, but they’d like to stay active with some kind of work or they need the additional money.The condition of the job market makes it difficult for many retirees or near-retirees to find the part-time job they’d like. Here’s one suggestion. Consider signing up as an […]
Causes of the Financial Crisis Summarized
There’s an ongoing debate among politically-motivated people about the causes of the bubble and ensuing financial crisis. I’ve long believed that the best summary and explanation is this brief e-book from Russell Roberts of the Mercatus Center. Roberts, being an economist, focuses on incentives. He talks about how various public policies gave people the wrong […]
The State of Retirement
Another survey of Americans in or near retirement has rolled out. This one is worth paying attention to because it’s not done by a financial services firm with an agenda to boost its business. Instead, the Society of Actuaries did another edition of a survey it’s been doing periodically for a while. The survey covers […]
Stocks Aren’t for the Long Run
Professor Robert Shiller of “irrational exuberance” fame is back making headlines, this time in an interview with Money magazine. Another of Shiller’s innovations is the Shiller P/E ratio. Instead of using forecasts of next year’s earnings, Shiller suggests using normalized earnings, which he defines as basically an average of the last 10 year’s earnings. That […]
Is a Target Date Fund for You?
The growing trend among mutual fund families and especially in 401(k) plans is the target date fund (TDF). These are asset allocation funds that assume the investors will reach retirement age at a certain year, hence the name Target Date. There’s an ongoing debate over whether the funds are good for investors. The idea is […]
The Search for Stock Market Patterns
It’s tough to identify the one mistake that is the worst or most common investors make. But my vote is the desire to identify patterns in the markets and use those to develop rules of investing. There are a few people who do this successfully. But they have very elaborate rules that take many factors […]
Good Strategy or a Contrarian Signal?
Large corporate pension funds have more of their portfolios invested in bonds than in equities for the first time in over a decade, according to pension consulting firm Milliman. Like individual investors, the pension funds don’t like what they see in stocks. There’s a lot of volatility and downside risk, and the positive potential isn’t […]
Student Loans in Retirement
Will your Social Security benefits be garnished to pay student loans? Apparently, that’s no unusual, according to a story in The Washington Post. The Federal Reserve, which tracks the details of household assets and liabilities, says Americans age 60 and over owe $36 billion on their student loans, and about 10% of that debt is […]
