401(k) fees and disclosure, fiduciary rules, mutual funds, Social Security, retirement planning.
171 articles · page 1 of 9
This is Part III of a three-part series on how homeownership can increase retirement wealth Owning a home offers distinct tax advantages, especially by reducing tax payments through deductions for mortgage interest, property taxes, and financing costs. The most significant deduction often comes from making interest payments on either a primary or secondary residence.
This is Part I of a three-part series on the importance of owning real estate to create wealth. Homeownership is considered the best engine to create long-term wealth. Today, housing is the most valuable financial asset for American families, especially homeowners approaching retirement (usually ages 55–64). Owning a home is considered the cornerstone of the…
The retirement crisis was never designed to end under the monopoly capitalist system. Financially unstable workers are good for political management. For nearly 50 years, I have written about retirement. It is not a glamorous subject in financial journalism, and many financial and investment reporters prefer to cover leveraged-derivatives stars and quant traders using secretive,…
By Amy Collett When you’ve spent your entire adult life diagnosing others, it’s easy to forget that you, too, will one day step out of the exam room for good. Retirement has a different process for doctors. It’s not just a question of stepping away from a paycheck, but of winding down a purpose, a…
“How much can I charge thee? Let me count the ways.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning When Browning wrote these words, the mutual fund business asked: “How much can I charge thee? Let me count the ways.” Many intelligent people in the mutual fund business spend much of their workday devising fees and undisclosed schemes to separate…
If you are thinking about retiring in Florida, think again. Florida is over-crowded, suffers from changes in global warming, has a reactionary state government focused more on anti-WOKE issues than good government, is the nation’s fraud capital, and has a shaky real estate market that is very localized and socially fragmented. Towns and cities in…
Knowing the allocations and return differences between stocks and bonds is essential for investors with large portfolios who want maximum diversification. This is the basis, but how do you measure the differences? It’s done by measuring the equity risk premium. This measures the long-term market relationship between the historical expected return difference between stocks and…
In a recent article in Bloomberg by Allison Schrager, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a senior executive at a large asset-management firm told her, “with surprising candor: “We don’t know how to solve the retirement problem.” Such honesty is rare in the investment industry, but it’s unsurprising. The senior executive doesn’t know the solution to…
Economic factors are expected to buffet financial wellness programs, but how do they work in an age of misinformation, distrust, and political gridlock? Recent reports show they don’t. These deficiencies are not new. Financial literacy among Americans has remained poor for decades, and there are no signs this is reversing. Financial literacy programs have been…
ETFs, also known as Exchange Traded Funds, are the most popular and investor-friendly investment inventions of the past century. ETFs are now a $7 trillion market and offer a wide variety of exposures to all market sectors, equity and bond styles, indexes, and specific categories of investments, such as ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) funds. Basically,…
Republican leaders, echoing the goals of their corporate donors, are planning to cut Social Security. Republican leaders “have embraced plans to reduce federal spending on Social Security and Medicare, including cutting benefits for some retirees and raising the retirement age for both safety net programs,” according to the New York Times.
The US Supreme Court ruled on Jan. 24, 2022, that investors can sue employers and managers if they charge excessive mutual fund management fees. In the 8-0 decision in the case, Hughes v. Northwestern University, the conservative-leaning Supreme Court found that “401(k) plan participants could continue to take legal action against employers…
What happens when the chairman of a publicly-traded corporation is accused of insider trading? Even worse, what happens when this top executive is the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, the symbol of American capitalism, and the world’s best well-known stock exchange? That’s the huge problem facing the NYSE now and the exchange’s response…
Michael Flynn betrayed the military and the political system when he met with foreign leaders as part of the Trump campaign. He lied to investigators and the vice president. Then, Trump rewarded him.
Despite a rising stock market, most people are still facing an uncertain retirement future. Every day, an estimated 10,000 Baby Boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) enter retirement at age 65, according to the Pew Research Center. These are exiting the workforce and will now have to test whether their lifelong savings disciples worked…
So you’re in your 50s, and retirement looks closer every day. But while you were saving for retirement, you’re now worried that you don’t have the amount of money you wanted and that maybe you need to re-think your investment strategy. While you may feel panicked, don’t make the situation worse by making some common…
While retirement planning for Millennials and Gen Y is expected to be more complicated than it was for earlier generations, there are some basic strategies to follow that can make it easier to boost retirement savings. Here is your comprehensive checklist to follow to get more traction for your retirement planning. Like other generations,…
Revoking a pension after being vested after years of work is the main reason many people go to work every day.
This is the first of a two-part series on how the combined impact of the COVID virus and corporate giveaways on state unfunded pension liabilities and how it will only make a serious underfunding problem more critical and possibly insurmountable. This may mean that state pensions are phased out and…
The IRS has announced its 2020 inflation-adjusted, annual contribution limits on retirement-related accounts and funds for self-employed and workers participating in employer-sponsored plans. Among the most notable changes 2020 are: 401(k) contribution limits are up; traditional IRA contribution limits stay the same; almost all the other numbers are up.
