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Don’t Gamble With Your Retirement
(Main Content/blog)
... years than they wanted to. And the older you are, the worse it is to have a gambler's mindset, because there's less time to recover losses. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Samuelson said: "Investing ...
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Good News: Rolling College Savings Balances Into IRAs
(Main Content/blog)
... with the same beneficiary over their lifetime. The catch is that it has to be done in increments; the annual rollover limit is the same as the yearly IRA contribution limit. For 2024 it's $7,000. Starting ...
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How to Invest This Election Year
(Main Content/blog)
Investors often worry about poor stock returns during election years, and that's not surprising, given the idea that markets dislike uncertainty. But while election years are often volatile, the truth ...
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How to Protect Your Heirs from Strict New IRA Rules
(Main Content/blog)
... in 2019 and taking effect in 2020, the SECURE Act, was aimed at boosting retirement savings—a worthy goal at a time when too few people are saving enough for their later years. But it also killed what ...
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Tax-Loss Selling is Losing its Luster
(Main Content/blog)
The end of the year is in sight, and soon countless investors will start selling losing stocks in order to gain tax writeoffs. The practice, known as tax-loss harvesting or tax-loss selling, is extremely ...
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We're Not Out of the Woods
(Main Content/blog)
... S&P 500 index has risen in the fourth quarter 80% of the time. And they point to recent indications from the Federal Reserve, which has raised interest rates from nothing to 5.5% over the past year ...
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The Big Question: When Can I Retire?
(Main Content/blog)
... by age 30, three times by 40, and so on. Vanguard recommends saving 12% to 15% of your pay each year. T. Rowe Price says you should have as much as 11 times your salary saved by the time you’re 60. ...
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How to Fix Your Retirement Savings
(Main Content/blog)
... throw you expensive curveballs, like health crises and divorce. Before you know it, you're 40 or 50 years old and you're not on track to retire when you'd hoped to. Often, the real reason people end ...
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Why You Should Be Invested Right Now
(Main Content/blog)
There's lots of volatility in the market right now. Since the beginning of the year, the S&P 500 index has risen 9.3%, then fallen 7.8%, only to rise another 14.8%. Since mid-June, it's fallen 1.2%. ...
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Here’s Why I’m a “No” on Annuities
(Main Content/blog)
Annuities are more popular than ever: Last year, buyers put a record $310.6 billion into the hybrid insurance and investment products, and sales are still going strong. Fixed-rate annuities, which guarantee ...
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“Sell in May Go Away” is Not the Way
(Main Content/blog)
... earnings are Ford Motor, Alphabet and Meta. Inflation may have been a problem for many companies a year ago, when it really started to spike. But if you've bought anything at all since then, you know ...
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Take the Long View, Ignore the Scary Headlines
(Main Content/blog)
... that seems less and less likely. Recession? Investors and business leaders have been predicting a recession since early last year and it hasn't happened yet. If it does, there are indications that it may ...
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Improving Bond Yields and the Case for Rebalancing
(Main Content/blog)
Owning bonds hasn't been very attractive for the past few years, and 2022 was the low point. A cross-section of bonds, as represented by the Bloomberg Aggregate Bond Index, registered a 15% loss in 2022. ...
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How to Get Back into the Market
(Main Content/blog)
Last year was a tough one for investors, with stocks and bonds both experiencing bear markets. Now, with markets off to a promising start in 2023, many investors are focused on figuring out which stocks ...
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Five Predictions for 2023
(Main Content/blog)
This past year has been one to forget—a bear market for stocks, the worst year ever for bonds, and raging inflation and rising interest rates to top it off. Will 2023 be better? While no one can predict ...
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Putting the Market’s Drama in Context
(Main Content/blog)
... really take stock of what they own every year, but because of the way the market soared between the Spring of 2020 and the end of 2021, many have neglected to do that. Keeping your investments on autopilot, ...
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Fighting Temptation in a Volatile Market
(Main Content/blog)
The 13-year period through early 2022 was a very lucrative one for investors, with stocks, as measured by the S&P 500 index, returning more than 400% over that time. But since the market's high on ...
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Understanding the Fed’s Rate Hikes and the Market
(Main Content/blog)
... consumer prices up 8.3% from a year earlier, worse than the forecast of 8.1%. Inflation didn't jump by 9.1% or 8.5% as it had in the prior two months, but the result it was disappointing given that gasoline ...
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Better Inflation News Spells Opportunity
(Main Content/blog)
... month. Make no mistake, 8.5% inflation is very bad for consumers. Our grocery bills are 8.5% higher than they were a year ago. But for investors, what counts is the direction of inflation. While the ...
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Is the Next Stock Market Catalyst Taking Shape?
(Main Content/blog)
... of good news: Consumer prices rose more than 9% on an annualized basis in June, the worst reading in 41 years. But something interesting is happening. While the official data are still ...