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Ignoring Data is Harmful to Your Wealth
Tweet Share on Facebook June 30, 2011 CommentEvery day most investors listen to the advice of their brokers or advisers. Often the advice they receive is to move their funds from one mutual fund to another, based on the poor past performance of their current fund manager and the stellar performance of the recommended investment.
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Making Retirement Plans Can Motivate You to Save
Tweet Share on Facebook June 29, 2011 CommentJoe Bomar, 51, of San Francisco, Calif., has a clear vision of what retirement will mean for him. He has also calculated exactly how much he needs to save to achieve his retirement goals. Here are six things on his retirement planning checklist.
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Overcoming Overcommitment in Retirement
Tweet Share on Facebook June 29, 2011 CommentA few months after I retired, my sister-in-law asked me whether I ever got bored with retirement. She was concerned that when she retired she would be bored, which was surprising to me because she enjoys many interests outside of work. So we talked about it a little, and it turns out that her real worry was that she would become lazy in retirement. While I’m sure there are people who experience boredom or even laziness, what I hear most frequently from retirees is that they are so busy they don’t know how they ever had time to work. In fact, a lot of folks are finding themselves too busy in retirement. They find they are overcommitted.
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If You Aren’t Comfortable, Don’t Invest
Tweet Share on Facebook June 28, 2011 CommentWhen I was 18, my father helped me open an IRA at a local credit union. I didn’t know much about investing and I chose to invest in a CD. This probably wasn’t the right investment for my age or investment needs, but it was a start.
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9 Ways to Learn a New Language in Retirement
Tweet Share on Facebook June 27, 2011 Comment (3)You could retire many places overseas and, at least in particular cities and regions, get by without learning to speak the local language. In Ireland and Belize, for example, everyone speaks English. And in Paris, Panama City, Buenos Aires, and Istria, many of the locals speak enough English so that you could survive without making any real effort to communicate in their lingo.
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4 Unusual Places to Stash Retirement Funds
Tweet Share on Facebook June 24, 2011 CommentMany of us are looking for places to invest or at least preserve extra money for retirement. Conventional retirement accounts such as IRAs and 401(k)s aren’t your only retirement savings options. Here are four savings vehicles that offer something unique to the retirement saver.
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How to Decide Between a Traditional or Roth IRA
Tweet Share on Facebook June 24, 2011 CommentBoth traditional and Roth IRAs are excellent places to keep your retirement investments. But you must make a choice about whether you want to pay income tax on your retirement savings upfront while you are working or defer income tax until retirement. Here is how to decide which type of retirement account you should use.
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A Simple Way to Add $100,000 to Your 401(k)
Tweet Share on Facebook June 23, 2011 CommentThe 401(k) plan you have is most likely geared to serve the interests of the brokers or insurance companies who advise the plan. The primary beneficiaries are the mutual fund families whose funds populate the plan. Your concern with saving enough so that you can retire with dignity comes last—if at all.
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7 Retirement Planning Mistakes to Avoid
Tweet Share on Facebook June 22, 2011 CommentDeciding to make a plan for retirement is a great first step. But there are no guarantees that your saving and investment strategy will lead to a secure retirement. Once you start your plan, make sure you take care to avoid these seven retirement mistakes.
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The Only Investment You Will Ever Need
Tweet Share on Facebook June 21, 2011 CommentThe Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto is famous for creating what is now known as the Pareto Principle, or the 80-20 rule. Pareto discovered that 80 percent of the land and wealth in his country was owned by 20 percent of the population. Subsequent research showed similar land and wealth distributions in other countries and proved the concept could be applied to other topics. The Pareto principle is a popular concept in management and economics, and can even be applied to personal finance. Applying the Pareto Principle to our financial planning can help the approximately 80 percent of the population who are beginning to intermediate investors and don’t have the time or desire to devote to managing an investment portfolio full-time to gain the most results with the least amount of effort.
