How to Ease Out of the Market

How to Ease Out of the Market

This is a companion blog to the one I wrote previously on using dollar cost averaging (DCA) as a way to slowly buy into the market to avoid the risk of investing a large amount of cash at a market peak. That approach works when you are in the accumulation phase of your life (the…
Read more

How to Ease Into the Market

Have you ever been in a situation where you found yourself with a large amount of cash to invest? Perhaps it was from an inheritance, or from a bonus at work.  Or maybe you actually won a lottery!  In any case, how did you go about investing the money?  Did you identify some number of…
Read more

Does Stock Market Volatility Worry You?

The recent volatility in worldwide stock markets reminds us that stock and mutual fund prices can and do fluctuate frequently and sometimes wildly. Indeed, coming on the heels of one of the best years for investing in several generations (2013), the market’s recent gyrations appear that much more unexpected and severe.  The fact is that…
Read more

Three Reasons for Retiree Life Insurance

As is probably well-understood, one of the most valuable benefits of life insurance is income replacement should the breadwinner(s) in a family unexpectedly pass away. For this reason alone, just about everyone supporting a family should have some amount and some type of life insurance during their working years.  It’s less clear, however, whether or…
Read more

How to Diversify Your Company Pension

If your company pension plan (assuming you work for a company that still has one) supports a lump-sum distribution when you retire, you will be faced with the decision whether to roll over the pension into an IRA or whether to take it as an annuity (i.e. as guaranteed income for life). What many people…
Read more

How to Avoid the Next Financial Emergency

At a speech in Washington a few weeks ago Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen declared that a large number of American families are “extraordinarily vulnerable” to financial setbacks because they have few assets to fall back on.  To them, a financial crisis is a month or two without a paycheck.  By contrast, she went on…
Read more