According to Consumer Reports some 70% of retirees’ net wealth is locked up in their homes. Given that, you’d think that reverse mortgages would be a very popular solution for tapping into all that wealth. Yet prior to 2012, the cost, complexity, and even stigma of utilizing a reverse mortgage have made it the choice…
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Annuities have been getting some bad press in the financial planning community. Financial planners tend to denigrate them due to their cost – “They have way too many fees, many of them hidden” – or due to the fact that they are not hedged against inflation, effectively reducing their usefulness at exactly the time (later…
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Investment companies and the financial media generally spend most of their time focused on returns and other benefits of the various investment opportunities they recommend. Yet when it comes to communicating the risks associated with those investments, the industry is a lot less forthcoming, according to Larry Doyle, author of the book In Bed with…
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Have you ever wondered how Standard & Poor’s selects the companies whose stocks go into the S&P 500 index? They utilize a methodology called capitalization weighting (cap weighting for short), in which inclusion is based on a company’s market capitalization. That’s a fancy term for how much investors value the company, and it is calculated…
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Yes, you do. How’s that for a succinct answer? But in case you don’t know what an Investment Policy Statement (IPS) is, or how it’s utilized, here’s a brief explanation. An IPS is a written document that basically describes how an investor’s money is to be managed/invested. Every publicly-traded mutual fund and ETF is required…
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If you’re a high net worth individual or family, chances are your estate planning strategy has focused on finding ways to exclude assets from your estate in order to minimize estate transfer taxes after you pass away. Gifting low-basis property while alive together with the use of bypass trusts after death are common ways to…
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