What Do You Pay Your Investment Advisor To Do?

What Do You Pay Your Investment Advisor To Do?

Are you paying your broker or the manager of your actively-managed mutual fund to generate a higher return for you than you think you can get from lower-cost passively-managed index funds?  According to Larry Swedroe and Andrew Berkin, authors of a new book entitled “The Incredible Shrinking Alpha,” you’re wasting your money. The term alpha…
Read more

One Way To Choose Between Mutual Funds

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a magical way to invest the cash in your IRA or 401(k) and know the return you will get in advance? When it comes to equities, returns are extremely difficult to predict. That’s because returns on stocks or stock funds can vary widely from year to year. If…
Read more

Five Tips on Supporting Your Boomerang Child

The Pew Research Center found that some 36% of all 18 to 31-year-olds were living at home with their parents in 2012.  As the parent of one such child I fully understand what life is like under those circumstances.  I want to offer a few financial planning tips to those of you who are in…
Read more

Think Stocks Are Volatile? Look At REITs!

Equities are among the most growth-oriented investment assets from which you can choose.   Almost all well-diversified portfolios include some degree of investment in stocks of one kind or another.  What is less well-known is that there’s another asset class that has experienced explosive growth since 2009: publicly traded real estate investment trusts, or equity REITS. …
Read more

Do You Really Know Your Investment Returns?

This blog is all about math.  No, wait, don’t leave.  It’s really about making sure you understand how to properly calculate the returns you get from your investments.  Because if you’re not getting the return you expect, you might be putting your future goals at risk. Most everybody is probably familiar with the concept of…
Read more

How Safe Is Your IRA?

No, this blog is not about how the custodian holding your IRA investments protects itself against hackers.  Rather it’s about the legal protection your account offers against creditors.  Although most of you probably will never have to deal with irate business creditors, keep in mind that should you end up being among the large minority…
Read more