Don’t Ask Your Portfolio To Do More Than It Is Designed To Do.

Some people want more from their investment portfolios than gains and income. Like other major arenas in life—some load more baggage onto a portfolio than it is designed to carry. Making more money guarantees nothing except it will make a person wealthier. An unhappy person will be an unhappy investor. Assuming grinding poverty is not…

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Stressed Out Over the Market? Get a Measure of Your Tolerance for Risk.

NOTE: Risk tolerance is key to the design of any retirement plan. In earlier postings, readers were asked to complete the Flexible Retirement Planner (FRP) to find out how well their funds would hold up over their life expectancy, especially in supplementing their retirement incomes. Reading previous postings is important to understanding this article. Putting…

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Tolerance and the Ship of State

Matthew and Shirley Wirth throw a hell of a bash for all of the guests on the Fourth of July in Deadly Portfolio: A Killing in Hedge Funds. At an actual dinner party recently, the subject of the proposed Muslim Center for lower Manhattan came up. Our hostess was outspoken. “They are just shoving our…

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How Much Should the Middle-Income Household Risk in the Market?

Middle-income families often do not have the resources to employ financial advisors. Yahoo Finance states that middle-income households have an average of approximately $110,000 set aside for their retired years. Financial advisors and brokers at major firms like Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and UBS Paine Webber are looking for mega buck accounts—accounts with $250,000 or…

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So We Have a Deal. Now What?

The news for the last several days, of course, has been all about the debt ceiling and the debate in Congress about raising it and cutting expenditures. So much has been written and broadcast about the subject that I don’t feel it serves much purpose for me to rehash things here. Thanks to all of…

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