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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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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Financial Advisor or Stockbroker. A Brief History.

In a recent interview, I was asked whether the 30 basis points charged against Mac McAllister’s $18,900,000 account in Deadly Portfolio: A Killing in Hedge Funds was realistic. 30 basis points is three-tenths of a percent, or $56,700 each year for managing the account. An $18,900,000 account is not 18.9 times more work to manage…

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Social Security and What’s in the Boat

Matthew Wirth describes what the financial side of retirement is like in Deadly Portfolio: A Killing in Hedge Funds. Matthew tells his wife, “No more income . . . just social security for the rest of our lives. We need to live on what we’ve saved. Like pushing off from the dock. We’ll need to…

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