I attended an investment sales seminar this week where the speaker tried to persuade the audience to take his approach to retirement investing. It involved something most of the audience had never heard of. Pitched as a “7702 Plan,” it was actually a life-insurance policy, a twist on the more standard annuity-sales pitch …
When it comes to mutual funds, investors have always gotten what they didn’t pay for. Now that they aren’t paying much, they need to decide if the money they’re spending is worth the results they’re getting. Morningstar Inc. recently released its latest fund-fee study, which showed that what investors paid to own …
The recent furor between personal finance icon Suze Orman and members of the FI/RE movement shows a significant gap in the language all savers, investors and retirees are using. Fixing the problem means coming up with new definitions for common terms. FI/RE stands for “financial independence/retire early” and its proponents tend to …
Marty in East Weymouth, Mass., asked recently if I would tackle what he considered an “oddball question.” His problem is one everyone might wish for: Too much cash. “I have a lot of cash and not much in investments,” he said. “I don’t have much faith that I will be in the …
Over breakfast one summer morning in the late 1990s, I asked Vanguard Group founder Jack Bogle – creator of the index fund and staunch believer in passive investing – what he would say to anyone who suggested that frothy times had made it “a stock-picker’s market.” I can’t recall Bogle’s exact answer, but …
Steven S. in Sylvania, Ohio just hit one of his lifetime savings goals, and now he’s freaking out. You’d think it would be a big celebration, reaching a big round savings number ahead of the rule-of-thumb schedules for being able to retire comfortably. Instead, Steven’s freak-out is that he’s worried about breaking …
The buzz around Jeopardy! superstar James Holzhauer was so big that I had to tune in to a game show I hadn’t seen in years. Holzhauer had purportedly “broken” the game – now in its 35th year – by turning traditional strategy on its ear; the winning did not slow down as the …
The market has been on a decade-long bull run, the proverbial environment for a blind monkey throwing darts to build a good portfolio. And yet, according to recent research, a high number of clients working with financial planners might prefer a blind monkey to the adviser they have. It’s a shocking indictment …
You missed out on hearing the smart people talking the latest in money-management at the Morningstar Investment Conference in Chicago last week, but you’re no worse off for staying away from the cutting edge in investment ideas. That conclusion was unavoidable as I attended Morningstar’s three-day fund-fest in Chicago last week for the …
The only question left for manager David Winters when it was announced recently that he will close his Wintergreen Fund was “What took you so long?” The fund is dead last in its Morningstar Inc. asset category over the last three and five years, but also the last three months. It is within …
