The 401k retirement savings account offered by employers has become ubiquitous over the last 30 years. But some retirement planning experts predict that 401ks will be overtaken by a new form of retirement savings in the future. The reason is simple: the accounts don’t help lower income employees who lack the ability to save for retirement, and they put each […]
Month: May 2012
Investors are sitting on wads of cash just at the wrong time
The latest consumer inflation rate was clocked at 2.3 percent in April. Sounds pretty benign, doesn’t it? Well it isn’t if you are keeping large sums of money in the bank at today’s interest rates. In fact, “safe” money in the bank is being subject to erosion just as surely as any stock market decline might affect your investment portfolio. […]
Stocks are scary to own, but they are your best inflation fighters
Individual investors have fled the stock market in droves ever since the great bear market of 2008. The latest statistics show investors selling more stock mutual funds than they buy and putting much of the proceeds into bond funds. Meanwhile market volatility has increased again as another round of scary financial headlines from Europe have pushed prices down sharply in […]
2012 NAPFA National Conference Highlights
I am just flying home from Chicago, where I had the opportunity to spend the past week with my fee-only advisor colleagues at the 2012 NAPFA National Conference. I had a great time and learned a lot too. Here are some of the highlights: William Strauss, senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said that while “growth of […]
