Visualize your future self when planning for retirement
A concept called “self-continuity” can have an impact on personal financial decisions. What is it, exactly? It’s a measure of how our lives in the future may change from the lives we lead today. High...
View ArticleWhy are investors complacent with stock prices so high compared to earnings?
While Bay Area traffic congestion is up 60 percent over the past four years, it is the price we pay for floating on the rising tide of this vibrant economy. Thanks to the performance of major local...
View ArticleHedging your bets through diversified investments
When I’m not reading magazines in the supermarket checkout line, I tend toward trade journals like “Pensions & Investments” — a font of juicy industry gossip of interest to people in my business. I...
View ArticleGridlocked in D.C.? ACA repeal shot down, tax reform looking shaky
The PBS documentary on the war in Vietnam offers a compelling look at how American policymakers, by their own admission, struggled to extricate themselves and America from what they conceded was a...
View ArticleHow a Bay Area man’s trade signaled an end to the ’87 crash; ETFs vs. mutual...
Thirty years ago this month, the stock market experienced a single-day plunge equivalent to a 5,100-point drop in today’s Dow Jones Industrial Average. It amounted to a 22 percent drop in value, the...
View ArticleCost-effective transfer of retirement savings to beneficiaries is a tricky...
National Retirement Security Week came and went last week without making much of a peep. The objective was to raise awareness of retirement issues and call attention to financial education and...
View ArticleHow could the feds slashing your tax-free 401(k) contribution cap affect you?
As Republicans on Capitol Hill hammer out a tax reform bill, one controversial proposal would slash the annual amount Americans can sock away into 401(k) plans without being taxed until they retire. Do...
View ArticleNot for the faint-hearted: Wild, potentially lucrative stock market ‘snap-backs’
One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons depicted a fortune teller looking into a crystal ball. To her customer, beside whom a Labrador retriever sat with a baleful look, the woman predicted, “I see a...
View ArticleHornets’ nest: How the Republican tax-reform bill could affect middle-class...
When I was about 8 years old, I thought it would be interesting to throw rocks at a hornets’ nest to see what would happen. The result was a wall of hornets that hit me in the face. My head swelled up...
View Article“Where are all the customers’ yachts?” The trouble with TIAA investment products
The investment business is offering yet another example prompting us to ask, “Where are the customers’ yachts?” This is a reference to the famous question asked by a brokerage firm customer when he was...
View ArticleGOP tax plan could hurt homeowners, banks, real estate sector
With all the discussion about the Republican tax reform efforts, I have yet to hear any concerns about how the increased tax on mortgage interest and property taxes might affect current property...
View ArticleWhy the cost of running our government is worth every penny
French citizen Alexis de Tocqueville wrote the book “Democracy in America” back in 1835. To this day, it is still considered the best book describing the American political system and its social...
View Article2017 brought good tidings for the economy, but what lies ahead?
The Disney character Uncle Scrooge McDuck must be happily swimming around in his money bin these days thanks to our economy in its record eighth year of expansion. While there is plenty to be anxious...
View ArticleAdvice for young adults on investing for a life of abundance
A golden opportunity awaits children who are home for the holidays. Parents can’t help it. Their unsolicited advice just comes flooding out — like a dam has broken. Enter “Steve Butler — Retirement...
View ArticleEroding fraud prevention in U.S. government is detrimental
Forty years ago, I owned an interest in a local bar that immediately showed indications of getting ripped off by the manager and employees. I hired a moonlighting IRS agent whose day job involved...
View ArticleBeefing up your retirement plan might help you avoid a tax-reform hit
If they can avoid the stigma of being categorized as exempt, business owners’ treatment of so-called pass-through income offered by the new tax bill creates a yawning window of opportunity to lop 20...
View ArticleHow “selling too soon and never buying at the bottom” might actually make sense
J.P. Morgan once opined, “I made my money by selling too soon and never buying at the bottom.” Other financial titans from Baron von Rothschild to Bernard Baruch have made similar statements — not to...
View ArticleBalanced fund investing: Only half the freak out during a stock market slide
Any time the stock market reaches all-time highs, the contributing factors are varied and their influences are impossible to measure. What we do know is that American companies for several years now...
View ArticleWhy Vanguard’s mutual funds may get a little more expensive
Since its founding in 1974, the Vanguard mutual fund organization has driven the financial services industry nuts. Run as a giant cooperative, effectively owned by its investors, the firm has...
View ArticleAfter first ‘Black Monday’ of 2018, event-risk cloud looms on the horizon
On this year’s first “Black Monday,” I happened to be busy all day and was oblivious to what was happening in the stock market. I had other reasons to bring up my accounts late in the day and was...
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