Tag: "investments"

Baby Boomers vs. Generation Y

The Insured Retirement Institute released a survey this week (described on the Wall Street Journal’s Smart Money blog) about the state of baby boomer retirement.  It is indeed a sad state, but nothing new to report.  As previous surveys have indicated, they are simply not ready: 35 percent of 50 to 66 year olds expect to retire after age [...]

Apr 05, 2012 | 3 comments | by

Will You Live Past 90?

The latest Census data show that more people are living to age 90, according to Healthday.  In fact the 90-and-beyond crowd has tripled since 1980, to 1.9 million people today.  Most are women (75 percent), and many live alone but are not necessarily independent and healthy.   The average income for people aged 90 and older [...]

Nov 18, 2011 | 3 comments | by

The Rest of the Retirement Story

Another sobering article about retirement, or lack thereof:  Households that expected to find retirement just around the corner will have to work longer.  The main reason?  Debt, debt, and more debt:  mortgages, home equity loans, kids’ college expenses and credit card debts are saddling 60- to 64-year-old households who expected their retirement-age years to be [...]

Sep 09, 2011 | 7 comments | by

Walk….Don’t Run When the Financial Markets Speak

One of the most important things to remember in an emergency is to remain calm.  Panic tends to cloud a person’s rational thinking and judgment.  In every situation, panic can create more problems than it solves.  It does two things:  1) It causes us to misunderstand the ramifications of the problem we are trying to [...]

Aug 10, 2011 | 1 comment | by

Pension Funds: What Not to Do

A word to the states and the people:  ignore what the federal government is doing in terms of how to manage a budget.  Among the dire predictions about the solvency of state and local employee pension funds (see our NCPA study on this topic), Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner recently announced that unless the debt ceiling was [...]

May 20, 2011 | 1 comment | by

The Case for Private Accounts

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Martin Feldstein makes the argument for private accounts as an alternative to Social Security.  I enjoy reading articles like Feldstein’s because they use simple math to compare the rate of return on Social Security benefits to the rate of return on rather conservative market investments.  And the math doesn’t lie. For [...]

May 03, 2011 | 5 comments | by

Government in the Annuity Business?

I ran across an article in the New York Times op-ed section two weeks ago, “Paying for Old Age,” by Henry T.C. Hu and Terrance Odean.  Hu and Odean have come up with a novel idea that would allow people to retire with a steady stream of income without fear of outliving their money.  If [...]

Mar 07, 2011 | 1 comment | by

Marketing retirement to whom?

As I watched the Superbowl commercials almost two weeks ago, I came to the decision that I needed to write about an issue that has bothered me for months now:  commercials for retirement planning. 

Feb 11, 2011 | 7 comments | by

Mixing Social Responsibility with Investment Responsibility

Today, the Wall Street Journal reported that socially responsible funds are back, riding the wave of the demand for emerging market funds (see Erin McCarthy, “Socially Responsible Funds Take on Emerging Markets“).  Socially responsible funds (or SRIs, as they are commonly called) are comprised of companies that are screened for social responsibility in the area of political, religious or [...]

Jan 14, 2011 | 1 comment | by

Running with the Bulls

Nearly two years ago, I received a call from a former college friend of mine.  This was about the time the market was starting to recover from its drastic downturn in the fall of 2008, leaving many investors shaking their heads, selling off and vowing never to return to the Dow Jones again.  During the [...]

Jan 04, 2011 | 3 comments | by
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