As retirees get older, it's common to shift a greater percentage of investment funds from stocks to bonds. This has been traditional wisdom for decades. Traditional wisdom may not be the best option right now. The last several decades have seen a bull market for bonds. They have been an effective safe haven when the stock market has gotten volatile and risky. But one thing has changed… the direction of interest rates. Bonds and interest rates run inversely to each … [Read more...]
The Worst States to Retire In US
I read the following article this last week. I thought it was interesting and I thought that you might be interested in the results for California which I'll reproduce below: … [Read more...]
What is a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT)?
Some investors value real estate as an asset class. One of the positives of the use of real estate is that it is not highly correlated to the stock market and can be used as the source of diversification inside of a portfolio. Other investors prefer physical properties as a way to invest in the real estate asset class. Using a single property to invest in the real estate asset class does have some drawbacks, which include being concentrated in a single property or geographic location … [Read more...]
Ready for Retirement?
Today, I was thinking about the retirement planning process that I take my clients through. I spent time thinking about each step that is important to plan for in order to have a successful blueprint. These stages include understanding how much retirement expenses will be, how to create reliability of income in retirement, how to deal with uncertainty of healthcare expenses and market risk, to name a few. … [Read more...]
Make Sure to Test Your Retirement Plan Against These Two Risks
Whenever we help a prospective client test their current plan for success, we also make sure to test two potential risks as well. The first tests a retirement plan in the event of a premature death of the spouse and loss of pension or Social Security income associated with that spouse. If the loss of this income is not sufficiently offset by the reduction of the expenses of the surviving spouse, it will cause an increase in the required distributions from investments to maintain the lifestyle … [Read more...]
