The “Great Recession” may have not been officially declared over just yet, but things we’re seeing in the financial world are showing that we’re regaining momentum, or at least solid ground in the markets. We’ve seen the stock market gain more than 60% since the low a year ago, which is remarkable even though we’re [...]
Posts under ‘newsletter’
Understanding the 2010 Estate Tax Repeal
The start of a new year often signals a time for change–especially when it comes to taxes, and 2010 has brought some major changes. As of January 1, the federal estate and generation-skipping transfer (GST) taxes are repealed, and the step-up in basis rule is modified for 2010. While it’s possible (and some believe very [...]
Bonds and Bond Funds
There is a question that often comes up when discussing investment strategies, especially for an astute investor who has done some research on various kinds of investments. Specifically the question often is: why would we choose a bond fund or a bond index fund versus purchasing a specific bond (or several bonds)?
Bonds in General
To answer [...]
Financial Recordkeeping – How Long Do I Keep This??
I often get the question – how long should I keep my _________ (fill in the blank)? So I thought I’d put together a list of the most common types of documents with some guidelines as to how long you should keep those documents. I’ll try to keep this as simple as possible – but [...]
What Can a Broker Do For You?
You have choices when it comes to investing. You can go directly to a mutual fund company (such as Vanguard or T. Rowe Price) and choose investments yourself, or you can use a fee-only financial advisor to assist you in choosing investments. But by far the most common method is to work with a broker. [...]
Facing the Possibility of Incapacity
Incapacity means that you are either mentally or physically unable to take care of yourself or your day-to-day affairs. Incapacity can result from serious physical injury, mental or physical illness, mental retardation, advancing age, and alcohol or drug abuse.
Incapacity can strike anyone at anytime
Even with today’s medical miracles, it’s [...]
Why We Use Timber in an Investment Portfolio
Continuing with the series we started some months ago, today we’ll talk about why Timber is a viable and important asset class to include in your portfolio. If you’ll recall, in previous discussions we talked about Real Estate as an asset class, and then we discussed the merits of Commodities as a broad asset class [...]
Why is Index Investing a “No Brainer”?
For those of you who have read much of my writing on the subject, you’ll recall that I always recommend working with index investments when we have them available. In this article I will do my best to help you understand some of the reasons why I make that recommendation.
What is Index Investing?
In order to [...]
Why We Use Commodities in Investment Portfolios
Continuing the theme we used last month, that of exploring the components of a properly-diversified portfolio, we now turn to Commodities.
What Are Commodities?
First of all, let’s talk about the nuts and bolts of commodities as an investment. These are among the oldest type of investments in our financial marketplace, and the trade of commodities grew out of the [...]
Why We Include Real Estate in Investment Portfolios
We construct portfolios out of various asset types in order to diversify, or spread out our risk associated with any one asset type. Most often these asset types include equities (stocks) and fixed income (bonds), which provide for basic diversification. Quite often we include additional asset types in order to achieve further diversification. Examples of [...]
