I wanted to take a brief moment to remind our readers of a fundamental investing truth that tends to get overlooked, forgotten, or deliberately disregarded during times of market euphoria. Think about this. If you had a million dollars at the beginning of 2016 to invest and I said that over the year that there would be a Supreme Court vacancy, the Cubs would win the World Series, interest rates would rise, and Donald Trump would become president – would you invest that million dollars in the market? I would bet that many people would not. They would guess that 2016 would be a dismal year for market returns. Yet, in 2016 the Dow returns 13.4% and the S&P 500 returned 9.5%! With all of that uncertainty and the improbable happening, the market still had a great year of returns. Those who stayed invested were rewarded. Those who sold (say, […]
investing
After-Tax Investment Considerations
Some individuals have the ability to contribute after-tax amounts to their employer-sponsored plans such as a tax-deferred 401k or a defined benefit pension. Generally, since these amounts are after-tax, the contributions start adding up to a sizable amount known as basis. Basis is simply the amount of after-tax money put into these accounts that is not taxed when it’s withdrawn. However, any earnings on the basis are taxable. Individuals considering contributing after-tax amounts to the above plans may also consider if it makes sense to contribute to a non-qualified brokerage account. Like the aforementioned employer-sponsored plans, contributions to a non-qualified brokerage account are made with after-tax dollars, thus they can build a sizable basis – which is not taxed when withdrawn. Also, like the above employer-sponsored accounts, any earnings are subject to taxation. The major difference is in the way the earnings from the non-qualified account are taxed. Earnings on […]
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How to Make Your Saving Automatic
Sometimes it can be difficult to save for emergencies or for retirement. While physically not demanding, the mental strain can be a hump that is hard to get over. In other words, we experience a little bit of “pain” or mental anguish if we have to physically hand over money or write a check. So how can we overcome this anguish? Automate. First, determine how much you need for an emergency. This can either be to start the fund or to replenish amounts that have been used. Generally, it’s a good idea to have 3 to 6 months of non-discretionary expenses (expenses that don’t go away if you lose your job or become disabled) set aside in an FDIC insured bank account. Some individuals may find it more comforting to have 6 to 9 months or 9 to 12 months. It’s up to you. For retirement, I recommend saving 15 […]
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6 Year End Tips for a Financially Productive 2017
As 2016 comes to a close in a few weeks and we start into 2017, here are some good tips to consider to start 2017 off with some good strategies that will hopefully become habits. If you’re not doing so already, set up your payroll deductions to save the maximum to your 401k. There’s plenty of time to your payroll allocated so your deductions start coming out on the first paycheck in January. The 2017 maximum contributions are $18,000 for those under age 50 and $24,000 for those age 50 or older. To deduct the max, simply take the number of pay periods you have annually and divide it into your maximum contribution amount. This will allow you to save the maximum amount over 2017. Consider doing the same to maximize your IRA contribution. Those limits are $5,500 (under 50) and $6,500 (over 50) respectively. Check your allowances on your […]
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Tax-Loss Harvesting: It’s Never Too Late
Tax-loss harvesting is a tax move that can help with your income tax burden when you’ve experienced a loss with your investments. Briefly, this is where you have a taxable account, holding stocks, bonds, or mutual funds and the market declines leaving your holdings in a loss situation. Once you sell the holding, you have realized the loss, which enables you to take advantage of the tax laws and deduct those losses, first against any gains in your account(s), and then at a rate of $3,000 per year against ordinary income. This is similar to the famous move that Mr. Trump (and I would be shocked if Mrs. Clinton never took a loss against future taxes) used to avoid future income taxes. This was recently discovered in Trump’s tax records and made out to be a fatcat loophole – at least by the media – when actually anyone can take advantage of […]
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The Third Most Important Factor to Investing Success
Previously I wrote about the Most Important Factor and the Second Most Important Factor to Investing Success. Continuing this streak I’ll give you the third most important factor to investing success: Leave it alone. To recap: The most important factor is to continuously save and add to your nest egg over your career; the second factor is allocation – make sure you’re investing in a diversified allocation that will grow over time. The third most important factor to investing success: Once you’ve started investing, leave it alone. Resist the temptation to sell off the component of your allocation plan that’s lagging; the reason you have a diversified allocation is so that some pieces will lag while others flourish, and vice-versa. Reallocate your funds from time to time (once a year at most) to match your allocation plan, but that’s all the fussing you should do with your investments. Leave it […]
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Investing Your 401k – a 2-step plan
If you’re like most folks, when you look at a 401k plan’s options you’re completely overwhelmed. Where to start? Of course, the starting point is to sign up to participate – begin sending a bit of your paycheck over to the 401k plan. A good place to start on that is at least enough to get your employer’s matching funds, however much that might be. In this article though, we’re looking at investing your 401k money. It’s not as tough as you think. In fact, it can be done in just two steps – taking no more than 30-45 minutes of your time. Step 1 – Look at your options When you’ve signed up for the 401k plan, review your options for investing your 401k. Look at the list of investments available – and from here you can take a shortcut if you like. If your plan has a “target […]
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Should I Pay Off My Student Loans or Start Investing?
I had an interesting question come my way from a student the other day and I thought I’d expand on my answer that I gave to the student. The question was whether he should pay off his student loans and then start investing, or if he should start investing first and pay off the student loans gradually. If we really look at it, paying down any type of debt is very similar to making an investment in a guaranteed account paying interest on the equivalent of the interest rate on the debt. This student’s interest rate on his debt was approximately 7%. Paying this off would not be unwise and would be a great way to earn 7% risk free – only this method keeps the 7% out of the lender’s pocket and puts it into the borrower’s. However, if we completely ignore investing and saving for retirement we can […]
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What to do with an extra 1,000 dollars
I occasionally get this question – especially around the time of tax refunds. When someone comes up with an extra $1,000, they often want to know how to best use that money wisely to help out their overall financial condition. Of course this question has different answers for different situations. I’ll run through several different sets of conditions that a person might find him or herself in, and some suggestions for how you might use an extra $1,000 to best improve your financial standing. (It’s important to note that you don’t have to have an extra $1,000 lying around to use this advice – you could have an extra ten or twenty or fifty bucks a week and put it to work with the same principles.) The point is to find money that isn’t being spent on something critical, and put it to work for you! Even small steps amount to wonders. […]
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Maintaining Confidence in an Uncertain World
All around us, every day, we see signs of an unstable financial world. The stock market has been all over the place, instability continues in the Middle East (like it will ever change?); at home we’re confronted by a presidential election that offers little choice other than to hold your nose and vote for the one that you believe is likely to do the least damage. Add to this the rising cost of “getting by” and there’s little wonder many folks are very concerned and have little confidence about the future. What Can You Do? I don’t suggest hiding under your bed – this has never worked for me, and sometimes you find things there that you would rather not! On the other hand, there are few things that you can do to help get through this uncertainty, and maybe you’ll decide that it’s not so scary after all. For […]
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The Power of Compounding
Many individuals understand the power of compound interest. They understand that compound interest means money or interest earned on interest received. That is, if I earn 5 percent interest annually on one dollar, in one year I’ll have $1.05, but in two years, I’ll have $1.1025, not $1.10. Granted, this may not seem like a lot; and it isn’t. But on several thousand or hundred thousands of dollars it really starts to add up. This post is mainly for those individuals who haven’t heard of this concept or haven’t started utilizing it to their advantage. Mainly, I’m addressing millennials and college students. Those individuals in the cohort I’m address have one powerful thing on their side: time. We’ve written before on this blog about the power of time and starting to save early. We showed the comparing of someone starting right away either during or right after college and another […]
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Our Investment Philosophy
One of the most important parts of your overall financial plan is the investment plan. The investment plan is made up of three distinct parts: present value, projection of future inflows and outflows, and allocation. It is allocation that we’re most interested in with this article. Allocation is the process of determining the “mix” of your investment assets: stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. as well as domestic and international categories. Allocation is determined by the philosophy that you choose to follow with regard to investment management. Our philosophy is summed up as follows: Diversify Reduce Costs Pay Attention to Economic Signals Maintain Discipline – Stick To Your Plan Now, there are three primary schools of thought that are often relied upon to develop an Investment Philosophy: technical analysis, fundamental analysis, efficient markets hypothesis. Technical Analysis is the review of charts of stocks and funds, with the belief that patterns within the […]
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The Hot Stove Analogy
We’ve all been there. Cooking dinner around the stove and mistakenly touch the burner or element with our finger. Instantaneously and instinctively our hand immediately withdraws from the heat and we quickly look to see if we need to run it under cold water or worse, grab the bandages. Individuals can have a similar instinctive reaction when they are burned by the market. When the market is highly volatile they’re gut reaction may be to pull their hand away quickly and easing the pain by selling and getting out. It would seem almost malapropos to keep a hand on the hot stove knowing that doing so will result in further pain and injury. And it would be unthinkable to place the other hand on the stove so both are feeling the heat. Naturally, no one likes to lose money. When markets go down it is perfectly understandable for individuals to […]
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Diversification: I Know I Should, But Why?
Any discussion of the tenets of long-term investing includes the recommendation for diversification. This concept is delivered almost without thought – after all, as children we are taught “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket!”. But have you ever stopped to consider just why we should diversify? Of course, in the example of the saying about the eggs, it’s simple spreading of risk: if you have all your eggs in one basket and you drop that basket… all your eggs have broken! By spreading your eggs into a second basket, if one basket is dropped, only those eggs in that basket will break, and you’ve still got one basket of good, unbroken eggs. What if we add a third basket? A fourth? As you might imagine, it soon becomes too clumsy to carry so many baskets (potentially one for each egg). One person couldn’t possibly manage twelve baskets effectively just to […]
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Personality Influences Financial Decisions
The recent volatility in the stock market has everyone a bit uneasy – even folks who have worked with a trusted financial adviser for years. But if you’ve never worked with an adviser before, you may be surprised to find that one of the first things he or she will do is ask you to fill out a risk analysis questionnaire. This questionnaire is designed to help you understand your financial decisions and the process of making decisions. It’s all tied to your personality, your own unique world-view. Why is risk analysis important before you make decisions with your money? Risk tolerance is an important part of investing – that should be understood at the outset. But the real value of answering a lot of questions about your risk tolerance is to tell you what you don’t know – how the sources of your money, the way you made it, how outside forces […]
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Everything But The Retirement Plan!
Conventional wisdom says that when you leave a job, whether you’ve been “downsized” or you’ve just decided to take the leap, you should always move your retirement plan to a self-directed IRA. (Note: when referring to retirement plans in this article, this could be a 401(k) plan, a 403(b), a 457, or any other qualified savings deferral-type plan). But there are a few instances when it makes sense to leave the money in the former employer’s plan. You have several options of what to do with the money in your former employer’s plan, such as leaving it, rolling it over into a new employer’s plan, rolling it over to an IRA, or just taking the cash. The last option is usually the worst. If you’re under age 55 you’ll automatically lose 10% via penalty from the IRS (unless you meet one of the exceptions, including first home purchase, healthcare costs, […]
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401(k) Mistakes (also applies to other Retirement Plans!)
These days you’re pretty much on your own when it comes to planning for your retirement. Granted, many state and local governments have a pension plan, but beyond that, precious few employers provide a pension these days. Typically retirement benefits only include a 401(k) or other deferred retirement plan, which means it’s up to you! For the purpose of brevity, I’ll refer to 401(k) plans throughout this article; please understand that most of the information applies to 403(b) plans, 401(a) plans, and 457 plans as well as Keogh, SIMPLE, and SEP IRA plans. For most of us, the 401(k) is the default account that must take on the role that the pension plan did for previous generations. Paying attention to and avoiding the following mistakes can help you to ensure that you have a financially-secure future. #1 – Choosing Not to Participate It’s amazing how many folks, young or old, don’t participate in their […]
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Strategies of Successful Investors
For a golfer looking to improve his game, it can be useful to study the top golfers’ strategies and methods. Investors can, in much the same way, learn from the “money masters”, the top group of the most successful investors. You might not have their resources or years of experience, but understanding their philosophies can help you in your own approach to investing. Think Like an Owner, Not Like a Trader This philosophy is as commonsense as the investor who is so famous for following it: Warren Buffett. Any list of the most successful investors of all time has to include the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, and he’s typically at the top of the list. The Oracle of Omaha is well-known for his down-to-earth approach to sizing up investment opportunities. Buffett invests in businesses however (not stocks), and prefers those with consistent earning power and little or no debt. He also […]
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Correlation, Risk and Diversification
Many investors understand the importance of asset allocation and diversification. They choose among various assets to invest in such as stocks, bonds, real estate and commodities. Without getting too technical, the reason why investors choose different asset allocation is due to their correlation (often signified by the Greek letter rho ρ) to the overall stock market. Assets with a correlation of +1 (perfect positive), move identically to each other. That is, when one asset moves in a particular direction, the other moves in the exact same fashion. Assets with a correlation of -1 (perfect negative), move exactly opposite of each other. That is, when one asset zigs, the other asset zags. Generally, the benefits of diversification begin anytime correlation is less than +1. For example, a portfolio with two securities with a correlation of .89 will move similar to each other, but not exactly the same. Thus there is a […]
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How to Invest
Occasionally, someone will ask me a question in the following different ways: “Did you see what the market did today?” or “How did the market do today?” To be honest, I’d love to use the line that Charley Ellis has used from the movie Gone with the Wind; “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Professionally, my response is more in line with “I couldn’t tell you.” or “I don’t follow the market really.” The response is not meant to be rude or abrupt, but more to simply say that for most investors (myself included); they shouldn’t be worried about what the market is doing on a day to day basis. This is especially true for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. A price weighted index of 30 stocks is hardly representative of the market, yet it’s what most people think and refer to as “the market” when they ask […]
Sterling Raskie, MSFS, CFP®, ChFC®
The latest in our Owner’s Manual series, A 401(k) Owner’s Manual, was published in January 2020 and is available on 
A Medicare Owner’s Manual, is updated with 2020 facts and figures. This manual is available on 
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Sterling’s first book, Lose Weight Save Money, can be 
An IRA Owner’s Manual, 2nd Edition is available for purchase on Amazon. Click the link to choose the 
Jim’s book – A Social Security Owner’s Manual, is now available on Amazon. Click this link for the 
And if you’ve come here to learn about queuing waterfowl, I apologize for the confusion. You may want to discuss your question with Lester, my loyal watchduck and self-proclaimed “advisor’s advisor”.