After a disappointing 2019, the top-ranked South Dakota Retirement System did some housekeeping in the first quarter of 2020, including buying a million shares of an index ETF. State pension funds control a lot of money, and the fact that tiny South Dakota, the 47th most populous state in the country with only 884,000 people, […]
Among the over $2 trillion in the new Cares Act is a couple of provisions to help people with their retirement accounts during the virus panic. These changes deserve to stay. The coronavirus scare has had many people scrambling to make ends meet due to a loss of income from the widespread shutdown that the […]
We should not just take a standardized approach to advising people on their retirement money, because the circumstances vary so much. This does not stop us though. The way that we advise those who are saving for retirement or are in retirement is in great need of revision. There is so much work that needs […]
With the SEC making the offering of annuities in companies’ 401(k) retirement plans easier, we are now scrambling to make this type of investment more transparent. There is something particularly tempting about annuities that appeal to a lot of people, for the same reasons that they loved fixed benefit pension plans. There is no doubt […]
New changes that will limit how far certain beneficiaries can stretch an inherited IRA have the retirement management community concerned. This is not a big change though. Retirement advisors are scrambling to find ways that their clients can work around the new rule changes that will be implemented in the upcoming Secure Act that restricts […]
Income in retirement is far too important to be left to simple-minded calculations. We need to get off the path of simple-mindedness and actually look to figure this out right. People’s situations differ quite a bit in retirement, and the circumstances surrounding the desirability of certain investments certainly do. We can’t just throw out percentages […]
Bankruptcies are painful at any age, including late in life. The aftermath of a bankruptcy isn’t as bad as many may think, and considerably less so for people already in retirement. Declaring a bankruptcy in itself isn’t a negative thing, and in fact this is a solution to a problem and not a problem in […]
Investment advice has always been pretty crusty, and this definitely is the case with what we do after retirement. There’s too much on the line to be stuck in the past. We’ve also come a long way with our understanding of markets and investing, at least on the leading edge, although we still are very […]
Nobel Prize winning economist William Sharpe is truly a legend in the economics of investing. Now 85 and retired, he is now focused on the issue of outliving your money. Planning for retirement properly and successfully is no small task. There are many variables involved, including how much you can comfortably save, what sort of […]
Three researchers from Boston College have just released a paper discussing shortcomings of the 401(k) retirement plan. The problems run even deeper than this. The Boston College Center for Retirement Research has a new paper out that examines some of the shortcomings of the 401(k) plan and how that is contributing to the shortfall in […]