By Brian Zdrowak I am 35 years old, and the world is in front of me. I have a wonderful and supportive wife, three fun and energetic kids under the age of 5 and a dog. My wife and I are trying to balance it all: being good parents, finding time for each other, playing…
Once you’ve abandoned the pursuit of balancing money and life in favor of integrating the two, the question still remains: Now what? How the heck do I better integrate money and life? Like most personal finance dilemmas, the answer is simple, but not easy. It’s simple because it doesn’t require many steps. What’s more, it’s…
The sophisticated asset-pricing models we have today allow us to determine the underlying sources of returns to investments. Specifically, they permit us to identify the factors to which an investment has exposure. However, a problem arises when employing current asset-pricing models to consider alternative, illiquid investments. The volatility of such assets is often understated. This…
Americans aren’t saving enough. The numbers appear to back up this claim, which we hear repeatedly. But what I find more interesting is how we react to such statements. I touched on the issue of savings last week, and the responses I’ve heard seem to confirm that it’s a touchy subject. For the sake of…
At the start of 2014, predictions of a market correction were rampant. So what has happened? The market has gone up on some days and down on others, and the volatility that was absent in 2013 has returned. This has led to even more talk about market corrections and projections about what lies ahead. But…
By C.J. Baxter Many investors are feeling a little jittery these days, and rightfully so. We have had to deal with fears of Ebola, constant tension in the Middle East and a sluggish overseas economy. And that short list fails to mention we recently went through one of the biggest market pullbacks since The Great…
On Oct. 29, the Federal Reserve announced the official end to its bond-buying program, otherwise known as quantitative easing (QE). Given all the debate about the efficacy of the Fed’s policy decisions, and the stomach acid created by the many dire forecasts about what was going to happen when quantitative easing ended, I thought it…
There is a huge variation in the quality of advice that investors are exposed to every day. If you can’t differentiate between good and bad information, it can cost you dearly. It may even mean the difference between retiring with dignity and running out of money in your golden years. Terrible advice It’s sad that…
It seems like investors have had plenty to worry about recently, even without considering the last few weeks of stock market volatility. After all, we’ve seen: Slowing growth in most of the developed world, including the possibility that European economies will enter their third recession since 2007. Growth in China’s economy decelerating faster than expected….
October was a wild ride for investors. At its low, the Dow Jones Industrial average plunged 5.2 percent from its September high. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index lost 6.2 percent and the Nasdaq was down 7.4 percent. Global headlines seized upon market uncertainty and featured tabloid-style “advice,” posing questions such as, “Is this the…
Every market pundit has an opinion on whether the market is now at or near a bubble. And after the recent bout of volatility, triggered by a resurgent and scary narrative about a “slowing global economy,” investors who have been in on the six-year bull market run would be right to question the profits they…
One of the more persistent investment myths holds that a winning strategy is to sell stocks in May and wait to buy back into the market until November. While it is true that stocks have provided greater returns from November through April than they have from May through October, the equity risk premium has still…
Let’s define “popular” as being liked or admired by the general public. One might reasonably think that popularity is a good thing, right? But when it comes to investing, research shows popularity often comes with lower returns. This correlation can sometimes result in a conflict with traditional economic theory, where risk and expected return should…
The municipal bond market has almost $4 trillion in total debt outstanding. That compares with about $18 trillion in outstanding U.S. Treasury debt. Besides market size, municipal bonds differ from Treasurys in that they carry credit risk, are less liquid and are exempt from federal income tax. The size of the spread between Treasury bonds…
We got the subtitle of my last book wrong. It reads, “Balancing Money and Life.” And while the book is still substantively solid and its aging content remains mostly relevant, the subtitle, I now believe, is a misnomer. It may actually contradict the book’s fundamental message. Whether we’re talking about money and life, work and…