Fair warning, this post is a departure from my normal articles on retirement planning. I had an opportunity to meet one of the founding fathers of modern finance, Harry Markowitz, in June of 2019 and I simply want to share the experience with you here. Harry Markowitz isn’t a household name, but the work he …
A gross expense ratio is the annual cost of operating a mutual fund or ETF. It tells you the total expense of owning the fund as a percentage of your investment. Fund families will often rebate portions of the fee so that your actual expense is lower than the gross expense ratio. That number is …
A fund of funds is a collection of mutual funds bundled together. By combining different mutual funds into one package, the fund of funds purpose is to give you a single-choice investment solution. You’ll sometimes see a fund of funds abbreviated as FOF. This can simplify your investment process, but you need to understand how …
The market risk premium is the return that you earn on stocks above what you could earn by investing in government bonds. For example, if the rate of return on the market is 15% when the rate on a government bond is 3%, the market risk premium is 12%. A more formal way of defining …
Are index funds good investments for retirement? If you’ve done any amount of reading on investment strategies, you have certainly heard about index investing. In this article I’m going to explain WHAT index investing is and WHY it is such a good strategy for your retirement. This article goes a little deeper into market theory, …
That’s not a typo. While asset allocation is a common investment term, asset location is an often overlooked aspect of retirement planning. That is unfortunate because asset location can significantly affect the after-tax value of your retirement income. I’ll explain what asset location means and how you can use that information to increase your retirement …
The research on investor performance is clear. The average mutual fund investor tends to have worse returns than the average mutual fund. Behavioral factors have a lot do with this. People tend to be emotional, and can often react in precisely the most incorrect way possible when markets are volatile. Fear often causes investors to …
Have you thought about what you might be giving up by waiting to invest for long-term goals such as retirement? One of the greatest financial tools that young investors have is time. Time’s effect on long-term investment performance is much greater than financial savvy or a large income. So many younger would-be savers and investors …
