Author Archives: David John Marotta

There is always an excuse to delay doing something that involves risk. They close the show reminding you not to wait. Invest now.

This whimsical 2004 post uses the hypothetical family business of Belle and the Beast to teach a valuable lesson about passing on the family business to the next generation.

Neither the dire pessimism at the start of the Bull Market of the 1990s nor the blind optimism at the end were warranted.

The average worker will have a dozen employers and work at each job for less than four years. Your career is now your responsibility, and so is your retirement plan. Allow this 2010 article to be your lifetime Human Resources Department guide to being financially prepared.

Portfolio construction is extremely important to achieving your long-term goals. Don’t risk those goals by assuming that individual stock-picking is a superior strategy.

Even though is often the worst choice, most people take Social Security as early as possible, at age 62. This decision reduces lifetime benefits by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Knowing that rebalancing boosts returns is useless unless you have the time, discipline, and nerve to follow through and actually execute the trades.

Maybe if we say it enough, it will actually get done. “The correct rate for the capital gains tax is zero, zip, nada. Perhaps it is even negative!”

This 2004 article contains the five steps you should take to navigate how to make your business venture more than just a dream.

“Buy on the dips” is a good strategy only because of the first word.

We recommend that you fund your Health Savings Account (HSA) to the maximum limit each year and that you keep funding it to the maximum as long as you can no matter how much money you have in the account.

This 2008 article reminds us that anyone who spends more than 4% of their rebate will actually lose ground saving toward their retirement.

A gone fishing portfolio is a portfolio of just a few stocks which should weather the ups and downs of the market fairly well while only rebalancing twice a year.

This gone fishing portfolio is our default portfolio which can be used at any custodian.

We recommend this gone fishing portfolio for accounts hosted at Vanguard.

We recommend this gone fishing portfolio for accounts hosted at Charles Schwab.

We recommend this gone fishing portfolio for accounts hosted at Fidelity.

We recommend this gone fishing portfolio for accounts hosted at eTrade.

We recommend this gone fishing portfolio for accounts hosted at TD Ameritrade.

Gil Weinriech, Senior Editor for Seeking Alpha, wrote recently about investors whose personalities tempt them to stay on the sidelines of investing at times.

Although the NPR commentators suggest that the corporate heart is growing fonder of government, feeling wistful, and longing for government bureaucracy, nothing could be further from the truth.

Market corrections are so common as to be largely ignored by long term investors.

Schwab’s presentation is designed to show a real time accounting of your portfolio’s value. It is not designed to report on your portfolio’s performance.

On Tuesday, January 8, 2019, David John Marotta appeared on Radio 1070 WINA’s Schilling Show to discuss financial resolutions for the 2019 new year.

Regardless of your assumptions about future market returns, the impoverishment to families with credit card debt is massive.

“We have simply not been able to serve those who really need us the most.”

To make the strategy of jumping in and out of the markets successful would require a precision only achieved by luck.

For all of these reasons, our recommended investment strategy does not focus on dividend-paying stocks.

Brokers tell investors they’re trusted advisors, and then tell the courts they’re just sales people.

“My greatest regret is not being able to convince as many investors as possible of the difference between real risk and phantom risk.”

Punishing people for inflation is neither fair nor good economic policy.

Much can be learned from your earliest money memories. Here are some of mine.

On Tuesday, November 13, 2018, David John Marotta appeared on Radio 1070 WINA’s Schilling Show to discuss several tax saving ideas you can do before the year ends.

The dark side argues that without commission-based sales people, low and middle income consumers will not have access to a financial advisor. They are wrong.

In addition to all of the other reasons people hate annuities, seemingly fraudulent advertising and sales techniques is a major factor.

These are two simple but effective strategies to help calculate a very good conversion target for this year.

Any investment manager can use the Institutional Intelligent Portfolio technology to implement extremely different investment philosophies.

Ten years after our original article we review how sage the advice was.

Stock buyback programs are a method of returning profits to shareholders without causing a taxable event.

We have a limited amount of willpower. It is a waste to have to expend it to ignore advertising.

The average holding period for a stock is not simply the inverse of liquidity.

Since only a small portion of stock is traded each day, a large majority of shareholders prioritize the long term appreciation of the value of the company.

Run, do not walk, away from outrageous claims.

Excellence and low cost can go together.

If the TSA were abolished, that would not mean that airports would be any less secure.

The regulation is an attempt to protect participants who don’t understand the rules set up by the government.

This is called “regulatory capture” and is quite common in government regulatory agencies such as the SEC.

Any movement out of the stock market can cause you to miss future market appreciation.

A little bit of work upfront can save a great deal of nuisance later.

This 2007 post offers us a bit of timeless advice. Funding a Health Savings Account can be as much about your present medical bills as it is about your end of life care.