Women are more afraid of becoming “bag ladies” than men, and it makes them approach investing and saving for retirement differently, assuming they have managed to tackle either of those chores.
It is better that you stop saving and use that money to do some of the things you’ve been longing to do, than it is to quit your job and retire early because you think that is the only way you can achieve your goals.
You may be a good candidate for a Roth conversion in 2012 if you can answer “yes” to any of these statements.
Do you think of being financially organized as a way to love your spouse? David and Krisan Marotta explain why you should.
Client resistance is an inevitable part of the financial planning process. It’s a sign the advisor is doing his or her job.
Marotta On Money is a weekly financial column and daily financial blog about the comprehensive wealth management small changes that have a large effect over time.
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A tax tsunami is coming at the end of this year. This will be your last opportunity to safeguard your assets in a lifeboat and avoid getting swamped with taxes.
Freedom scores ranged from #1 in freedom Hong Kong at 89.9 to #92 ranked mostly unfree Italy at 58.8.
Over the past five years, countries with the most economic freedom averaged annual returns just below emerging markets.
Sovereign debt and deficit weigh most heavily on a country’s level of government spending, one of the ten components of freedom in the Heritage Foundation economic freedom study
We believe this is one of the times when your asset allocation should tilt foreign and overweight the handful of countries with high economic freedom.
New Zealand, the fourth highest country in economic freedom, joined the United States with positive returns for 2011.
The equation of the trend line shows that every point on the freedom index was worth 0.36% annual return over the past year.
Now at year end, I will review how freedom investing fared in 2011 and in the decade since 2002.
I had a dream in which I saw a map similar to the one above and I heard myself explaining why 2011 was not a financial mulligan
If money is among the most common causes of domestic spats, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that almost one in four Americans would try to hide money troubles from their spouses.
We compute an asset allocation deviation or “out of balance” number for each household’s primary retirement assets and rebalance to lower this number.
Lots of articles steer you to the best credit card by categories–one if you want airline miles, another if you need to transfer a balance. This is not one of those articles. The millionaire mindset does not want airline miles and doesn’t carry a balance.
Comprehensive wealth management is based on the idea that small changes in our finances can have large effects over long periods of time. These changes can make the difference in achieving our life goals.
“Successful active management is a fantasy stoked by the financial services industry.”
“Many investors think active managers can shift out of stocks in time to stem losses in bear markets. Not true.”
Listen to David John Marotta’s interview on growing rich slowly: the four secrets of an automatic millionaire
The world markets groaned as the burden of the rising American debt and the European deficit weighed down more productive countries.
Learn about the index preferred by the person who invented index funds with the Vanguard S&P 500. And no, it isn’t the S&P 500.
“A blindfolded chimpanzee throwing darts at The Wall Street Journal can select a portfolio that can do just as well as the experts.”
“There exists a timeless and flexible process for successful investment management decision making that is specifically tailored for Investment Stewards.”
Kiplinger is teaming up with the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) to bring you FREE, personalized financial advice.
For a small business, marketing and advertising seeks an answer to the question “How will prospective customers find me?” Most small businesses would benefit from enhancing their website presence by blogging and social media connections.
Most investors invest in only one and a half of the six asset classes. Learn where to invest in all six and how to tilt in each to over-emphasize appropriate categories.
Kiplinger teamed up with the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) to bring you FREE, personalized financial advice as part of Kiplinger’s 11th annual Jump-Start Your Retirement Plan Days.
“One of an advisor’s greatest challenges? Directing client expectations – and meeting them with portfolio performance.”
Computing your net worth annually is like taking a sextant reading to chart your course toward financial security. Net worth gives you a snapshot of how much money would be left if you converted everything you owned into cash and paid off all your debts.
There are three IRA tax requirements and saving techniques which collided recently for a client. I found a solution.
“Let every man divide his money into three parts, and invest a third in land, a third in business and a third let him keep by him in reserve.”
Most investors do not have a balanced portfolio. And by chasing investment returns they miss the easy money they could make from having a good asset allocation in the first place and rebalancing it periodically.
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As we kept our spending frugal we gained enough margin to start businesses and employ people. And as employees find their area of genius, they help others through their productive work.
New rules go into effect January 1, 2012 which change the way you need to compute the cost basis for mutual funds if you use average cost accounting. We recommend you change the method you use to something which allows better tax management.
Financial resolutions usually don’t even last until the end of January. Making a permanent change in our behavior requires both time and a steely resolve. We can only develop financial character one action at a time. Here are seven practices to take you from pauper to prince or princess if you add one each year.
David John Marotta was featured on WINA 1070’s Rob Schilling Show on December 14, 2011. The topic was the high cost of regulation, leaning libertarian, and the roots of David’s leaning libertarian.
Other than Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’s story “A Christmas Carol,” Tiny Tim is certainly the most memorable character. Dickens used the boy in the story to soften the hearts of both Scrooge and his readers toward the worthy poor.
An article by David John Marotta on how to glean information from your IRS 1040 tax return was featured in the latest Nov/Dec 2011 issue of NAPFA Planning Perspectives.
To interest me, a game must have a simple but thought-provoking premise that allows for deep strategy. I’d never played Farmville but decided to recently because the parent company, Zynga, is going public this Thursday, December 15, 2011.
The “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (PPACA), is misleadingly named. It has neither protected patients nor made healthcare more affordable.
True life planning begins when you realize you are unique. There will never be another you in the history of the universe. Your calling is yours alone. Understanding yourself is the first step in managing your financial affairs to support your life plan.
Even though money was tight, having margin in our budget for unknown unknowns kept us from punishing a student simply because they lacked experience bidding painting jobs.
Perhaps one of the most important parts of wealth management is learning what questions are worth asking.
“We tax cars, land and corporations. It is a good thing that people don’t have to pay them!”
It isn’t crazy to suspect that the FDA does as much harm as good. And if you begin to suspect that, you are on your way to admitting that you might be more libertarian than Republican or Democrat
In the midst of this turmoil, especially after this past summer’s sharp drop, many investors wonder if they should put all of their investments into something safe and avoid the markets altogether.