How Much Should Unbiased Financial Advice Cost?
How many times have you heard "before you make any big money decisions, check with your own financial advisor"? NPR's Marketplace Money program says that all the time. It can't be taken at face value because it assumes that everyone has a financial advisor.
I've never had a financial advisor. I'm guessing the percentage of the population who have a financial advisor isn't that high. If they all say people should check with their financial advisor, why don't most people have one?
1. Too many sharks. For those who have a financial advisor, I'm guessing again that most are not working with a fee-only advisor who acts as a fiduciary and only gives advice in the best interest of the client.
Book Review: The Bogleheads' Guide to Retirement Planning
I've been waiting for this book for a long time. About this time last year, the leaders of the Bogleheads investment forum announced a book project and asked for volunteers. I was selected and assigned to write a chapter on defined benefit pension plans. The book was finally published in September and I got my free book from the publisher last week. This is the first time I got the chance to read the whole book.
The title is The Bogleheads' Guide to Retirement Planning. It covers a wide range of topics on planning for retirement. The emphasis is on planning, not saving or investing for retirement, although there are still a few chapters on investing. It starts off with the planning process. Then it goes over the different savings and investment vehicles, investment strategies, how to make the most of social security, withdrawal strategies once you are retired, insurance, estate planning, how to find help if you need it and what to do if you face divorce or too much debt you can't repay.
I like the broad approach in this book. Retirement planning is a complex subject. There can be full-scale books on each of the topics covered in this book. Every chapter covers the main points in about 15 pages so the size of the book stays manageable. If the reader wants to read more about a particular subject, there are a list of additional resources at the end of each chapter. The book serves as a good roadmap for retirement planning.
Austin Frakt on NPR
Remember The Incidental Economist (TIE) who used to co-blog with me here? His real name is Austin Frakt. He's famous now. His blog posts, which I still help host under his own domain name, have been cited in Washington Post, Mother Jones, The Atlantic, and many other high profile places. He's been quoted in Business Week twice. He got a 15-second sound byte on NPR today.
Short-Term Fixed Income: CDs vs Bond Funds
The interest rates are really low these days. If you are trying to rollover a matured CD or if you want to save for something you need in a few years, it's not easy to find a good option.
After rolling over my IRA to my solo 401k at Fidelity, I want invest a small sum in the solo 401k account in short-term fixed income. I went and looked at my options.
Treasuries
I Bonds: Hold Or Sell?
Savings Bond Advisor reported that the next inflation adjustment on I Bonds will be 3.07%. I bought some I Bonds in April 2008 when the base rate was 1.2%. They will earn 0% starting this month through March 2010. Based on the 3.07% inflation adjustment, these I Bonds will earn 4.28% between April and September 2010.
I had planned to sell them in January 2010 after they earn nothing for three months. Now it looks like I will hold them one more year until January 2011.
If I redeem them in January 2011 instead of January 2010, these April 2008 I Bonds will earn
Lesson from the Recession: Keep Your Job
In The Right Lessons and The Wrong Lessons, I said the right lessons from the recession and the bear market are "so simple they don't need any further explanation." A reader Mark suggested that I shouldn't be so dismissive.
"If you tell him/her it's so simple that he should be ashamed of himself for failing to grasp your full meaning, then your are negating that investors desire to learn – in effect saying 'do it because I said so.'"
After thinking about it for a little longer, I agree with Mark. So I decided to write down what exactly I learned personally from the recession. These will serve as notes to myself in the future. I apologize if the lessons look so obvious. I hope there is enough personal flavor to make them more interesting.
Mortgage Refinance and Option Pricing
Being a blogger with a contact form, I often receive PR outreach messages. They want me to write about what they are trying to promote. I ignore most of those. Once in a while, I get something worth reading.
Andrew Kalotay Associates is a fixed income analytics and debt management advisory services company in New York. They sent me a special report they wrote for Mortgage Bankers Association, the industry trade group.
A Financial Analysis of Consumer Mortgage Decisions, Andrew J. Kalotay and Qi Fu
What Makes Investing Hard?
I wrote a few weeks ago Investing Is Simple.
"You come up with an asset allocation, open some accounts, pick a few index funds, and you are done. Once in a while you see if anything is out of whack and you redirect your new money to wherever is lagging. It's not complicated at all."
If investing is that simple, then why in the world are there so many talks about investing? There are many books, professional journals, newspapers, magazines, TV shows, radio programs, and now blogs about investing. The Bogleheads investing forum I participate in (user name "tfb") has more than 560,000 posts. If investing is simple, what can't possibly be exhausted in 560,000 posts?
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