Queercents

The recent collapse of Bear Stearns, and all of the pain and anguish that has accompanied it, mainly by the employees and retirees should heighten the call for a review of the line between greed and good business practices…and ‘ethical’ behavior. The shareholders took this one on the chin both the institutional, and the widow Masterson. I feel terrible for this poor woman who was living off of the dividends, and am just a little more than a tad angry at the institutional investor.

Between the board of directors, and the institutional investors, there is one word which explains this whole debacle perfectly - “greed”.

Financial Services and Wall Street can be a wonderful place to work; to earn a respectable living, even by most standards, an incredible living. But like speed - “greed” kills too. Read the rest of this entry »

I received this email yesterday, from a financial advisor at the local branch of Merrill Lynch.

Hi Jan,
Hoping that it’s okay to write since I came upon your name on the 2007 domestic partner registry. I wanted to introduce myself as a financial advisor who specializes in working with the glbt community. Since there are 1138 federal rights and benefits that are not afforded samesex couples, we need different tactics to protect ourselves and our families.

If this is anything you’d like to talk about, perhaps we could talk further about how I might be of service.

My first reaction: Ugh, I had no idea that putting my name on the domestic partner registry opened me to solicitations like this. My second reaction was much more positive: Hey! I’m being marketed to! And from someone who very likely understands the whole domestic partner situation from an insider’s perspective. That’s pretty cool! Read the rest of this entry »

I was recently reading an article published by my financial planner’s firm and it talks about an old saying on Wall Street that “the stock market climbs a wall of worry”. Anyone who even remotely watches the financial news knows that if Chairman so and so as much as sneezes wrong the Dow and NASDAQ can plunge and investors scurry around like deranged rats in a test lab. Our system and the markets are indeed a bit odd but that’s the way the economy rolls. Yet there are sound ways to not only make money over the long term but also be quiet and peaceful on the inside as you do so.

Consider this from The Financial Philosopher:

You’ve got to be in to win:

Remember that stepping out of the asset allocation suitable for you is nothing more than a foolish version of timing the market. Based on history, between 80% and 90% of the returns attributable to market performance comes from just 2% to 7% of the time in the market. If you jump out of stocks when the market is in a down trend then how do you know when to get back in? If you’re out of the market on those few “big days” as it resumes its march back up, your portfolio is doomed to under-performance. Time in the market is favorable to timing the market.

What that translates to is developing a strategy and sticking to it. The only way to stick to it when the media and financial publications frenzy about is to be calm within the storm. And, that starts from within. Read the rest of this entry »

“Retirement: It’s nice to get out of the rat race, but you have to learn to get along with less cheese.” – Gene Perret

For many people, contemplating retirement can trigger anxiety about having enough money. There are gobs of books one might read to make sure the magic number has been saved. There are worksheets and online calculators that can help determine the amount. While it’s a highly personal calculation, figuring out the number is usually the easy part.

Establishing the plan to reach the number is typically the bigger challenge. Women have a harder time than men with closing the retirement savings gap. We live longer and make less. This isn’t an astounding revelation. Read the rest of this entry »

While travelling for a business trip last week, I had the opportunity to read The Little Book That Makes You Rich, by Louis Navellier. It’s one of several books in the Little Books Big Profits series, in which various investment professionals cover different investing strategies. The book claims to contain “a proven market-beating formula for growth investing.” Since I personally lean towards the value side of the investing style scale, I was curious to see if Mr. Navellier’s growth strategy would sway me.

The book is relatively short, as the title implies, and it’s an easy read. Navellier’s writing style is fairly engaging, and novice investors should have no trouble following the investing advice he provides. Read the rest of this entry »

Any finance professional will tell you that if you want to grow your wealth, your asset allocation needs to include stocks. The reason is simple - stocks have the highest potential return. In the many articles on how to invest for your retirement, a common recommendation is to get stock market exposure through a low-cost index fund. There are good reasons for that, but buying actively managed funds or individual stocks are also valid approaches, with different benefits and drawbacks. I want to discuss some of those here. I’m not a financial advisor, but this is my take based on what I’ve read and my own investing experience.

Before we get into that, I should point out that we’re only talking about the stock portion of a portfolio here. The concept of asset allocation - how much to invest in stocks versus bonds versus anything else - is a topic for another article. Similarly, I’m ignoring targeted maturity funds, since they take care of asset allocation for you. I’m also ignoring exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which can be a good alternative to index funds. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I wrote about why investing knowledge should be a part of everyone’s basic education for purely practical reasons. But there’s another benefit to being an investor - how it teaches you about the world.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. In his article “The United States of Toyota”, Peter M. De Lorenzo writes, “But after all is said and done, there is one simple reason why Toyota never has been and never will be an ‘American’ car company. Well, 13.2 billion reasons, actually. Toyota earned a $13.2 billion profit in 2006. And where, exactly, did those profits go? It seems there’s one very big thing that isn’t American about Toyota, and that is where those profits go at the end of the day.” Read the rest of this entry »

Marc explained some mutual fund basics yesterday in “Why A Mutual Fund Makes More Cents”. It’s a good introduction to the topic. But the necessity of the article highlights a problem that often frustrates me - the general lack of knowledge about investing.

Unless you make loads of money, you absolutely have to invest if you ever want to retire. OK, so there are a few exceptions to this. If you have a traditional pension, or you’re planning on severely cutting back expenses, or you have some reason to believe Social Security will still be there for you, maybe you can get by without investing your savings. But for most workers today, investing is not optional - it’s required if you want to have some semblance of a secure retirement. Read the rest of this entry »