Believe it or not, now may be the best time for small investors seeking to build a retirement — ever. Hyperbole? Maybe. But it might well turn out to be an understatement. Things might only get better for retirement investors. Consider the recent interview Jason Zweig at The Wall Street Journal had with James Cloonan,… Continue reading →

When it comes to investing, having money doesn’t buy women confidence in their ability to choose their investments wisely — or choose them at all. The Wells Fargo Affluent Women Retirement Survey polled 600 women with a median household income of $145,000 and $455,000 in investable assets. According to the survey, two out every five… Continue reading →

The bad news for baby boomers has been hard to avoid. Dire predictions of a looming retirement catastrophe have piled up for several years. Now that reality is starting to hit — hard. Wells Fargo recently released its latest survey of middle-class retirement prospects, and the news is bleak. Among the outcomes expected by survey… Continue reading →

The Internet is known for “rolling up” inefficient businesses. Email has supplanted the postal service. Online entertainment, including gaming, is eating into traditional TV and cable. Now education is under pressure — in a good way. For starters, retirement courses online make planning easier than ever, and virtually free to all. The new online learning model… Continue reading →

When you think about all the ads that you see and all the media about various money managers beating their benchmarks and doing well and so on. I guess the thing that I would ask you is why do you suppose they’re advertising those particular products? And the answer often is that it’s because those… Continue reading →

If you read the work of pop economists these days, everything and everyone is rational — even if the outcomes make no sense. Take men and women. How have we, collectively as humans, managed to evolve into the dominant global species? The economist’s answer is rational division of labor: Some of our distant ancestors sent… Continue reading →

Is your retirement ready for the next big market crash? What if I told you it doesn’t matter? It doesn’t — if you are properly invested. One of the major lessons learned from the 2008 debacle is that people who remained in the market and avoided panicking came out of things just fine. Clearly, some… Continue reading →

Here’s a smattering of recent headlines. See if you can find rhyme or reason in them, at least in terms of actions you might take — right now, today — in regard to your retirement investing. After-hours buzz: TI, IBM, Best Buy & more Brace for ‘more choppiness,’ strategist says Sell crude on Obama’s Syria… Continue reading →

When working people enter their late 50s or early 60s, most begin to take stock — many for the first time — of their retirement plan investments. Often, they are shocked to find that the reality underlying their plan to fund retirement is dire, even catastrophic. Now, this is not an article to scold savers who… Continue reading →