Retirement Savings Strategies – Best Investment Options
You’ve heard it before, but it’s the golden rule of investing: the sooner you start putting money aside, the more the power of compound interest can work for you. How does compound interest work? By keeping your money invested over a long period of time, you earn interest on the interest...
Keys To Successful Investing
By investing, we can reach our ultimate financial goals—whether for education or for retirement. Here are some of the keys to successful investing. Following these suggestions can help even the most inexperienced investors achieve high returns. Set Objectives Always identify clear goals and objectives...
Retirement Planning For Women – How Much Is Enough?
Women need to save more money for retirement than men. Yet they generally have less disposable cash to set aside. And what they do save, they tend to invest too conservatively. On average, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, women live longer than men, work fewer years, change jobs more frequently,...
Investing For Retirement – Managing Investment Risks
When it comes to investing over the long term, investing too cautiously might be the biggest risk you can take. Here’s why: over the past 50 years, the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index has returned an average 11.8 percent a year with dividends reinvested, says Ned Davis Research. Long-term...
401k Questions To Ask
Expenses in 401(k) plans have grown so complex that even plan sponsors often do not understand what they are and how much they add up to. Here are some steps to guide you. Go to your human resources department or the adviser responsible for the plan. Bring your records to the meeting. Ask first about...
Taxes And Your Investments
Why worry about the taxes your stock investments generate? Top-tier performance will compensate for any bite the government takes out of your profits. Anyway, that bite has become a nibble, with recent cuts in the federal long-term capital gains rate. Right? Wrong. The only investments for which taxes...
401k Fees And Expenses – Hidden Costs
Savvy investors are always beefing about the high expenses they’re forced to pay when they invest in mutual funds. But few of them grasp the soaking they’re taking on their 401(k) plans–an almost invisible drain on their assets that is getting worse every year. There’s much to...
Institutional Mutual Funds – Invest With The Millionaires
Suppose a posh country club in your neighborhood offered to let you join for a fraction of the super-high initiation fee it charges its rich and famous members. You’d be tempted, wouldn’t you, even if you never planned to set foot on its Masters-level golf course? That may be fantasy, but...
IPO Risks – Initial Public Offering Programs
When you receive a get-rich-quick solicitation in your email inbox, you’re probably schooled to be skeptical. “Isn’t this sweet,” you say to yourself. “They have the secret of wealth, and instead of using it themselves, they want to share it with me, a perfect stranger!”...
Three Smart Bond Strategies
Government bonds are kind of like the Bill Pullman character in Sleepless in Seattle — they stand for stability, not zest. But to reap the full benefit of dull dependability, you have to choose your Treasuries well. The wrong ones can rock your boat if the economy turns choppy. Investing in government...
Family Budgeting Tips And Advice
Most families wish to save time and money so they can enjoy increased leisure time. Patricia Sargeant, a homemaker who lives with her family in the Morgantown, West Virginia area, has learned from experience. Patricia stopped working outside the home after her fourth child was born, and although she...
The Long-Term Cost Of Credit Cards
Does your mailbox fill with a blizzard of pre-approved credit card applications each week? They sound like tempting offers, promising a low interest rate if you transfer the credit balance on your present card. They dangle great offers to entice you to add an equity line of credit on your house. They...
Money Management For Teenagers
Most teenagers are interested to learn that if they save a dollar a day, they’ll have saved more than $2,000 at the end of five years (assuming they’re putting it away in a savings account with a modest interest rate of five percent). But few realize they can earn a fortune during their working...
Take Control Of Your Finances – Family Budgeting Ideas
When you take control of your finances, good things can happen. You can take great vacations. You can save for retirement. A “dream” house can become a reality. Donna Vandermark and her husband, Brian, of East York, Pennsylvania know this firsthand. They live in their dream home because they...
Stress Test Your Investments
It might not take a market meltdown to nuke your portfolio. Your investments could be vulnerable to many, more-minor missteps. To protect yourself, you need to put your portfolio on the treadmill and find out if it’s a toned-up investment machine, sufficiently diversified and properly positioned...
