Cash flow in retirement can be confusing. There is the question of where to get the money. Should it come from your IRA? How about your nonqualified investments? What if you have pension income? How much should you factor in social security? Maybe you’ve heard of the 4% rule, which states that you can take 4% of your investment portfolio each year and you “should” never run out of money. Some...
Read More
Baseball season is long. Major leaguers start spring training in mid-February, with a month of practices and scrimmages. Six months, consisting of a 162-game schedule, take us through the summer. Finally, the playoffs fill up October and deliver us a World Series champion by the start of November: One champion. One. Fans of one team are elated and celebrate with a trophy. Fans of the other twenty-nine teams wind up...
Read More
Markets go up and down. Historically they have gone up more often than they have gone down. No one can predict the future, nor should they try when it comes to investing. But if you’re someone who is waiting for the next crash and basing your investing decisions on fear, consider the confidence level of those driving our economy.
A recent survey by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) revealed that 95.1%...
Bonds serve an important role in the portfolios of many individuals and organizations as they provide income, liquidity, and help reduce portfolio volatility. If your financial plan warrants investing in bonds, what type of bonds should be in your portfolio? At Foster Group we focus on two primary characteristics of fixed income investments to help us answer this question – maturity and credit quality. Maturity As a bond holder, essentially you are providing a...
Read More
With five-year CD rates averaging 1.56% annually and money market annual yields remaining below 0.29% (Wall Street Journal Market Data – Feb. 22, 2018), investors continue to ask if there is anything they should do to increase the cash flows coming from their portfolios. A popular answer coming from some corners of the financial press is to seek out high dividend paying stocks. Unfortunately, this strategy for increasing cash flow may...
Read More
Investing is risky. Not investing is also risky. Right or wrong, as people contemplate their need for retirement income, many venture into the world of annuities. The promise of a stream of income when your working years are complete can be appealing and comforting. These products are often sold under the premise that they can take the risk out of investing. In reality, annuities are complex insurance vehicles that frequently come with significant fees, restrictions, and...
Read More
High costs can make it much harder for investors to achieve the returns of broad investment markets. Watch this video to learn about the different kinds of costs you may incur as an investor and how you can potentially obtain broad market exposure with low overall costs. ...
Read More
By Scott Berryman of Legacy Design Strategies
Whenever I counsel physicians and families about transferring and protecting their assets in an estate plan, we always talk about a few other items that tend to be appropriate in helping them manage taxes and risk. First, I ask them if they have long-term care insurance. If they say yes, I know they have had a conversation with a financial professional. If... Read More
We’ve all been there. Stuck in traffic. Blood pressure rising. Four lanes apparently nowhere near enough to efficiently funnel all the vehicles to their intended destination. You cannot fathom what in the world is causing this crawl of a pace. In a desperate attempt to expedite your trip, you quickly weave into the paralleling lane that appears to be moving faster than yours. Five seconds later, you are hitting the...
Read More
How might smart investors target the risk and return of their investment portfolio to meet the unique aspects of their total financial plans and goals? ...
Read More