Are Safer Investments Worth The Risk Right Now? Key Take-aways: 1. Real yield (inflation-adjusted yield) is your yield minus the inflation rate, which historically averages between 1% and 2% for risk-free assets 2. The S&P 500 from 1928 to 2023 averaged 9.8% per...
Stress-Test Your Plan Key Take-aways: - Stress-test your plan is a good way to see if you can ride through rough markets - "Capital Market" outlooks from firms like Vanguard are NOT market timing tools. But they're often misinterpreted as such - These outlooks can...
The New Rainy Day Fund: Your 401k Key Take-aways: 4.8% of 401k account holders took hardship withdrawals in 2024, up from 3.6% in 2023 and pre-pandemic average of about 2% Auto-enrollment in 401k plans has increased, which may contribute to the rise in withdrawals as...
Investor Behavior Impacts Returns Here are some key takeaways from "Investor Behavior Impacts Returns" - Investor behavior (panicking, selling quickly, over-trading, etc.) tend to lead to poor returns, especially from from volatile funds - Frequent trading and...
Monte Carlo Simulation Here are some key takeaways: 1. Monte Carlo simulation explained: It's a retirement planning tool that runs thousands of scenarios using inputs like withdrawal needs, investment returns, and inflation rates to assess retirement viability and...
Longevity in Retirement: What To Expect Here are some Key Takeaways: For a married couple aged 65 today, there's a 92% chance of at least one spouse living until age 85 if both are non-smokers. This emphasizes the need to plan for a potentially long retirement....
401k Loans Are Bad? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv0nIVcWDlk Here are some key takeaways: - Taking 401k loans can significantly impact retirement savings due to missed opportunity costs, potentially reducing the final balance by hundreds of thousands of dollars. -...
It's OK to Spend Money in Retirement Here are some key takeaways: - Even wealthy retirees fear outliving their money, struggling to transition to spend money in retirement - It's important to do personalized financial analysis to determine how much "slack" is in your...
Price Targets for 2025 Here are some key takeaways: - The S&P 500 finished 2024 at 5881, up 25%, significantly outperforming analysts' price targets - These price targets are often viewed as not very useful, as they tend to cluster around historical averages -...
Crystal Ball Challenge Here are some key takeaways: - Even with advance knowledge of news headlines, predicting market movements is extremely difficult. In a study where participants were given Wall Street Journal headlines a day in advance, about half lost money and...
