DIY Personal & Retirement Financial Planning
Do-It-Yourself financial and investment planning Excel spreadsheet software
Everyone has similar, yet distinct, financial planning needs regarding their families’ financial futures. While more wealthy people (think millions of dollars) have greater complexity to their financial affairs (caused largely by our incredibly convoluted U.S. personal tax codes), everyone needs sophisticated financial lifecycle planning. Whether wealthy or not yet wealthy, families need a personalized way […]
Why allow the financial industry to help itself to your money? This blog provides you with objective information that could solidify a lifelong commitment on our part to low cost investing. Low cost investing is how you keep more of your own investments for your family, instead of naively giving your money to the financial […]
Why don’t we hear about the real financial sector scandals, which are exorbitant fees and costs that cause a continuous wealth transfer from individuals to the financial services industry? This article follows a recent article entitled “The Financial Services Industry is Still the Largest S&P 500 Sector – Even after the Collapse of its Stock […]
For three decades, the market value of the financial services industry segment within the Standard and Poors 500 composite index rose steadily to reach 21% in the middle of 2007. This article updates an August 2007 article, “The Biggest Personal Finance Story of the Past 30 Years,” which was published just as the real estate […]
The Problem – Straight answers about personal financial planning and investment management are difficult to find In this article, The Skilled Investor summarizes some of the significant problems faced by ordinary individuals, when they attempt to plan their family finances. This is the first in a series of articles that will provide scientifically grounded decision […]
There are three primary types of client paid advisor compensation: hourly-fee, fixed-fee, and asset-fee. When choosing an advisor, individuals should first decide the type of advisor compensation that makes them most comfortable. How an advisor is compensated can be a very important issue. When you hire a financial planner or investment advisor, 1) you pay […]
Yes, it can matter significantly how a financial advisor is paid. The heart of the compensation issue is an advisor’s potential “conflict of interest” with respect to payments from third parties. Does third party compensation change the quality of the recommendations that the advisers make? If an advisor works on sales commissions or accepts other […]
CLICK HERE TO READ THE SKILLED INVESTOR’s OTHER ARTICLES ABOUT THESE “10 FINANCIAL PLANNING STEPS IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION Even with optimal investment strategies, there is still substantial room to improve upon net investment performance through continued and vigilant focus on controlling investment costs and tax realization. Financial Planning Software for Individuals The fees extracted […]
< <– Go to Part 4 The Biggest Personal Finance Story of the Past 30 Years – Conclusion Family Financial Planning Software for Consumers This article concludes our series on the greatest personal finance story of the past thirty years. In this article, we discuss whether the dramatic growth in equity value of the financial […]
< <– Go to Part 3 The Biggest Personal Finance Story of the Past 30 Years – Part 4 Find Family Financial Planning Software What does it mean to individual investors that the financial services industry is now about 21% of S&P 500 market capitalization? (For a graph of the relative percentage shares of various […]
< <– Go to Part 2 The Biggest Personal Finance Story of the Past 30 Years – Part 3 Financial Planning Software for Home Use There is no reason to believe that industry self-regulation or governmental regulation will ever fix these problems. Only those individuals who become wise enough to be proactive and seek out […]
< — Go to Part 1 The Biggest Personal Finance Story of the Past 30 Years – Part 2 Family Financial Planning Software for Home Use To understand what has happened to the market valuation of the financial services sector, particularly over the last 30 years, you should view Figure 4 on page 16 of […]
The Biggest Personal Finance Story of the Past 30 Years – Part 1 What could the biggest personal finance story of three decades be? The growth of mutual funds and ETFs? Nope. The dot com boom and bust? Nope. Vanishing pensions? Nope. The not-so-high quality of mortgage bonds? Nope. A 0% personal savings rate nationally? […]
How to lie with statistics: Investment performance charts – A Tip from The Skilled Investor Darrell Huff wrote a short and very informative book, “How to Lie with Statistics,” which was first published in 1954 and was amusingly illustrated by Irving Geis. This book is still in print and remains very popular (Amazon book rank […]
PIRATES OF THE CREDIT SEA – Part 6: Default under the Citibank credit card contract This final article in this series discusses the seven conditions of default under the Citibank / ATT Universal card agreement. It also expresses my opinions about contractual relationships in general and about the Citibank / AT&T Universal credit card contract […]
The Birth of Yet Another Darn “Asset Class” – “Infrastructure” Recently, The Skilled Investor published two articles: The first article discussed how the financial industry keeps manufacturing new asset classes for brokers and investment advisors to sell to individual investors. The Skilled Investor raised the question of whether these new asset classes are likely to […]
PIRATES OF THE CREDIT SEA — Part 5: I write to the President of CitiBank Customer Service My saga to recover my credit card treasure continues. Previous articles have covered the particulars of my situation, and I will not repeat them. In summary, for fifteen years I have always done my best to conform to […]
Use Caution with Classical Investment Books – A Tip from The Skilled Investor Individual investors should exercise caution when applying the tactics of classical investment books to current markets. The more handcrafted, seat-of-the-pants, and individual actor approach to the securities markets in the pre-computer, pre-networking era has given way to different practices. What might have […]
PIRATES OF THE CREDIT SEA – Part 4: Hitting the Citibank Stone Wall in Polite Conversation This article continues my personal saga of trying to get Citibank to fix problems with their management of my credit card account with them. For a summary of the overall situation, go to Part #1: My Treasure Is Taken! […]
PIRATES OF THE CREDIT SEA – Part 3: I want my treasure back!! (Please) What are my rights in the situation that I summarized in my previous article: “PIRATES OF THE CREDIT SEA: My Treasure Is Taken!“? Well, the answer is very simple. I have a contractual right to get my treasure back. I also […]