Do-It-Yourself financial and investment planning Excel spreadsheet software
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? […]
Summary Table of Traditional IRA and Roth IRA Tax Rules For your convenience, The Skilled Investor has provided a detailed table that summarizes 2007 rules for traditional IRAs and Roth IRAs. Family Financial Planning Software for Consumers Because this table has 13 columns and 20 rows, it is too large to be displayed properly in […]
Introduction: Roth IRA Contributions versus Traditional IRA Contributions for Renters In a series of articles, The Skilled Investor compares different lifetime financial planning projections for Fran and Fred Frugal to illustrate the relative value of adopting different financial planning strategies. Fran and Fred, both ages 30, are a married working couple with $100,000 in combined […]
Introduction In a series of articles, The Skilled Investor compares different lifetime financial planning projections for Fran and Fred Frugal to illustrate the relative value of adopting different financial planning strategies. Fran and Fred, both age 30, are a married working couple with $100,000 in combined annual earned income. (See the “Fran and Fred’s Baseline […]
When to Take Social Security Retirement Benefits? Concerning when to take Social Security retirement benefits, the Boston College Center for Retirement Research has some research in their publications section that addresses this subject. In particular, see “SHOULD WE RAISE SOCIAL SECURITY’S EARLIEST ELIGIBILITY AGE” by Alicia H. Munnell, Kevin B. Meme, Natalia A. Jivan, and […]
Early retirement for renters due to investment cost improvements and higher savings rates Improving on Fran and Fred’s lifetime financial plan with earlier retirement Fran and Fred Frugal, both age 30, are a married working couple with $100,000 in combined annual earned income. They want to understand how valuable different personal finance strategies could be […]
Pre-retirement savings rates for renters – with and without investment cost improvements Improving on Fran and Fred’s lifetime financial plan through lower investment costs Fran and Fred Frugal, both age 30, are a married working couple with $100,000 in combined annual earned income. They want to understand how valuable different personal finance strategies could be […]
Lifetime investment assets of renters through investment cost improvements Improving on Fran and Fred’s lifetime financial plan through lower investment costs Fran and Fred Frugal, both age 30, are a married working couple with $100,000 in combined annual earned income. They want to understand how valuable different personal finance strategies could be to their lifetime […]
Retirement savings needs of renters prior to any financial planning improvements Starting to plan with a non-optimal baseline projection Fran and Fred Frugal, both age 30, are a married working couple with $100,000 in combined annual earned income. They want to understand how valuable different personal finance strategies could be to their lifetime finances and […]
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 […]
10 Lower Cost S&P 500 Index Mutual Funds Regular readers know that The Skilled Investor advocates a very boring, low cost, broad market, passive index investment strategy. Costs less. Gets the broad market return — whatever that will be. Narrows the range of outcomes and therefore the risk to your long-term personal financial plan. Takes […]
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 […]
The kind of financial advisor you need – A Tip from The Skilled Investor Good or bad, financial advisors are expensive. If you need a financial advisor’s help and you carefully select a good financial advisor, the value of the personal finance and investment advice that you receive might easily repay the advisor cost. However, […]
Check out this automated tool for aligning your investment risk tolerance and asset allocation – A Tip from The Skilled Investor Your tolerance for investment risk is a relative thing. Few people like investment risk, but some can handle it better than others can. The more investment risk you are willing to tolerate, the higher […]
Commodity futures in your investment portfolio – Is there really any future for individual investors? The Skilled Investor’s previous article, “Be wary of the new investment asset classes,” voiced skepticism about many supposedly new asset classes. This article delves into the financial science behind this skepticism, as it relates to one of these supposedly new […]
Hear ye, Hear Ye, individual investors: Be wary of new investment asset classes – A Tip from The Skilled Investor Many promoters in the financial services industry have shown a strong proclivity in recent years to invent and to market supposedly “new” investment asset classes. Industry advocates will claim that these new asset classes deserve […]
Your personal tolerance for investment risk should drive your asset allocation decision – A Tip from The Skilled Investor Your tolerance for investment risk is a relative thing. Few people like investment risk, but some can handle it better than others do. The more investment risk you can and are willing to tolerate, the higher […]
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 […]