DIY Personal & Retirement Financial Planning
Do-It-Yourself financial and investment planning Excel spreadsheet software
US Small-Capitalization Value and Growth Stock Mutual Funds Small Cap Index Fund Investments with low costs This summary delivers a list of the least expensive small capitalization value and growth stock mutual fund investments. The list of the lowest expense index investment company funds in the small cap index fund asset class tends to be […]
Real Estate/REOC/REIT Mutual Funds with lowest fees Low Cost REIT Mutual Funds This chart delivers a listing of the lowest expense real estate index mutual funds investments. The listing of very economical index investment company funds in the xxx asset class is relatively stable across time. Shareholders in the most economical index funds are more […]
International mid-cap, small-cap, and emerging markets stock mutual funds List of international mid-cap and small-cap stock mutual funds with the lowest costs This section provides a listing of the lowest cost international small-cap, mid-cap, and emerging markets stock mutual funds. See the chart in this article for the least expensive index mutual funds investments. This […]
Here is some really good news for you. The Skilled Investor has published an article about lower cost S&P 500 index mutual funds that you can read, entitled: Low Cost S&P 500 Index Mutual Funds. The Standard & Poors 500 stock index is the most common equity index fund benchmark in the U.S. The S […]
Here is some really good news for you. The Skilled Investor has published an article about lower cost S&P 500 index mutual funds that you can read, entitled: Low Cost S&P 500 Index Mutual Funds. The Standard & Poors 500 stock index is the most common equity index fund benchmark in the U.S. The S […]
The table below presents The Skilled Investor’s Fund Authority Score and other information for the DWS S&P 500 Index Fund (SXPAX). The Scudder Equity 500 Index Fund (BTIEX) and the DWS S&P 500 Index Fund (SXPAX) Financial Planning Software for Individuals The Skilled Investor has published an article about lower cost S&P 500 index mutual […]
The table below in this article presents The Skilled Investor’s Fund Authority Score and other information for the SSgA S & P 500 Index Fund (SVSPX). The Skilled Investor has also published an article about lower cost S&P 500 index mutual funds that you can read, which is entitled: Low Cost S&P 500 Index Mutual […]
Fund Authority Scores rate mutual funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs) on the most important economic factors that influence individual investors’ net long term diversified investment fund performance. The Skilled Investor developed the Fund Authority Score system to provide individual investors with concise, objective, and realistic summaries of mutual funds and ETFs for comparisons within […]
The diversified investment fund strategy of the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund According to the Vanguard website, the investment strategy of the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index mutual fund is to use a “passive management—or indexing—investment approach designed to track the performance of the MSCI® US Broad Market Index, which represents 99.5% or more […]
The Standard & Poors 500 stock index is the most common equity index fund benchmark in the U.S. The S and P 500 tracks about 75% of publicly traded U.S. equity market asset value. The dominant issue in choosing among passively managed index mutual funds and ETF funds benchmarked against the S & P 500 […]
Actively-managed mutual funds are not created equally. Performance can vary significantly – even when funds pursue similar strategies or “styles.” This article addresses the impact on portfolio diversification of holding more than one actively-managed mutual fund. (For the companion article to this, see: How many mutual funds are needed for a well-diversified portfolio? – a […]
< <– Go to Part 3 The Biggest Personal Finance Story of the Past 30 Years – Part 4 Family Financial Planning Software for Home Use 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 […]
< — Go to Part 1 The Biggest Personal Finance Story of the Past 30 Years – Part 2 Find Family Financial Planning Software 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 financial […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]