Category Retirement Finance
Structured Products II- Good or Bad? It Depends on Your “View”.
Structured Products II- Good or Bad? It Depends on Your “View”. An earlier blog provided an overview of Structured Products . As a specific structured product application consider an enhanced index product with six year maturity whose payback is 1.45x the reference price index return in local currency (without dividends),when it is positive, ; and […]
Balanced Portfolio: Simple and Cheap ETF Implementation
(Originally posted July 16, 2008) Why is this important? Because over a lifetime of saving for retirement, total assets accumulated at 1.5% and 3.0% annual fees are respectively 23% and 46% lower than those resulting from 0.4% fees (Ambachtsheer and Bauer)!Or, because in retirement 1.5% extra annual cost can reduce you standatrd of living by […]
Comparing strategies for retirement wealth management: Mutual funds and annuities by Pang and Warshawsky
Comparing strategies for retirement wealth management: Mutual funds and annuities by Pang and Warshawsky in the Journal of Financial Planning This was a wonderful, must read and long overdue paper in the latest issue of the Journal of Financial Planning which will help advisers (and sophisticated do-it-yourselfers) better understand available decumulation strategies and the fundamental […]
Control what you can!
(Originally posted June 13, 2009)
Protecting the Downside, while Participating in the Upside
Protecting the Downside, while Participating in the Upside A couple of months ago in “Lifecycle investing” I, superficially touched, upon Zvi Bodie’s view that diversification is not the only way to reduce investment/market risk. In fact, according to him, it may not even be the best way. In a reference that I quote in that […]
What’s in the budget for retirees?
What’s in the budget for retirees? Well not a great deal more than the reaffirmed pension splitting announced last Halloween. The additional goodies included here are mostly covered in Chevreau’s FP article “Retirees: two more years for saving”: • RRIFs start date moved from age 69 to 71, adding opportunity for a further two years […]
Withdrawal Strategies in Retirement (expanded)
Withdrawal Strategies in Retirement (expanded) Clearly, unless you are in the fortunate position of having been a longtime employee with an employer providing a guaranteed, generous and indexed pension plan (e.g. you’re a retiree from a government job), withdrawal rates from your accumulated assets will be one of the more stressful decisions that you’ll have […]
Withdrawal Strategies in Retirement
Withdrawal Strategies in Retirement Suppose that you just retired and you are trying to figure out how much can you withdraw per year from your accumulated asset base. Traditionally people used to say “never touch the principal, only withdraw the interest” and that retirees should be invested in guaranteed fixed income instruments only! The problems […]
(Mostly) Great News for Retirees/Pensioners
(Mostly) Great News for Retirees/Pensioners Welcome to the first issue of RetirementAction. I hope you wil return to help evolve and improve this periodic communication on how to take control of our financial future. Mr. Flaherty, Canada’s Minister of Finance showed up on Halloween with a trick and a treat. Much ink has been spilled […]
There are risks, but I’ll stay with ETFs for my money: ETF concerns- Has anything changed?
There are risks, but I’ll stay with ETFs for my money: ETF concerns- Has anything changed? In a nutshell Yes there are risks everywhere, but I am sticking with ETFs so long as they are used as they were intended to be. Broad/diversified asset classes (except where accessing in a limited application otherwise inaccessible asset […]
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