Retirement Planning that Helps You Sleep at Night

Let me be blunt. If you’re like the vast majority of Americans, your retirement plan is about as good as the survival plan of that last lemming heading over the cliff!

For most of us, our “retirement planning” has been manipulated by our employers, Wall Street, and celebrity talking heads – all of whom have their own agendas that don’t seem to prioritize our financial security and well-being. And the vast majority of personal financial representatives have chosen to stick with conventional strategies without even questioning the less-than-stellar results they’ve given us over the years.

Risk, a four-letter word?When a “plan” proves that it isn’t getting the results it’s supposed to produce, doesn’t it make sense to come up with a different plan? (The answer is “Yes!”)

Over the next several blog posts, I’ll illustrate specifically how and why your conventional retirement plan is failing you and changes you can make that will let you build a retirement savings fund that is safe and secure – guaranteed.

Let’s start with the problems of conventional retirement plans. I know of at least six major pitfalls and traps and I’ll cover each one in detail. The first painful trap is RISK. [Read more…] “Retirement Planning that Helps You Sleep at Night”

Shocking New Report Wall Street Doesn’t Want You To See

I’m holding in my hands a hot-off-the-press Report from the well-respected research firm, DALBAR, Inc., about the actual returns investors have been getting in the stock market over the last 20 years. The news is shocking, but should make sense if you’ve been having the feeling your investment accounts aren’t rising at the rate the market has been…

  • The average equity fund investor has gotten less than half of the return of the S&P 500 over the last two decades – beating inflation by less than 1% per year
  • The average fixed income investor got – you should probably sit down for thisonly 15% of the return of the related benchmark (Barclay’s Aggregate Bond Index)
  • The typical asset allocation investor got less than 30% of the return of the S&P 500 – 2.12% per year to be exact – and didn’t even keep up with inflation!

So… was that worth all the roller coaster ups and downs and sleepless nights?

[Read more…] “Shocking New Report Wall Street Doesn’t Want You To See”