risk tolerance level

Defining a good goal is hard enough in itself, but people still fail even with well thought out SMART goals. Why? The answer is simple: they fail to turn these goals into actions. Generally, a goal is broad and hard to identify practical ways to achieve it. To transform your goals into practical actions is [...]

My company made Vanguard Target Retirement Funds available for our 401k accounts about two years ago. However, I have not used them preferring to manually manage my own portfolio using traditional funds that include bond, large-cap, small-cap, international stock, and REIT funds. However, Target Retirement Funds are not without merits — in fact, I’ve been [...]

Bonds, or fixed income securities, are debt instruments issued by companies or the government that pay a certain amount of interest, and the full principal amount at the maturity date. The interest rate for bonds depends on a variety of factors, such as the current market interest rates, the maturity date, and the credit worthiness [...]

With the current economic crisis in full swing, it’s easy for us to fall into the recency bias trap.  In psychology, the recency effect is the tendency to remember more recent events or observations more vividly and give recent information more weight than historical information. Unfortunately, this recency bias could cause you to abandon your [...]

A friend of mine is hit hard by the 40% plus drop in his 401(k) and the daily gyration haven’t made it any easier.  He was seriously considering cashing out of his 401k and stop contributing altogether.  After a long conversation with him, I was able to explain to him why this was a bad [...]

Asset allocation is an investing a strategy for maximizing gains while minimizing risks in your investment portfolio. It involves diversifying your assets among different broad categories of investments, such as equity, fixed income, and money market, etc.  By reducing your investment risks, you’re in a better position to meet your financial goals.
How Asset Allocation Works
The [...]

This is the 8th issue of the Ask The Expert column by Larry Swedroe. You can see Larry’s full biography and important disclaimer below. If you are interested in having your question answered by Larry, please send me an email via the contact page.
Now, let’s get to the questions and answers (please note that the [...]

In the past few years, Americans average savings rate has declined precipitously — in fact the current savings rate is practically zero. This means that as a society, we are not saving any money. Worse, we have a habit of borrowing to fuel our consumption. We are spending more than we earn, and that’s a [...]

Kent Irwin, who recently wrote a guest article: Is Suze Orman Right, Can You Be Your Own Financial Planner?, sent me a free license to use his eFinPLAN online financial planning software. In this post, I am going to provide you with my initial experience, and I will follow up with a second post to [...]

With the recent turn of events, I have been giving a lot of thought about what to do in event of economic slowdown — i.e., recession, stagflation, depression, financial doom, or whatever you want to call it. As I put this list of 5 strategies together, I realize that they are nothing more than responsible [...]