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Welcome to the end of the week! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy this weeks roundup of interesting reads in another edition of Happy Hour.
BrandZ released it’s top 100 brands of 2014 this week. With it, Apple was unseated by Google as the top brand this year.
Whether you’re aware of it or not, powerful branding breeds loyalty. With many of these brands, there’s a small fanatical base, like the Apple fanboys, that become walking billboards for the products. Continue Reading…
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The growth and popularity of index investing has provided investors with a great opportunity to move their money away from higher cost mutual funds. However, low costs aren’t the only thing you need to consider these days.
When you drop the fund manager, you become the full-time decision maker for your investments. Done wrong, it opens the door to bad habits, confusion, comprehension risk, and losses. That’s never a good trade-off when discussing the benefits of index based funds, but it’s true.
For each index fund you own, you need to know the underlying index, what it measures, the asset makeup, how the index is weighted, the risks, and finally the costs. It’s a lot to cover, but it all impacts your performance. What once was a simple comparison tool has evolved into a complex investing strategy. Continue Reading…
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Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of interesting reads in the land of money.
If you thought 2014 would be the year of higher rates, so far you’d be wrong. Treasury rates are falling. More worrying, high yield/junk bond rates are down near 5%. Continue Reading…
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Saving for retirement is a goal with a limited number of ways to meet it. Did you know that your IRA investment options extend beyond stocks, bonds, and mutual funds? You have more choices than think.
An IRA (Individual Retirement Account) is just a tax shelter. You use it to store money for retirement, so it can grow tax-free. You see, when you open an IRA and fund it, the money just sits there in the form of cash. Some banks or brokers may offer an interest rate on that money, some don’t. But with rates at all time lows, that money won’t grow very fast. In order to boost that growth, you need to invest it in other assets. Thankfully, the IRS gives you some leeway with all the IRA investment options available.
That doesn’t mean you need to invest in each one. There is nothing wrong with taking a nontraditional approach when investing your retirement money. Just make sure you understand the costs and risks associated with any investment before you begin. And do your homework before jumping into something new. Continue Reading…
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Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of interesting reads in the land of money.
The annual pilgrimage to Omaha, the value investor’s mecca, was this past weekend. I wasn’t in attendance (not a shareholder). But enough travelers take notes every year, plus the media coverage, that anyone can get information on it. Every year there’s a few niblets to take away from the event. Continue Reading…
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Did you get the most tax savings possible this year? Is there anything you could have done differently that would have saved you more money? I bet there was.
You need to be proactive for big tax savings. By the time April rolls around it’s already too late to work the tax code in your favor. The only planning you have left is a last-minute IRA contribution before the deadline to salvage some savings.
Real tax planning is an ongoing process of making small financial changes that lead to big tax savings year after year. You need a plan for that and our extensive tax code offers up some places to start. Continue Reading…