by P.J. DiNuzzo October 31, 2015 What’s a better gift for a young person than a savings bond or a gift card? When you talk with people who have made a lifelong habit of saving and investing, often you’ll hear them say that somebody—often a grandparent—gave them a few shares of stock at a young age. […]
by P.J. DiNuzzo November 4, 2015 Social Security Claiming Strategy Change The outrage is palpable. Financial advisers and their clients who were counting on exercising a coordinated claiming strategy to maximize their Social Security benefits and secure their retirement were shocked to learn that most of those options have been virtually eliminated by a stealth […]
by P.J. DiNuzzo November 5, 2015 Medicare Fix-It Congress has fixed the potentially alarming increase in Medicare Part B premiums under the recently-passed government budget deal. Medicare Part B covers most health care services outside of hospitals, and thus represents one of the biggest expense items in the government-run health system. The program is voluntary, but […]
by P.J. DiNuzzo November 6, 2015 The Cost of a Perfect Market Timing Strategy What if we could construct a strategy with a correlation close to 1 with a perfect market timing strategy? Can we estimate what its returns would have been? Can we use these estimates to understand what the market would have "charged" […]
by P.J. DiNuzzo November 10, 2015 Shifting Share If you want to see global economic history in a single colorful graph, check out this one, produced by The Atlantic magazine. It shows the share of global GDP for various countries since the year 1 AD. What you see in the early years might surprise you. […]
by P.J. DiNuzzo November 12, 2015 MyRA May Not Be YOUR RA Suppose somebody offered you a choice between two cars. The first car was identical to the second car, with one exception: it would only travel at a constant speed of 30 miles an hour. In the other car, you could choose to travel […]
by P.J. DiNuzzo November 16, 2015 The Paris Attacks Most of us watched news coverage of the multiple terrorist acts against the city of Paris, France, with a mixture of horror and dread. The horror was our usual response to terrorism, the feeling that arises when we ask ourselves: how can people think this way? […]
by P.J. DiNuzzo November 17, 2015 Retirement at 75? Chances are you've wondered about the prospects of younger Americans. Will they enjoy the same economic conditions that their parents lived through? Will retirement still be an option for them? The NerdWallet organization recently issued a report which found a few differences between today's college graduates […]
by P.J. DiNuzzo December 9, 2015 Giving Tax Wisely You may have read that Facebook founder, chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced plans to gift substantially all of his Facebook stock to a philanthropic entity called the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, named after himself and his wife Priscilla Chan. The gift would be worth […]
by P.J. DiNuzzo December 12, 2015 Toy Hacking You Undoubtedly Know That Hackers are everywhere these days, including openly operating in Moscow near the government offices and inside the Chinese military. You probably have virus and malware protection on your computer, and you know not to click on suspicious links sent by email. But an interesting new […]
