Knowledge is power, but is there such as thing as too much information? In this day and age of technology, it’s so easy to get information.  Want to know how to replace a laptop screen? Watch a YouTube video.  Should you refinance your mortgage? Check out bankrate.com for current rates. Should you invest in a mutual fund [...]

Prudential is exiting the long term care field on 3/31/2012.  John Hancock policy owners are realizing a 30-90% rate increase on customers existing policies.  What is happening? 1. Insurance companies assumed their reserves would rise at 7.5% per year.  That didn’t happen. 2. They had a lower lapse rate.  This means that fewer people dropped [...]

Whenever TV pundits talk about investments, you generally hear them mention price/earnings (PE or P/E) ratios as the best way to value a stock, and there is usually talk about earnings estimates and whether a company beat or failed to live up to analyst forecasts.  But behind the camera, most investment professionals recognize that a [...]

At a recent informative presentation, Judith Mauer, CEO of Low Load Insurance Services presented some tips on applying for insurance (any type including life insurance and long term care).  After going through the underwriting process for the various forms of insurance, she highlighted two items for anyone who is seeking new insurance coverage to consider:  Be [...]

In a surprisingly candid opinion piece in the New York Times yesterday, recently resigned Goldman Sachs executive director Greg Smith essentially pulled the curtains opened and showed how Wall Street really works. Smith declared that he was resigning from the large brokerage firm because, in his view, its culture is all about putting the client’s interests last.  “To put the problem [...]

Most of us have heard way too much about the finances of a relatively small member of the global economy: Greece, and its debt crisis.  Recently one economist described the Greek debt default as “the slowest-moving train wreck in history.” But now, the constant parade of headlines may be over. On Friday, March 9, holders of [...]

There is a good chance you missed the article on page C7 of the Wall Street Journal on January 24, but the events discussed caused quite a stir in the financial planning world.  As the article stated, the Securities and Exchange Commission has delayed implementing a key part of the Dodd-Frank Act, which required fiduciary [...]

An interesting quote by Jean-Paul Kauffmann reminds us that we live in an uncertain world so no amount of technical research can provide an analyst all the right answers: “The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters.”   //

If Rip Van Investor had fallen asleep at the start of the 20th century, and woke up with a yawn 100 years later at midnight, December, 1999, he would have been startled to see that his investment in the S&P 500 had gained more than 10% a year, on average, during his 100-year nap.   He [...]

An article by MorningstarAdvisor begs the question: “How Safe Is Our Clients’ Money?”  We thought you might like some of the insights we found in the article. It highlights the downfall of MF Global, who filed for bankruptcy on October 31, 2011 as a recent example of why broker-dealer firms fail. However, the article argues that despite the [...]