Building A Retirement Income TIPS Ladder

A TIPS ladder can be constructed similarly to a Treasury strips ladder, learn how it’s done here.
What Would A 30-Year Bond Ladder Cost A Retiree Today?

Building bond ladders for retirement income is an important but understudied topic.
How the Fed Impacts Your Investments

The financial media loves talking about changes in the target for the Federal Funds Rate. What the financial media want to talk about and what actually matters don’t overlap much. Let’s take a look at how changes in the Federal Funds Rate actually impact your investments.
Using Target-Date Retirement Income Funds To Guard Against Interest Rate Risk In Retirement

Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) takes a more direct approach to immunizing retirement liabilities through their target-date retirement income funds. These funds provide a useful case study for understanding the role bond funds play in meeting retirement expenses.
What Are Annuities?

Annuities are like power tools. In the right hands, they can help you considerably, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, you could cut your fingers off.
What Every Retiree Should Know About I Bonds

Any discussion of TIPS requires an additional mention of Series I Savings Bonds. This article will cover the basics of I Bonds.
Which Is Better For Retirement Portfolios: TIPS Or Traditional Treasuries?

Traditional bonds are priced around the objective of getting a return that exceeds expected inflation. If inflation is unexpectedly high, then the real return on nominal bonds is less.
What Do TIPS Tell Us About Future Inflation Rates?

Today, I want to talk about what TIPS can tell us about inflation. Exhibit 1 shows the TIPS yield curve for January 3, 2017. Yields are negative for TIPS maturing prior to 2022, and positive beyond that, although the longest ones do not even reach 1%. The Treasury stopped issuing thirty-year TIPS in the early 2000s and, more recently, eliminated twenty-year TIPS. That is why you see gaps in the yield curve—represented by dashed lines in the exhibit—with no TIPS maturity in 2030-31 and 2033-39.
How Far Should You Trust Market Models?

We use models all the time. We are constantly making decisions based on them – everything from simple heuristics (nachos taste good), all the way up to (and including) quantum mechanics. They’re great tools for helping us understand and make sense of the world. But it’s important to understand their limitations and the dangers of […]
The Investment TIPS You Should Care About

The U.S. began issuing Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) in 1997. Backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government and assurances that inflation cannot eat away at their value, TIPS provide a risk-free asset for U.S.-based investors.