The Art of Asset Location

You’ve probably heard a realtor tell you that the 3 most important factors in a property’s value are location, location, and location. There’s a similar rule for investments: asset location. Where your assets are located within your portfolio matters.

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How Can You Protect Your Retirement Portfolio During the Election?

The presidential elections usually offer some very stark choices, so often people are concerned about how the election results will effect the economy. Let’s take a deep breath and try to take an objective look at how the election could affect your portfolio.

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Seeking A Fixed Percentage Approach To Retirement Spending

The fixed percentage withdrawal strategy is the polar opposite of constant inflation-adjusted spending. Subsequent strategies we consider will strive to strike a balance between these two. This fixed percentage strategy calls for retirees to spend a constant percentage of the remaining portfolio balance in each year of retirement.

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US Markets Are Outperforming Global Markets, What Should You Do?

To say international stocks haven’t been doing great relative to US stocks is a massive understatement. What does that mean for your portfolio?

Most of the investment advice you get is (or should be) conditional. Advisors tend to steer clear of definitive, blanket statements, but this is one that I’m pretty comfortable making if you have stocks in your portfolio, you should probably own both domestic and international st

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The Most Important Investment Decision You’ll Ever Make

When most people think about investing, they’re thinking about stuff that doesn’t really matter. They’re caught up in the minutiae: What fund should I own? How fast did the iPhone 7 sell out (and are people really going to be okay with no headphone jack)? What sector is going to take off this fall? But that’s not really what determines your portfolio’s fate. What really matters is your ratio between stocks and bonds.

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Common Investor Behaviors That Hurt Investments

In my post from last week, “behavioral coaching” was suggested to have the biggest impact on real-world investor returns. In Vanguard’s analysis, being able to overcome your own behavioral quirks could add more than 1.5% to your returns, as opposed to falling victim to your own human tendencies.

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The Value of Sound Financial Decisions: From Alpha to Gamma

David Blanchett and Paul Kaplan at Morningstar created a similar study about the value of good decision making. Their results and approach are different from those of Vanguard, but the goal is the same: to quantify the costs of poor and good decision making. Naturally, many assumptions must be made regarding good financial decisions and the impact of poor financial decisions.

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The Value of Sound Financial Decisions

Good financial planning decisions extend well beyond where and how you invest. Two major research efforts have attempted to quantify how good financial decision making can enhance your lifetime standard of living. It is important to understand what this research means, because this may not always equal a higher portfolio return in the short term.

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