Monday, April 27, 2015

What is Your Retirement Plan? - Post 2

So what is your retirement plan? Do you have a pension, 401k, IRA, Roth or other?

Today Seniors have almost 4 trillion invested in 401k plans. Many of these plans are invested in mutual funds and other high-fee investments sold by Financial Advisers who sell the client on what produces the most fees and profit for themselves not for you.

This can be a disaster for your retirement savings. Ad in taxes and it is no wonder why people are afraid of their retirements not carrying them until their death.

Unfortunately, you are risking your money and having to decide what to invest in. You probably know little about investing.

Many factors are happening in real time such as volatile markets. Combine that with exorbitant fees and the tax man (who will take up to 50%) and the world can be a pretty scary place.

So how do most invest?

They use a financial adviser. He recommends how to invest there funds in there 401K and other investments.

Is this wise? Financial Advisers earn their money from commissions on what they sell. So like any good salesman they will sell you what pays them the most money as opposed to what makes you the most money.

Mutual funds also advertise whet the made. So let’s say that they made a 10% for the year. Is that what you get? No!!

Forbes Magazine did a study of the costs of mutual funds. They found that on average the following fees are subtracted:

"Cost Summary

The following summarizes the average quantifiable costs described. Adviser and soft dollar costs are excluded due to the large range in advisory fees and the difficulty of quantifying soft dollar costs. When working with a financial adviser, it is important to add the advisory fee to the mutual fund costs listed below for an accurate depiction of total potential costs.


Non-Taxable Account


Taxable Account
Expense Ratio .90%
Expense Ratio .90%
Transaction Costs 1.44%
Transaction Costs 1.44%
Cash Drag .83%
Cash Drag .83%
Tax Cost 1.00%
Total Costs 3.17%
Total Costs 4.17%

Commissions to salesman about .75%"

So out of 6%  you actually get either 2% 0r 2% depending on whether you have a Taxable or a Non-Taxable account. What if the fund had a year where they did only 5% or less (you can lose money?)

Action – I strongly advise you to contact you adviser and get a full list of fees for anything you are invested in. Demand it in writing. Then move to investments with mush lower fees

We will quantify precise numbers in the next blog post

Don’t be like the fellow in the cartoon below.



As usual please send us your comments and any topics you would like to discuss. 

Also realize I am writing this to give people information to help them keep the most money they can in in their pocket. At no time to we sell any financial products or get commissions for any recommendation. This blog will be updates every Monday.






Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Senior Finances – Simplified - Post 1


My name is Fred. I am a 66-year-old senior citizen. I was a senior executive in several large companies such as IBM and ITT. I still run several successful companies and that I would like to share my knowledge with others….as I have seen many that struggle with finances due to lack of Knowledge

At the age of about 50, I started looking at the company’s pension plans as well as the government programs. What I found has shocked. It takes a lot of hard work to try to understand how “OUR” money is invested and in most cases; we are not making much headway in growing out money to support our retirement. The years from 2008 – 2015 have seen a lot of investment accounts and 401k plans lose money (in many cases a lot of money). Many seniors who planned on retiring will now have to work another 5 to 10 years because of these problems.

Seniors need to understand their investments in simple language so they can stop losing money.

This blog will address in simple language how you are being taken for a ride on your investments and what you can do about it. I will give specific strategies to help you make and keep your money and steer your away from money holes. I get nothing out of it. I just want to help those that are unfamiliar with investments

We do not nor have we ever sold any financial investment products. The advice given is from years of research into my own accounts and gives practical tips in plain language so it can be easily understood. We have no vested interests

If there were topics, you would like me to address, please put them on the blog
This blog will be update weekly.

What are people worried about
These results are from Gallup's annual Economy and Personal Finance poll, conducted April 3-6, 2014.

They show the top financial concerns of in various age brackets

Please note that the number one fear is not having enough money for retirement.


I hope you will follow along with me in sharing 15 years of my own learning and research into the subject.
Speak to you next week