Money Matters’ buy, hold, and sell strategy is designed to enable us to participate in the stock market as long it is going up. We see that as an unlimited upside. The strategy also tells us when the market is trending downward so we can get out hopefully before any major damage is done. It can sometimes predict a bear market that doesn’t happen and there could be a small loss or tax consequences. That’s a tolerable downside,
I recently received an email from a listener who told me he wants to beat the S&P 500 index. If you are retired or close to retirement, I don’t think that’s wise. At that stage, I think you should not be looking to grow your investments. I believe you should be in protection mode, where your main goal regarding your investments is the preservation of your standard of living.
At Money Matters, we advise our clients to take only as much risk as is necessary to accomplish their financial goals.
If you are retired or retiring soon, you probably have different financial needs than you did when you were younger, and will soon need to replace your wages. If you’re counting on your investments to do that for you, I believe your number one job is to protect your principal. After all, if you lose half your money in the next bear market, you probably won’t be able to live the retirement lifestyle you want.
The stock market is making history—and not the good kind. As of this writing, it looks as if the market will have its worst December since the Great Depression. This news could be even worse than it appears: The last three months are usually the strongest of the year—instead it appears that the S&P will end 2018 with a loss of 5.6%.
The market could rally, and I would not be surprised to see it do so for a short period of time.
When creating a trust, there are two basic ways to go: the revocable or the irrevocable trust. What’s the difference?
To begin with, “revocable” means “capable of being revoked” or “changeable.” If you create a revocable trust, you can change the terms and details whenever you want. And yes, “irrevocable “ means the opposite: once written, even you cannot change the trust. Both types of trusts have their place.
Flexibility is the obvious benefit to the revocable trust.
