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I’m wondering if there’s data on how much dividends for total market or S&P500 go up or down on average during bull vs bear market. As a retiree, I rely on my dividends and interest for my living expenses. It seems somewhat arbitrary to just hold 5-7 years of total living expenses (minus SS/pension) when in fact, dividends would like still happen even in a market downturn?
EARLY LAST WEEK, The Wall Street Journal ran an article with the headline “Why This Frothy Market Has Me Scared.” The author cited a number of indicators that have him worried, including a survey of investor optimism that’s at a 35-year high. Investors, the Journal said, are feeling “euphoric,” and that’s often a bad sign.
So, as we head into year-end, it’s worth taking stock of where things stand. The stock market has returned nearly 25% so far this year.
SIPPING MORNING coffee on the porch of my 40-year-old aluminum box in the Sonoran Desert, I’m pondering the cost of housing.
My affordable unit sits on cement piers at the end of a street within an age-restricted park, at the sparsely populated edge of Tucson. Few jobs exist nearby. Civic amenities are modest. Summer weather is challenging, with heat, thunderstorms and seasonal rattlesnakes. Still, these conditions have created a financially comfortable place for a retiree to live.
When you compare HD readers on subjects like Social Security, health care, retirement, saving and investing, 401k, managing money and all that goes with those topics, with the general public, well, there is no comparison. HD readers know their stuff or know when to ask when they aren’t sure of the facts.
And, of course, discussions, even disagreements remain civil – except maybe when I write about my theory of retirement income replacement. 😎.
I scan several social media sites each day.
So reads a Wall Street Journal headline.
This begs the question, how do Americans want to pay for their health care?
They don’t want to spend their money- even for relatively minor expenses like a co-pay
They want someone else to take the risk, but not make any money
They want quality care, but with little idea how to define that other than more of it at high prices
They don’t want high premiums or taxes
They don’t want to wait for care
They don’t want restrictions on accessing care or selecting a provider
They don’t want anyone approving care or denying to pay for it.
I want to ditch my great 401(k).
When BrightScope rankings of 401(k) plans were available to individual investors, mine ranked very highly. By most measures in this Morningstar article on whether to keep your 401(k) in retirement, mine merits keeping. Besides these factors, I have a few of my own reasons that I like it.
First, I like its stable value fund, which is managed to keep a $1 per share price (not guaranteed) but with a higher return than any money market I’ve seen.
I recently read – again – that 401k plans are a scam. You can’t save enough, you can lose money, etc.
Consider these words of wisdom. “It is a scam. When I worked in corporate America I contributed the max amount each year. At the time it was $19k per year. It took 5+ years to hit $100k. When I stopped contributing it barely grew.”
We don’t know the years involved, but nevertheless it’s nonsense. Investing the $19,000 a year even in a GIC would get you over $100,000 in less than five years.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM, the father of investment analysis, made this observation: “The investor’s chief problem—even his worst enemy—is likely to be himself.”
Why? One reason is our intuition can sometimes lead us astray. Things that seem like they make sense, and seem like they ought to be true, often turn out not to be supported by the data.
Perhaps the best-known example is the divergence between growth and value stocks. Intuition suggests that growth stocks—companies like Apple and Amazon—would deliver better performance than their more pedestrian peers on the value side of the market.
IT’S AN ARGUMENT I’ll never win. But perhaps I can sow a few seeds of doubt.
The anti-foreign-stock drumbeat has grown louder with each additional year that international markets underperform U.S. shares. Indeed, even though foreign stocks beat U.S. shares in the 1970s, 1980s and 2000s, there are folks today who argue there’s no reason to own foreign shares.
Really? Before you throw in the towel, ask yourself six questions:
1. If U.S.
THE JUNE 16, 2021, edition of The Washington Post carried this headline: “Cristiano Ronaldo snubbed Coca-Cola. The company’s market value fell $4 billion.”
The incident in question had occurred a few days earlier, at a press conference in Budapest, where the soccer star was set to play in a high-profile championship game. Coca-Cola was a sponsor of the tournament, so when Ronaldo sat down at the microphone, he found two bottles of Coke positioned in front of him.
THE TOUGH PART COMES last.
Saving for retirement is pretty straightforward: You sock away as much as you can, favor stock funds, diversify broadly, keep investment costs low and make the most of tax-advantaged retirement accounts. By contrast, paying for retirement can involve mind-boggling complexity—and a big reason is the tax code.
The good news: Once you quit the workforce, you have a fair amount of control over your annual tax bill, especially if you aren’t yet taking required minimum distributions (RMDs) from your traditional retirement accounts,
As a recent retiree who is using my cash reserves to cross my two-year “bridge” to my SS claiming date, I need to decide from which of my tax-free accounts I should withdraw to supplement our living expenses as I move into 2025. I will have used up my taxable account funds by the end of 2024.
Given our household’s low taxable income during this period I have been doing strategic (fill up the tax bracket,
I’m wondering if any other HD readers have run into this policy at TRowe Price?
Here’s what happened:
I am trying to get my year end portfolio in alignment. I am trying to generate cash to fund my taxable withdrawals from two inherited IRAs for the next two years.
On 1/29 I sold a balanced fund in an account in mother’s name and transferred the proceeds into a money market fund in the same account.
Today I tried to do the same trade in my father’s account and a T Rowe supervisor said I could not do that due to their frequent trading policy as the first sale was >
IT’S IMPORTANT TO BE familiar with what happens with Social Security benefits when someone dies. Otherwise, you may find yourself in a long, painstaking battle to get the payment to which your loved one was entitled. I found this out the hard way.
My father-in-law Bernard died in September 2015. My wife was his executor and the agent under his power of attorney (POA). But I’d earlier served as POA and executor for my mother,
I MAY NOT BE THE best source of retirement advice. After all, I’ve called myself semi-retired for a decade and yet, faced with a grim medical diagnosis, I continue to work far too hard. Moreover, even if I opt to fully retire—which is doubtful—cancer will likely ensure my retirement will be all too brief.
On the other hand, I do run a website devoted to retirement issues, and that means I spend a lot of time reading and thinking about the topic.
