Wall Street skips a beat on three words. The words were “around six months,” and they were spoken by Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen at the Federal Open Market Committee’s March 19 press conference. Those three words sent the Dow south 190 points; it lost 114 points on the trading day. Specifically, Yellen was responding…

America is enduring a data breach epidemic. As 2013 ended, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics released its 2012 Victims of Identity Theft report. Its statistics were sobering. About one in 14 Americans aged 16 or older had been defrauded or preyed upon in the past 12 months, more than 16.6 million people. Just 8% of…

In 1994, a financial advisor named Bill Bengen published research articulating the “4% rule”, which became a landmark of retirement planning. The 4% rule postulates that a retirement nest egg can last 30 years if a retiree withdraws 4% of it per year (incrementally adjusted for inflation), given a portfolio of 50% stocks and 50%…

Just what is an RMD? After you turn 70½, the IRS requires you to withdraw some of the money in most retirement savings accounts each year. These withdrawals are officially called Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs). You must take an RMD from a traditional IRAs after you turn 70½, even if you are still working. If…

You buy a corporate bond at par or at a discount, right? It just seems like common sense. What would lead you to purchase a corporate bond at a premium? Actually, investors do sometimes buy fixed-income securities with coupon rates above current market rates. If interest rates are on the way up, buying a premium…

RETAIL SALES UP 0.3% IN FEBRUARY Weather didn’t stop Americans from shopping last month. February’s headline gain in retail sales was the first in three months and represented a nice turnaround from the (revised) 0.6% drop measured by the Commerce Department for January. Minus car and truck buying, the February increase was still 0.3%. Sales…

Our parents & grandparents saved much more than we do. Most people who have read up on the economy for any length of time have heard of the personal saving rate (PSAVERT), which the Commerce Department calculates as the ratio of personal saving to disposable personal income. The January personal spending report released by the…

In planning for your retirement, you may face several financial issues.  Maybe you’d like to generate retirement income, but want to minimize the taxes on investments you’ve held for several years.  Perhaps you’d like to minimize your income taxes during retirement.  You also might like to reduce the size of your taxable estate so more…

ECONOMY ADDS 175,000 MORE JOBS February’s payroll growth was decent, and seemingly unimpeded by the weather. Last month’s net jobs gain approximated the 12-month average of 179,000 recorded by the Labor Department, which also revised January and December totals north by a collective 25,000 hires. Few of the 264,000 new participants in the job hunt…

Stocks rise, fall … and rise again. Volatility certainly came back to Wall Street during the first several weeks of 2014 in the form of a 7.2% descent for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and a 5.9% retreat for the NASDAQ. The declines gave investors pause: was a correction underway? Would bulls be held back…