Category Archives: Uncategorized

Part 1: Is your retirement portfolio at its peak value for the rest your life?

Last week I read this article “The Long-Term Forecast for US Stock Returns = 7.5%”. The article assumes 2.5% future inflation. That means the forecast translates to ~5% real return for stock vs. the historical average of ~7%. That’s 30% lower ((5-7)/7). I

I switched financial advisors this week. What was my thinking?

Several of my friends have separated from their financial advisors and became a self-reliant investor. It’s pretty simple for us nest eggers, since our total portfolio is only four index funds. I have never hired a financial advisor for our money. But I separated this

What’s the effective capital gains tax rate? Isn’t it really more than 15%?

The capital gains tax rate is really is more than 15%, because the calculation of gain does not adjust your cost basis for inflation. When you pay tax on capital gains, you are paying tax on the real component of gain and on the inflation

What does PSERS do to improve its investment returns?

I went CRAZY this week thinking about PSERS – Pennsylvania’s School Employees Retirement System. I wrote about PSERS two weeks ago, but I couldn’t get it out of my head this week. Why? PSERS is committed to an investment strategy that we nesteggers would

What’s the history of inflation, and might history foretell the future?

I posted last week about the latest calculation of 4.2% annual rate of inflation, May 2020 to May 2021. This is greater than the Federal Reserve’s long-term objective of expectations of annual inflation to be “well anchored at 2 percent”. Is 2 percent a reasonable

How bad must inflation be to be worrisome?

We all have read about recent increases in inflation; the annual inflation rate in April was 4.2%, the highest in 13 years. How concerned should we be? The purpose of this post is to simply remind us of how bad inflation was in the period

Is it possible to mismanage a retirement portfolio any worse than Pennsylvania’s pension fund for teachers?

This article in the New York Times (FBI Asking Questions After a Pension Fund Aimed High and Fell Short) prompted me to look at the performance results for Pennsylvania’s Public Schools Employees’ Retirement System (PSERS) pension fund. What a mess, and I CANNOT

How do you use the money you have in a Roth IRA to avoid paying tax?

With proper use of a Roth IRA, retirees with higher retirement income can avoid paying taxes that they just don’t need to pay. This post describes how to use your Roth IRA to avoid paying tax of about $850 per year (single taxpayer) or $1,700

Have you written down your financial retirement plan?

I updated my summary of our financial retirement plan a couple of weeks ago. I show our original written plan in Appendix B in Nest Egg Care (NEC), and I displayed my summary 3 X 5 card from December 2014 on the last

Does your brain have the correct financial model for your future?

This week I listened to two talks by Jeff Hawkins, author of a new book, One Thousand Brains. I haven’t read the book yet. The talks are here and here. My summary is that the thinking part of our brain builds models of

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