Wealth management experts identify the need for parents to help their children to plan for college and postgraduate life starting at an early age.  Some experts suggest that children from wealthy families often struggle to handle their finances once they graduate from college due to everything being given to them while they are young.  One [...]

They say there is a coffee shop on Wall Street  serving a Stock Market Breakfast-scrambled nest eggs. With millions of aging baby boomers continuing to work past normal retirement age, many clients are wondering if there is anything they can do to reduce income taxes on social security benefits. Annuities are one way to access [...]

A Financial Adviser calls his client and says that he has bad news and worst news. Which would the client like to hear first? “The bad news,” the client says. “All your money will be gone in 24 hours”. “What’s the worst news?” To which the advisor says “I should have made this call yesterday”. [...]

March is one of the nicest times of the year. Spring is in the air, warmer temperatures, flowers are blossoming and oh yes, Basketball. March madness is a time where people absolutely go crazy, sports fan or not. I have never seen so many people predicting the outcome of a game than when it comes [...]

We have all heard the horror stories of individuals just not having enough to retire on.  Some of us are even leading characters in these stories.  The majority of Americans just do not know how to invest, or even save.  That’s where the state of Oregon could be changing things.  House Bill 3436 is a [...]

Brian Grigg of Fidelity and Guarantee recently wrote about targeting a specific group of baby boomers for annuity sales.  Grigg refers to boomers born from 1955 to 1964 as the trailing edge boomers.  This group differs from the earlier boomer population.  They had different life experiences and see things through a different lens than their [...]

I am reminded about the chiropractor who adjusted the backbones of an avid but duffer golfer. After the crack in the back, the patient asked the doctor if he felt the relief would help his game. The chiropractor answered the patient, Joe, “I can heal the sick but I can’t raise the dead.”   After [...]

The most widely followed stock index in the world is the Standard and Poor’s 500, a capitalization- weighted index followed from sea to shining sea and around the Globe from Wall Street to Wallyworld.  It covers a wide variety of companies from Apple to Big Lots.  It is still after 18 years, by far the [...]

In a world that is challenging to find assets that zig while others zag, Real Estate Investment Trusts or REITS,  have provided an effective way to invest in the housing and commercial property recovery while outperforming the broader equity market, and the S&P 500 index the last 4 years. The performance of REITS have been significantly [...]

With BNP Paribas upgrading AVIVA, it’s beginning to appear that analysts are beginning to see rreal value in Private Equity’s entrance into the Annuity Industry. I am reminded, however, that their estimates of hidden value are like a bikini. What they reveal is important. What they conceal is vital. As AVIVA’s U.S. operations are divested [...]