Where an Advisor Can Make a Big Difference
'When one retires now has a much greater effect on one’s retirement income, but workers lack cultural or clearly marked financial incentives to indicate when to retire, and are...
Insurance U. Becomes Retirement U.
Conceived by Solomon Huebner (pictured in the 1950s) to give life insurance salesmen a professional gloss, The American College has, with money from New York Life, become Retirement Income...
Advisors: How to Outsmart the Smartphone
The shorthand message to registered investment advisors at the Technology Tools for Today (T3) conference in chilly Fort Lauderdale this week: Don't end up as a Yellow Cab in...
The Prodigal Daughter (and the Annuity)
An elderly woman's remaining wealth was being eroded by a feckless daughter and granddaughter. Could an advisor solve a family mess with an annuity?
DFA and S&P Collaborate on STRIDE Index
STRIDE stands for Shift To Retirement Income and DEcumulation. 'We see the index as an appropriate benchmark for the transition from wealth accumulation to income,' said Philip Murphy, vice...
Legal Defenses
Will the financial services industry sue the Department of Labor if it doesn't like the final wording of the fiduciary rule? And if it does, what happens next? Four...
Betterment Wants to Build a Better 401(k)
Betterment, the largest independent retail robo-advisor, said Wednesday that it has entered the small company segment of the 401(k) market. But will its model confine it to the shallow...
More Than a Nice Interface?
Jon Stein, CEO of Betterment, the biggest of the 'robo-advisors,' talked with RIJ recently at Betterment headquarters--three converted lofts in an historic building just west of the Flatiron Building...
The January sell-off in stocks—a delayed reaction to the Fed?
'It is possible that we could have seen outflows from U.S. equity funds in December were it not for the year-end rebalancing trend," said Alina Lamy, author of the...
Video: Income ‘Roundtable’ at The American College
Retirement income sources, including annuities, reverse mortgages, Social Security and LTCI, were topics of this two-hour seminar from the Retirement Income Certified Professional program at The American College. (Above:...
MetLife To Let VA Liabilities Go
Whether MetLife can or will avoid designation as a Systemically Important Financial Institution is uncertain, but it is clear "that MetLife will no longer write new U.S. retail life...
Do In-Plan Annuities Have a Future?
The latest evidence of the opinions of plan sponsors and plan providers on this topic comes to us via the “2015 Survey of Defined Contribution Viewpoints,” produced by Rocaton...
Tales from the Annuity Frontier
Three pioneers in the creative use of annuities in retirement portfolios--Wade Pfau, Joe Tomlinson, and Steve Vernon--have created an "efficient frontier" for deferred income annuities in two reports published...
‘The Big Short’ Is No Tall Tale
'The Big Short,' in which the actress Margot Roddie (above) provides exposition from her bath, is an excellent docudrama based on Michael Lewis' bestseller. It blames the financial crisis...
RIJ’s 20 Top Events for 2016
Here are 20 events that RIJ would like to attend in 2016. We'll try to reach as many of them as we can.
Damage Assessment: Who’s Hurt by New Fiduciary Rule?
Advisors who sell on commission, I-banks that underwrite securities and sell them through their own broker-dealers, and recordkeepers that capitalize on their access to participants should all beware the...
Bob Pozen Knows Retirement
'My proposal was to link the growth of Social Security benefits of the upper third of earners to CPI growth while letting the benefits of the lower third of...
No-Nonsense Income Planning
Jim Otar has explained his "zone" approach to retirement income planning in hundreds of presentations to thousands of advisors since 1997. He spoke at the IMCA retirement conference in...
Quartzite’s Most Famous Pianist
Paul Winer, aka Sweet Pie, is a 72-year-old blues musician, nudist, used book seller and one of tiny Quartzite, Arizona's principal tourist attractions. If you visit his store, be...
Waiting on the Fed
'The long end of the curve will stay stable but the front end of the curve will go up, so that we’ll have eventually have 2.5% at the short...
