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 Scottsdale earlier this month.

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 end and a long end between 2.5% and 3%,' predicted a BNP Paribas managing director recently. (Pictured: Janet Yellen.)

Removing ‘Lapse Risk’ from Variable Annuities

“Almost every major variable annuity writer has absorbed large write-downs on ‘policyholder behavior assumption updates,’” said a Munich Re executive. “So how do we take out that risk?”

Deep in the Data Mines

At the Society of Actuaries Equity-Based Insurance Guarantees conference in Chicago this week, the use of 'predictive modeling' to unearth buried or cryptic data was strongly encouraged.
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Fed raises target overnight rate by quarter-percent

'Were the FOMC to delay the start of policy normalization for too long, we would likely end up having to tighten policy relatively abruptly at some point,' Janet Yellen said at a press conference yesterday announcing the first rate hike in seven years.

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 sure to buy a few books or albums. He never saved much for retirement.
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