AXA Trumpets a Treasury-Linked VA Rider

AXA Equitable Life (and its trademark gorilla) have bounced back from the financial crisis with a novel variable annuity rider that pegs guaranteed accumulation and withdrawal rates to the 10-year Treasury rate, plus one percent.

Can’t Do The Math

You knew it all along, but now there's evidence. Most Americans are financially illiterate. Experts wonder how the millions who don't understand compound interest can possibly fashion successful retirements.

Bridge to Somewhere

"Liability-driven investing for individuals" is how J. Brent Burns, MBA, (left), and Stephen J. Huxley, Ph.D., describe Asset Dedication, which is the name of their bond-laddering methodology, their book and their company.

Luck of the Draw

In this second installment of our series on retirement risks, we examine sequence-of-returns risk: what it is, what it can cost, and how best to deal with it.
Featured

A Decade to Remember. Or Not.

The president of PPCA, Inc., and Target Date Solutions looks back at the worst calendar-decade for U.S. stocks since the beginning of the Great Depression, and offers his informed perspective on TDFs.
News

Bernanke Blames Crisis on Regulatory Failure

The Fed's vice chairman, Donald Kohn, added that the fragile economic recovery would “warrant exceptionally low” interest rates “for an extended period.”

And In Comes 2010

I predict that the next decade will be very much like the last one, only more so. Interest rates are my top-of-mind issue.