When a client incorporates an immediate annuity into a custom financial plan, we shouldn’t ask what revenue method is best for the advisor; we should ask what method is best for the client, writes advisor Curtis Cloke in a Letter to the Editor.

If you incorporated the risk of expensive emergencies, the sustainable withdrawal rate would sink to 3%, writes Gordon B. Pye, Ph.D., in the current issue of the Journal of Financial Planning.

92% of millionaires have not abandoned the stock market, with 43% currently engaged in moderate to heavy buying or selling and 49% waiting for the right opportunity to buy or sell.

Similar to the Bowles-Simpson proposals, the Rivlin-Domenici plan would lower income tax rates while eliminating most deductions and credits. It would replace the home mortgage and charitable contribution deductions with 15% refundable credits, and cut health care expenditures by $75 billion a year.

Covering the projected long-term shortfall facing Social Security would require revenue increases equal to slightly more than 2% of taxable payroll over the next 75 years, according to the National Academy of Social Insurance.

“We won't be investing in a single infrastructure fund, though, or a single commodities fund, or a single high-yield fund until we get bigger,” said Mark Fawcett, CEO of the National Employment Savings Trust.

Virtually all advisors who use mutual funds include large-cap growth or value funds in their lineup; 39% use large-cap American Funds product for the growth portion and 31% for the value.

"People tend to overestimate the utility of money and underestimate the utility of not being surprised by financial problems or not having to worry about money.” -- Steven A. Sass of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, author of The Promise of Private Pensions.

Late-breaking items from AnnuitySpecs, Pershing, ING, Jefferson National, Securian, Allianz Life and more...