Anthony Isola

It’s Monday Again…..When Is My Retirement?

Good Morning! Here are this week’s retirement links. Have a great day. What Is An Annuity Contract? – PlanSponsor The Price Of Progress – The Irrelevant Investor Finra Cracks Down On Faulty Variable Annuity Exchanges – InvestmentNews Bad News: Your 401(k) Won’t Give You A Decent Retirement – L.A. Times How To Pay For Long-Term…

Generation Kill

  Young people are killing their chances of building wealth.  Their ignorance of how credit cards work is mind-blowing.  According to a recent survey: 6% believe that missing a card payment would “improve” their credit rating. WTF!!!! 17% said missing a card payment would have no effect on their score. 48% carry card balances on…

Transferring Risk Won’t Make It Disappear

Sometimes “safe” investments are anything but. This week, I wrote an article on Stable Value Funds for the InvestmentNews. Many people own these funds in their retirement accounts. They are sometimes looked upon as a higher yielding money market fund. This is not entirely true. If Investors use these products inappropriately, they might not get…

Investors Need To Come Out Of The Closet

“[With] closet indexing….you’re paying a manager a fortune and he has 85% of his assets invested parallel to the indexes. If you have such a system, you’re being played for a sucker.”  – Charlie Munger Investing is hard even if you know what you are doing. Week number two of my investment class was devoted to…

How To Make $5,300 In Commissions on a $43,000 Retirement Account

This is why we do what we do. The title of this post is no typo. It is the sad reality of many Non-ERISA 403(b) Plans. Public school teachers are the victims of the most exploitative financial services model on the planet.  This post should shock anyone with a sense of decency and minimal investment…

It’s Monday Again…..When Is My Retirement?

Good Morning! Here are this week’s retirement links. Have a great day. Shining Light On Hefty Fees To Outside Managers Of Public Pension Funds – NJSPOTLIGHT Does The New Tax Proposal Penalize 401(k) Plans? – A Teachable Moment Did You Know The Government Might Pay You To Save Money – The Motley Fool Who’s Left…

Does The New Tax Proposal Penalize 401(k) Plans?

  Is it possible that even though President Trump’s tax reform proposal preserves the standard deductions for retirement plans, it will still provide disincentives to save? Maybe. The effect of unintended consequences is always the wild card. The potential problem has to do with pass-through entities, which include sole proprietorships, S-corporations, partnerships, and limited liability…

Teacher? I Prefer the Term Educational Rock Star

It is hard to get something out of your system that you did for twenty years. Even though I could not stand annoying helicopter parents or attending dumb ass meetings, I really enjoyed teaching kids. A lot of people said I was pretty good at it; maybe I was and I certainly had fun along…

It’s Monday Again…..When Is My Retirement?

Good Morning! Here are this week’s retirement links. Have a great day. Tax Reform Anomaly Could Diminish Some Companies’ Need For 401(k) Plan – InvestmentNews I’m Going To Work Until I Die – The Washington Post Social Security Cola Could Get Wiped Out By Medicare Costs – InvestmentNews Having Children Can Ruin Your Retirement –…

The Retirement Monster Among Us

What is the biggest problem facing retirement investors? Crummy products coated with high fees? Salespeople posing as real financial advisors? Owning too much company stock? It turns out the answer is none of the above. Cash-out leakage is the retirement monster among us. “Premature distributions, cash-outs of retirement accounts, and defaults on loans are major sources…