No BICE For You!!!

    Thankfully, variable annuities may fail a new exam that would  allow them to be included in retirement accounts.  While many investors will be saved from having these noxious investments in their tax deferred accounts, others will not be so lucky. The Best Interest Contract Exemption or BICE could drive a dagger into the heart of variable annuity sales…

We Are Sorry for the Inconvenience, but This Is a Revolution

The oppressed are rising up against their oppressors. Teachers are starting to pay attention to the strangle-hold insurance companies have over their retirement funds. More importantly, they are starting to take action against the powerful vested interests that siphon billions of dollars from their retirement accounts annually. A teacher in Illinois, Mark Eichenlaub,  recently sent…

Fewer Schools are using 403(b) Plans

One of the reasons given is “to streamline costs.” It is not surprising that some schools are making this switch. The benefits of a single vendor and features such as auto enrollment cannot be disputed. Read more here

High-fee Products often Lead to Broker Misconduct

It is no coincidence that investment products that pay out high commissions are often near the top of the list regarding financial misconduct. The temptation of high monetary rewards is a tremendous incentive to cheat. This could apply to brokers pushing clients into high-fee Class A funds when a simple index fund would do the…

The Biggest Hedge Fund May Be your Kid’s University

Student loan debt recently surpassed one trillion dollars. Many private and public universities are contributing to this spiraling problem by massively overpaying hedge funds to manage their large pools of endowment funds. To make matters worse, they are often receiving returns that are inferior to almost zero-cost index funds. Hedge funds are often looked at as…

The World’s Lamest Excuse for a High-Fee Investment

Articles containing tales of the tidal wave of “annuity abuse” flood financial media. Apologists for this indefensible behavior continue to concoct excuses that defy even the most generous definition of reality. Investment News just came out with an article detailing the all too familiar tale of a broker fleecing his clients with improper annuity sales. As mentioned here,…

A Sales Model that Makes Revenue Sharing Look Investor Friendly

Annuities in retirement accounts are an atrocious investment. They are so heinous they make funds involved in revenue sharing schemes, commonly found at many wire houses, look good in comparison. Inexplicably, regulators continue to allow teachers’ retirement accounts to be raided by insurance companies using variable annuities as their Trojan horse. Jason Zweig recently wrote an article…

Is there any Reason this is not Taught in School?

Most schools do a horrible job of teaching kids about money. Why do our current presidential debate topics include such gems as which candidate wet his pants on stage? I have not heard one mention of the plague of financial illiteracy that afflicts our youth. The tune of one trillion dollars in student loan debt should be…

Rich Plan, Poor Plan

403(b) plans are treated like the ugly stepsister compared to their more glamorous close relative, the 401(k). Both plans were designed for the same purpose. Unfortunately, their separate governance structures are a textbook case definition of discrimination. Workers who participate in a public rather than a private retirement plan are being given the short-end of…