An August 1, 2008 story by Laura Meckler in The Wall Street Journal included the following quote that got my blood boiling. She said:  “Beginning in 2017, the government will start paying out more in Social Security benefits than it collects in taxes and will have to start drawing on the trust fund, money stored in government bonds, to pay promised benefits.

I recently wrote a column about “longevity insurance.” This topic raised the question of how financial planners estimate our clients’ life spans. Obviously, if we planners are going to tell you whether you’ll have enough money in retirement to last the rest of your life, we need to estimate when your time on earth will be over.

Because I encourage clients to invest for the long term, I tend to be an optimist when it comes to the economy. Economic cycles are normal, and the one thing we can be sure of is that markets will go up and markets will go down. If a portfolio is properly diversified, however, with five or more asset classes, it will withstand economic fluctuations with little damage.

You may want to read an interesting post today in a WSJ blog, The Wealth Report, by Robert Frank. In the post, Frank reports that a survey of 400 wealthier Americans finds them satisfied with their investments in hedge funds, which account for about 9% of their average portfolio.

“It’s wise to mortgage your future.” This was the headline in the July 13 “Insider Q&A” column in the Rapid City Journal financial section.  The column featured Ian Ayres, a Yale professor who is an attorney and an economist. He recommends that young investors should save for retirement with borrowed money. He thinks, when you’re in your 20’s, it’s a good idea to buy stock index funds with margin accounts or options.

The good news? You exercise regularly, eat wisely, keep your weight down, wear your seatbelt, and don’t go bungee jumping or ride a motorcycle without a helmet. Your doctor says you’ll probably live to be 100.

The bad news? Your financial adviser says you’ll probably run out of money by the time you’re 90.

One of the current buzzwords in the financial industry is “longevity risk.

You know gas prices are soaring. What you may not know is why.

As with most problems, there are no easy answers or quick solutions. Yet in our society, we don’t want to hear that. We want easy answers and quick solutions.

Pandering politicians and the sensationalists in the media are quick to give us what we want—someone to blame and a quick fix for the oil problem. The blame? Greedy speculators. The fix? More regulation.

On Wednesday, July 2nd, the US Stock market officially became a roaring bear market, falling below the defining 20% decline mark from its peak in October 2007. 

According to Bear Markets, by Harry D. Shultz (Prentice Hall 1964), the average length of the past 26 Bear Markets is 16 months, with a range of 2 months to 56 months; the range of the declines is 14% to 90%, with a mean of 32%; the 508-point decline (22.

Make no mistake about it, June was an ugly month for investors. Unfortunately, my recent predictions that come September we will be gazing back on our 2.5% YTD gains in May with wistful eyes is well on the way to happening. I’ve been telling clients for months to expect things to get worse before they get better. At the end of May it wasn’t uncommon for a portfolio to be up about 2.5%. As of the end of June, that same portfolio was down 2.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know these are not happy times for investors. A casual glance at the financial headlines would lead to the conclusion that the best place to put your money may be under your mattress—preferably in euros.

A recent front page story in The Wall Street Journal led with a story about a couple who planned to retire this year, but now can’t because of the failing economy.