Luke F. Delorme
Investing: Don’t Pay for Past Performance
Investing for retirement should be a long-term process. It would be nice to extrapolate meaning from three- or five-year performance, but more often than not we may actually be chasing returns that are likely to regress to the mean in the future.
Bite-Sized Financial Planning
All too often, I talk to someone looking for financial advice and they don’t know where to start. I was talking with a friend recently who wanted some advice on what investments to hold for retirement. As I talked to him more, I realized that asset allocation was the least of his worries.
Social Security File-And-Suspend Ends: What Now?
This blog targets those of you that are already at least 62 years old (born in 1953 or earlier) but have not yet filed for Social Security benefits. As many of you know, the recently signed budget bill closes the “loophole” that enabled the file-and-suspend and restricted claiming strategies. Please feel free to read more…
What Congress Just Did to Social Security
The U.S. budget deal includes a provision that seeks to end the file-and-suspend and restricted claiming strategies. I explained these strategies in recent blogs as a way to bring couples upwards of $60,000 more in total Social Security benefits. The section of the bill is titled “Closure of Unintended Loopholes.” Let’s take a look at…
Why It’s So Hard to Delay Social Security
Behavioral economists have found that traditional economic models cannot explain what people actually choose to do with their money, including filing for Social Security benefits early – a move that can cost them a lot of money in the long run.
Your Retirement Account Balance May Mislead You
I recently read an article from CNN Money about how much you should have saved at different ages in order to be prepared for retirement. This is a popular topic in the financial media; the problem is that I’m not sure it’s doing anyone much good. In this case, I find the opening lines to…
Why Your 401(k) Differs from Fund Performance
The way that a fund calculates performance is probably quite different from the way that you perceive performance.
Social Security “File and Suspend”: An Example
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote up the case for the “file and suspend” Social Security claiming strategy for married, two-earner households. To recap, the strategy can allow two-earner couples to collect a Social Security spousal benefit for up to four years without compromising long-term benefits. The blog was well-received, but it also brought…
Humans Aren’t Wired For Investing
Economists are frustrated by investors. Investors will just not follow their models. You see, there is a tendency among investors to sell stocks after a big drop in price, at exactly the time when the expected return has increased. On the flip side, there is a tendency to buy just after prices have risen, when…
How Lesser Investments Can Create Better Investors
The humans that put their money into financial markets have a tendency to underperform their investments — by a wide margin.
