| Don't Get Sick After You Retire
Here's another good reason to eat your leafy green vegetables and dig your running shoes out of the back of the closet. Fidelity Investments estimates that a 65-year-old couple who retires this year will need about $215,000 to cover medical costs in retirement. That's a pretty mind-boggling pile of cash. It's also lot more -- 7.5% more -- than last year's figure. In 2006, Fidelity calculated that retirees would need $200,000 to cover their post-retirement health costs. In the five years that the investment and mutual funds company has been calculating the size that your health-care nest egg needs to be in order to stretch through retirement, the amount has gone up an average of 6.1% every year. If you happen to be among the dwindling minority of people who have retiree health coverage through your employer, you won't need quite so much.
Make sure you always have an emergency fund
The recent nasty, brutish and (hopefully) short sell-offs in the stock market underscored a few elementary investment lessons. One is: Be sure to have an emergency fund. What if you suddenly needed money just when all (or almost all) your stocks or mutual funds were way down? You don't want to be forced to sell just when your securities seem to be cheap. Few Americans actually have emergency funds. Surveys have found that only three of 10 people have enough cash on hand to tide them over for three months. The usual recommendation is that an emergency fund constitute six months worth of your regular income. Six months, I presume, because periods of unemployment typically last five months. And unemployment is probably the most common financial emergency. Also high on the list of emergencies are medical expenses: A good percentage of personal bankruptcies in this country are the result of doctor, hospital and drug costs.
Banking on Boomers
Few companies have been as successful at winning shelf space in 401(k) plans as Newport Beach-based Pacific Investment Management Co. Under the guidance of chief investment guru Bill Gross, Pimco bond funds have become a staple in thousands of 401(k)s. But investors may be seeing an unfamiliar name -- BlackRock Inc. -- pop up more frequently on their retirement plan menus. Analysts say that could be good news for individual investors, especially if BlackRock brings new products at competitive rates. "For the average investor, this should mean over time that their costs will go down and the investor should benefit through higher returns," said Geoff Bobroff, a fund industry consultant in East Greenwich, R.I. Like Pimco, BlackRock made its bones running bond funds for pension plans, insurance companies and other large investors.
How to Ease the Tax Bite
HOW MUCH DID YOUR MUTUAL FUND REALLY EARN for you in 2006? As fund investors tear open their Form 1099s this tax season, many are finding there is much less to celebrate than they expected. While funds reported decent returns last year -- domestic large-cap stock funds gained 12.9% and small-caps, 13.5% -- they also handed investors their biggest capital-gains distributions since 2000. The resulting tax bill for fund investors: about $20 billion, up from $15.2 billion for 2005, according to Lipper, the fund-tracking firm. "If you look at your return on an after-tax basis, you may see some really ... .
Time to Sew, and Time to Rend
The recent correction in stock market gives investors a good opportunity to re-assess their expectations from their investment portfolios and also their tolerance to risk. When markets are in a bull run, investors are rarely aware of the risk they are exposing themselves to. But it becomes all too apparent in a crash! Being an optimist and believer of market cycles, helps maintain that it is never too late to correct ones mistakes. Excessive volatility in portfolio values may be attributed to many factors: 1. Problem: Concentration Antidote : Diversification
If your stock portfolio has a small number of securities, then undue change in value of any of them, will excessively impact the total market value of your portfolio.
Barclays, ABN Amro Know Most, Pay the Least for Takeover Advice
April 10 (Bloomberg) -- Ask Barclays Plc and ABN Amro Holding NV how much takeover advice is worth and they'll prove it's a lot less than what companies in any other industry pay banks for arranging acquisitions. Bankers hired for the proposed merger of Barclays and ABN Amro may share about $100 million for what would be the biggest marriage in financial services based on comparable fees from previous deals. That's about one-third less than advisers charged last year for AT&T Inc.'s $73 billion purchase of BellSouth Corp., estimates compiled by New York-based Freeman & Co. show. ``Financial institutions understand particularly well the fee world because they live in it,'' said Frederick Lane, a founding partner and chairman of Boston-based investment bank Lane, Berry & Co.
Tanmiyat eyes REIT, IPO for expansion
SINGAPORE: Saudi developer Tanmiyat Investment Group plans to divest $1 billion worth of its assets through a property trust listing in the United States and set up a Singapore-based finance firm to fund its expansion abroad.
Tanmiyat Investment Group Deputy Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Aziz Al-Majed told Reuters in an interview the firm was also mulling an initial public offering (IPO) in either Singapore or London in 2009 to raise about $1.2 billion, or equivalent to 30 percent of its total $4 billion in assets.
The family hasnt decided yet. We will go for an IPO when weve expanded our business to other countries. We want to be an international company when we list, said Abdullah, one of the four brothers that run the family firm founded in 1982.
Tanmiyats real estate investment trust (REIT) is more imminent, with a listing in the US expected in the next three to four months, Abdullah said.
Interest in gold to stay healthy
Johannesburg - Investor interest in gold grew markedly in 2006 and is expected to remain healthy throughout 2007, Gold Survey 2007 noted. Gold Survey 2007 is GFMS' most recent report on the gold market. One of the key findings of the report was a 13 percent decline in World Investment to 743 tons in 2006. World Investment comprises of implied net investment - GFMS' balancing item understood to reflect "western" investment demand (excluding primary coin sales) - bar hoarding and coin fabrication demand. Interestingly, in approximate value terms, the figure was up by 18 percent year-on-year to14.4 billion, the survey noted. "Although prima facie the decline in the volume of World Investment could be misunderstood to suggest investor interest in the yellow metal weakened last year, the evidence is overwhelming that in fact investor activity enjoyed healthy growth and was the principal driver of price fluctuations," GFMS said.
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