Being smart with $$ -- Late August 2014 posts

August 29, 2014
(SAVE + INVEST) x TIME = WEALTH
- Larry Pike, CFA, Client Priority Financial Advisors LLC
- www.clientpriority.com

August 28, 2014
Do you buy actively-managed mutual funds instead of passive funds because you think the manager will be smarter in a down market and not lose as much money? Should this offset the fact that 3/4 of actively-managed funds underperform their index benchmark on average? Should the best mutual fund have done better than the horrendous -37% return of the S&P 500 index in 2008? Well, the top-performing large-cap mutual fund over the last 10 years lost 43% in 2008!! I guess we need some new reasons to buy actively-managed funds.

- Larry Pike, CFA, Client Priority Financial Advisors LLC
- www.clientpriority.com

August 27, 2014

Over-priced investment advice.  Does your investment advisor charge you 1% of assets? Did you know that could be costing 1/6th of your initial portfolio over 10 years and that might even be for inferior performance?  (For example a $300,000 starting portfolio might pay out $50,000 in fees over 10 years even if you trail market averages.) Do they only advise on assets they control and ignore the rest of your "big picture"?  Ask me about a different approach that can save you tens of thousands of dollars and address ALL of your financial needs.

- Larry Pike, CFA
- www.clientpriority.com

August 20, 2014
Have you heard the newscasters say that the stock market is up today because of strong economic data? And then the next day they say that the stock market is down because of strong economic data? On the second day, they argue that a strong economy may make the Fed raise interest rates which can be bad for stocks. Okay, who votes for believing everything we hear on the news?
- Larry Pike, CFA, Client Priority Financial Advisors LLC
- www.clientpriority.com

August 18, 2014
You may have seen the story today that 36% of adults have zero retirement savings. Shockingly, 26% of people within 15 years of retirement have no retirement savings (Bankrate.com study.) If you have too little or no retirement savings, the time to start saving is now. The earlier the better and the more the better. Every day you put it off makes the goal of retiring someday more elusive.
- Larry Pike, CFA, Client Priority Financial Advisors LLC
- www.clientpriority.com

August 17, 2014
investors will always try to beat the market averages but the end result is more often trailing the average than beating it. Money Magazine in it's August issue highlights average market returns and then returns for the five largest mutual funds in each category. If you have read my past posts you will not be surprised to hear that for the last three years the S&P 500 index of large-cap stocks has beaten 4 out of 5 of the biggest large-cap funds that are actively managed to try to beat that index. And as a group the five also failed to beat their benchmark index. International stocks? Same story. Confused? I am. Teams were hired to beat an unmanaged pile of stocks and four out of five did worse! Any guesses why?
- Larry Pike, CFA, Client Priority Financial Advisors LLC
- www.clientpriority.com