​Way back in the 1970s, there was a TV commercial that had the tagline: “When EF Hutton talks, people listen.” That was a good way to characterize what went on yesterday, as Jerome Powell, the new Chairman of the Federal Reserve, gave his first press conference. A lot of people were listening to the central bank chief because what the Fed says often has real-world consequences. 

Even though we are constantly thinking “save for retirement” most people limit their strategy and ignore using individual retirement accounts or IRAs. Why?  Your employer and the government have made it simple and automatic for you to save and invest the maximum amount in your company plan.  Most people have a limit to the amount they can save and how they allocate between tax structure will make a difference. 

Here are some factors to consider for the dollars you can save for retirement. 

For high school seniors planning to attend college in the fall, emotions are probably running higher than usual these days. Schools are now communicating to Regular Decision applicants. Taking steps to minimize emotion and get a clear view of what’s on offer can help make the decision process easier. Here’s how to put together a useful Cost / Benefit Scorecard for selecting a college:

As an investment advisor and asset manager that focuses on active asset management, we are often dumbfounded by the constant messaging of passive firms saying investors should use index products only.  Their conventional wisdom is that investors should use passive funds because active managers do not outperform and they are expensive.   We find many examples of active funds outperforming passive.  Yes, some managers do print terrible results but our goal is to avoid those bad situations.