[table id=9 /]
This table gets a little technical with the financial academics weighing in on their knowledge of how stocks are priced during a typical trading day. The idea is for us to understand that nobody has a vision of how and why stocks or mutual funds are priced. The sales pitches will try and convince you that they have some type of formula or computer program that will give a heads up on which investment drops in price so you can get it at very low prices, or get you out of the market when it gets too frothy.
IT’S ALL BULL! NEVER BELIEVE SALES PITCHES. A genuine fiduciary financial adviser will never predict the future performance of a stock market or mutual funds. He or she will construct a diversified portfolio with a balance of bonds or fixed accounts with low-cost stock index funds. All investments will have core holdings that all portfolios have, large, mid, small and international stocks with different bonds: treasuries, corporate, mortgage-backed and perhaps some munis and an inflation protection bond. They will charge you by the hour or by a percentage of your portfolio value if you want this genuine fiduciary adviser to manage your portfolio (rebalance, harvest tax losses and arrange an effective cash flow in retirement). Be careful to only pay .50% or less, or better yet negotiate to pay by the hour or on retainer.
Below is an example of my diversified portfolio which is appropriately balanced between stocks and bonds for a 72-year-old retiree–ME. This is a typical portfolio that a fiduciary financial adviser should construct for most retirees. There is nothing tricky, obfuscating or overly complicated. If you need more information, read my quarterly YTD 2020 report: https://old.latebloomerwealth.com/amid-covid-19-stock-market-crash-we-married-virtually/
Steve’s Late Bloomer Wealth BIO
Stephen A. Schullo, Ph.D. (UCLA ’96) taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) for 24 years and UCLA Extension teaching educational technology to student teachers. Steve wrote investment articles for the United Teacher-Los Angeles (UTLA) union newspaper for 13 years. He has been featured and quoted in many mainstream media articles about 403(b) plans, including the Los Angeles Times, NY Times, and U.S. News and World Report. He co-founded an investor self-help group 403bAware for teacher colleagues and wrote 7,500 posts in three investment forums since 1997. He testified at California State legislative hearings and honored with the “Unsung Hero” award by his teacher’s union for his retirement planning advocacy.
For the last 14 years, he serves as a volunteer on LAUSD’s Investment Advisory Committee as a “Member-at-Large” and former co-chair. The committee contains collective bargaining reps from the unions and monitors the district’s tax-deferred retirement plans, 457b/403b, of 55,000 former and current LAUSD employees, worth $2.8 billion in total assets.
He started this blog in 2012 to help all PreK-12 public school educators nationwide, especially his Los Angeles Unified School District colleagues. He belongs to a small national group of 403(b) advocates (mostly teachers) who want to bring closer attention to the 403(b). During the last 25 years, 40 newspaper articles have been published and each one says the same thing, TSAs (Tax Sheltered Annuities) are terrible 403(b) plans and the salesperson gets the benefit from lucrative commissions and high-costs. Nobody in educational leadership reads these articles NOR talk about the proper place for annuity products publically. We come together at 403bwise.com and 403bwise Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/349968819000560/ Come on over if you want to join us so we can help our colleagues avoid these self-conflicted and high-cost Tax-sheltered Annuities (TSAs).
Steve is the author of two books, Late Bloomer Millionaires and Fighting Powerful Interests: Educators Challenge Tax-sheltered Annuities and WIN!, a story of how a handful of LAUSD educators struggled for years to improve the 403(b) to no avail. But we never quit! We were instrumental in LAUSD’s implementation of the new 457(b) plan and earned a very rare, but very precious “Plan Design” award.
For a copy of both books, email Steve at steve.schullo@latebloomerwealth.com and he will happily email you both books, FREE with no obligation except to read them and get informed, in a pdf file format.