Net Worth Blog

The general guideline of withdrawing no more than 4% of your portfolio each year during retirement has come under re as of late. This guideline was the result of a study conducted almost 30-years ago by William Bengen, at a time when it was believed that 5% was a safe withdrawal rate. In the study William determined that 5% was […]

Would it surprise you if I said your investment success in 2018 had much more to do with your personal investment behavior rather than the overall market returns? This may sound counterintuitive, considering market returns for 2018 were pretty bad. My guess is you’re not feeling like you were a very successful investor last year, but let’s more fully consider […]

Since I began working in the financial services industry in 1987, I’ve noticed that investors seem to continually feel that the current stock market has been more volatile than it was in the previous five or 10 years. This thinking was brought to my attention once again recently when a client indicated that they felt like the stock market today […]

With interest rates still close to historic lows there has been lots of talk about how rising interest rates will reduce bond values. This hasn’t been helped by President Trump’s trade war threats, which have the potential of causing rising prices and higher inflation. The Federal Reserve has raised rates six times in the past three years. Even though rates […]

The Dow Jones industrial average index (DJIA) opened 2018 just shy of 25,000 on Jan. 2, and a little over two weeks later it already had topped 26,000. I was recently asked when I thought the Dow would reach 30,000. Since stocks are the long-term piece of an investor’s portfolio I think this question misses the mark. The better question […]