Blogs

May 16, 2010 at 8:40pm by CFA Institute Blog Team

In the opening session of the CFA Institute 2010 Annual Conference, moderated by Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Zweig, keynote speaker Dan Ariely argued that we all make the same mistakes over and over again — and that these mistakes are predictable. Ariely used visual illusions to show the audience that although a very large part of the human brain is dedicated to vision, we still fall for visual illusions in predictable ways, and we do not learn from these mistakes.

If you are reading this, you probably have some money in a savings account that you are thinking of investing. You probably have also realized that a savings account is hardly working for you given the paltry interest rate it earns.

I’ve read countless studies that say women are more at risk of financial disaster than men are. Whether it's due to the fact that we don't earn as much, or we live longer or spend more time out of the work force to raise our kids, it all leads to one conclusion: To reach our goals, whatever they may be, we need to start planning earlier and investing more aggressively than we've done in the past.

Growing up the kid of frugal immigrants really ingrained the value of saving and investing in my mind. I had to first earn every dollar I got and then invest it in a savings account. Optional spending on toys was out of the question. We didn't spend for the here and now, but instead saved for the future, which is a valuable lesson in being patient.

Most of the debate about financial overhaul legislation has focused on the impact on what the big banks do. One part of this legislation, that would affect consumers directly, hasn't received much attention - a requirement that stock and insurance brokers act in their customers’ best interest.

A reasonable thing request of someone handling your money...I mean, doctor's have the Hippocratic oath. So why shouldn't brokers have something similar when money, or lack their of, may affect your health just as much.

We covered a lot of ground in our three-part Tonka Beans series on target-date funds. If you read that, you should feel more informed about what they are and why they matter to you, but you might be wondering what to do next so here’s a simple set of steps you can take:

When will you post more videos? They were very interesting & fun to watch.

In the first part of this three-part series we reviewed the fundamentals of target-date funds. Then we talked about why target-date funds are going to be hard to avoid in Part 2 . Here we’ll finally step through some of things you can do to be smart about target-date funds.

In the first part of this three-part series we reviewed the fundamentals of target-date funds. What are they? Why do they exist? How are they different from other mutual funds?

Now we’re going to learn a bit about why it’s becoming almost impossible to avoid target-date funds.

The end-of-the-world blockbuster movie 2012 opened in record-setting style, earning more than $225 million globally in its first weekend in theaters. But despite thousands of web sites that all seem to agree that December 2012 really will be the end of the world, here at Tonka Beans we’re pretty sure it won’t be. Assuming we’re right, then you’ll need to make sure your target-date fund outlasts 2012 and manages to do for you what the movie seemed to do for Sony Pictures: pay a return on investment.