Zina's blog

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:

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.

1. Review your portfolio and rebalance, if necessary
Major market swings like the ones we’ve seen in the market recently can cause your investment allocations to shift. By rebalancing, you can restore your target allocation, manage investment risk, and keep your portfolio in good health. For example, say the asset allocation mix for a 30 year-old is 70% stock and 30% bond. But given the great run in stocks this year, that mix has moved to 80%/20%. Well, she should sell 10% of her stocks and use the proceeds to buy bonds. In a way, you’re always selling high and buying low.

The human brain is amazingly complex, flexible and able to process a vast amount of information. Even today’s supercomputers are not up to the task as far as raw processing power. The human brain has them beat…at least for the moment. But past these amazing stats and processing power, the human brain is also subject to some very real, emotional, limitations. We haven’t yet evolved that much past cavemen despite our technological advancement.

In recent years we’ve seen a lot of turmoil on Wall Street and the investing world. Between Bernie Madoff and the financial crisis of ’08 and ’09, many of today’s financial issues are the results of a multitude of conflicts of interest on Wall Street. And a lot of investors are left wondering who can I trust to help me manage my money and hopefully grow my wealth.

It’s well-known that I prefer index funds over any actively managed fund, but I read a couple of studies that showed women fund managers perform better than their male counterparts. So I decided to do some research on the subject and I found out some interesting facts on estrogen and testosterone. Here’s what I found…

In the first two articles in this series we covered index funds versus actively managed funds and then we learned about the major types of the high fees associated with actively managed funds. And since fees are just another chunk of your money going into someone else’s pocket, we saw that taking that money out of your investment instead of letting it grow and work for you makes it very hard -- and therefore very unlikely – for most actively managed funds to beat the market.

Unfortunately, it gets even worse if you invest through a broker…