The Ramifications of Regret

The Ramifications of Regret

How many times have you taken some action only to regret it afterwards? In the world of financial decision-making this happens all the time. Sometimes it’s regretting the purchase of some investment whose value subsequently drops. Possibly it’s regretting not having purchased some investment which your neighbor has been bragging about having made a killing…
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Three Consequences of Extended Longevity

My 80-year old uncle used to laugh off warnings from family members about taking better care of himself. “After all,” he’d joke, “I can’t die young.” He ultimately passed away at age 85 from cancer but I’m sure would not have regretted the quality of the long life that he’d enjoyed. Excepting perhaps those of…
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Why Don’t Millennials Like Stocks?

I previously posted about a Bankrate financial security survey in 2017 which found that real estate was the Millennial Generation’s top investment preference over stocks and cash (https://www.cognizantwealth.com/2017/11/24/is-real-estate-best-for-building-wealth/). The post pointed out that real estate as an investment had actually underperformed stocks over many periods since 1900, suggesting that millennials’ expectations of the best long-term…
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Latest Top Scams Targeting Seniors

The U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging recently released their 2018 report on the top ten scams targeted to seniors as reported to their toll-free fraud hotline 1-855-303-9470. With today’s technology it is not only easy for criminals and cheats to reach millions of citizens but also easy to misrepresent themselves and their organizations. While…
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How Still To Get Charitable Tax Deductions

As a result of the passage of the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act in 2017, taxpayers (especially in California) may find themselves losing some of the deductions they used to get for charitable contributions on their 2018 taxes. Let’s use a simple example to explain this. Suppose you are married and have the following annual…
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The Wrong Way To Invest In Bonds

Most 529 and 401(k) plans offer a pretty broad range of U.S. stock mutual funds. There are large cap funds, small cap funds, value and growth funds, actively managed vs. passively managed funds, and occasionally even industry sector funds. When it comes to bond funds, however, most plans limit you to just one fund that…
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