A Couple of Good Reads

This is the time of year where financial writers like to recommend mutual funds for the coming year. Do you follow their recommendations?  If so, do yourself a favor and read The Best Mutual Funds to Buy Right Now! by Andrew Hallam.

Another good read is at MarketWatch by Robert Powell:  You may need less retirement income than you think.  The article illustrates to me that the whole subject of retirement planning is treated simplistically by researchers, and individuals should be aware of this.  Even going beyond the excellent points made in the study cited by Powell is the fact that individuals vary in the amount they spend during their retirement years.  Many spend heavily at first, doing the traveling or other expensive endeaors they have dreamed of, get it out of their system, and then settle in.  A decade then follows where spending may be somewhat less and even less than the 80% cited by Powell.  Closer to the end, or as Ed Slott is fond of saying "when the life insurance matures," medical costs ramp up.  The point is that spending in retirement is generally more complex than generally made out to be, and it is less cumbersome for researchers to just use simple percentage rate drawdowns.