http://www.finsymnews.com Economic News & Analysis from Finanical Symmetry, Inc. Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:35:31 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en [caption id="attachment_1152" align="alignright" width="240" caption="photo credit - cliff1066™"][/caption] If you invest in your employer sponsored retirement plan you have probably heard of Target-Date funds.  These funds are characterized as investments that change the allocation of stocks, bonds, and cash according to your specified retirement date.  In theory, these funds should progressively ... http://www.finsymnews.com/targetdate-funds-good-autopilot/ The gold standard discussion in the mainstream media over the last year or so has been driven by the extreme measures taken by the Federal Reserve to shore up our banking system during the credit crisis.  Brad Delong, an economics professor at U.C. Berkeley has an interesting summary of why ... http://www.finsymnews.com/gold-standard/ Investing in gold is on the tip of many investors’ tongues these days. The fact that gold has tripled in value over the last seven years and recently has been hovering at a price of $1,100 an ounce, has certainly helped.  This is coupled with the realization that gold has ... http://www.finsymnews.com/investing-in-gold/ When Congress left town on Christmas Eve, it failed to address a major issue – the repeal of the federal estate tax.  The result of this inaction meant that after midnight on December 31, 2009 the wealthy would die knowing that their assets could pass to their heirs without the ... http://www.finsymnews.com/issue-estate-tax/ After going through multiple investment bubbles, a severe credit crisis, and two painful recessions, the "Lost Decade" for stock investments has come to an end.   In fact, the latter half of 2009 left us with a rather robust recovery and the idea that we may be participating in a sustainable ... http://www.finsymnews.com/the-lost-decade/ We've recently launched a newly designed website- www.FinancialSymmetry.com.   We felt that a new site was needed to showcase our services in an easy-to-navigate manner. A few of the new features include client stories, frequently asked questions and additional details of our services. We invite you to browse our new website and hope ... http://www.finsymnews.com/check-financial-symmetry-website/ In response to the many fears and uncertainties that arose during the recent economic crisis, The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) Consumer Education Foundation sponsored multiple financial advice events around the country as part of the “Your Money Bus” tour.  On Tuesday January 19th, the “Your Money Bus” ... http://www.finsymnews.com/your-money-bus-raleigh/ Have you made your 2009 Roth IRA contribution? If you have not yet made the maximum contribution, you still have time!  Tax payers have until April 15th of 2010 to make their Roth contributions for the 2009 tax year.  If you are within the income limitations to make contributions, a Roth ... http://www.finsymnews.com/2010-roth-contributions/ There’s no better time than the beginning of a new year to implement a new budget in order to gain control of your spending.  In the final installment of our series on Quicken, we provide a few pointers to make using Quicken more meaningful so that you can better track ... http://www.finsymnews.com/meaningfulbudgeting/ When selecting mutual funds to use in our client’s accounts we use various quantitative and qualitative factors to evaluate if we believe a fund can add value.  Morningstar is the most widely used source of mutual fund data and analysis, so we rely on their data for a significant portion ... http://www.finsymnews.com/morningstar/