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In Part One of this series the focus was on bonds, and the bank insurance or government backing behind them that offers safety to investors. Left out of that post were state and local bonds, commonly called municipal (or muni) bonds. Like the bank CDs and federal government debt we discussed yesterd...

I am skipping a post in my "What is a Safe Investment?" series to revisit a topic I touched on in early May in a post entitled "Of Boots and Oil." I was disappointed in the comment made by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. In a comment left on our blog, one person wrote: "Your point on tone is...

In my first post on this topic, I mentioned that safety is a subjective term and will mean different things to different people. A common definition of "safe" is: will I get my original investment back? If you invest a dollar, you expect a dollar back by a certain date, plus interest. All such fi...

Different types of employer-sponsored retirement plans are well known commodities. If you work for a privately owned company, there is a good chance you have a 401k. If you work for a hospital or school district, you are probably aware of the 403b available to you. State employees often have 'deferr...

Among the most frequent questions we get are those about safety. It seems at first like an easy question to answer: something is safe or it isn't. But stop and think: the very word "safe" is subjective. That is, what makes one person feel safe might not make someone else feel the same. Put another...

The story of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and of the company at its heart, BP, has transfixed the nation for weeks. Major environmental, political, and financial issues swirl about the story like crude oil in salt water. I'll leave the environmental and political topics to others to debate:...

A transfer-on-death (TOD) designation is a legal agreement between you and a financial institution that lets you direct how ownership of an account will be transferred upon your death. During your lifetime, you retain full control of the assets held in the account. You can manage the investments...

We get questions all the time from clients about how long they should hold on to important documents: account statements, tax returns, cancelled checks, and so on. Of course we are happy to provide advice on the topic, but then clients are on their own about how to dispose of their old documents. Ma...

Wow, what a ride that stock market is. Over the past week the Dow Jones has had swings of down 346 points to up 405 points. What started as a sell over European debt concerns led into a full-fledged rout where blue chip companies temporarily traded for pennies and the Dow swung down around 1,000 poi...

There are two Medicare surtaxes arriving in 2013........ beware. The first is a 0.9% levy on earned income, covering wages and income from self-employment. Singles earning over $200,000 and couples earning over $250,000 will pay the 0.9% surtax. The second one is a special 3.8% Medicare surtax on...