The College Solutions Blog

March 21, 2008

Just about every morning, I spend time at the gym. Many mornings I read The New York Times on the Stairmaster, which I hate. The Stairmaster, not the NY Times. One of the regulars at the gym is an older man, who happens to be a multi-millionaire. He usually likes to kid me good naturedly about the fact that I...

March 15, 2008

This week, I heard from a Navy retiree, who wondered what he should do with the stockpile of cash he built up in his Thrift Savings Plan, the federal government retirement plan that looks a lot like a 401(k). My recent blogs on finding a financial planner was fortuitous because he has been grappling with the sort of daunting decisions...

March 8, 2008

If you are bewildered by the number of mutual funds on the shelves, selecting a financial advisor has got to be an even more excruciating process. The nation’s inventory of mutual funds exceeds 8,100 and if you multiply that number a few times, you’ll get some idea of the staggering number of people trying to hack out a living in...

February 29, 2008

About two years ago, Smith Barney, the brokerage giant, announced that it would start calling its stockbrokers “financial advisors.” Most Smith Barney clients, if they heard this pronouncement, would probably have greeted it with some variation of “duh.”  These investors already assume that the brokers, who handle their accounts, are advisors. While the clients would have been puzzled by the...

February 24, 2008

I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately about finding good financial advice. In fact, I’d say that 90% of the questions I receive revolve around this issue. I was reminded of how important it is to find a smart ethical advisor this week when a neighbor told my husband and I of a scam his father and brother got...

February 16, 2008

I don’t know why I continue to be surprised by the ingenuity of the financial industry to develop and peddle products that will endanger the financial prospects of anybody who falls for them. Maybe I should stop being surprised. Ever again. The dubious investment that caught my eye recently is an old dog wrapped up in a new package. I’m...

December 15, 2007

Thirty seven billion dollars is a nearly unfathomable amount of money to imagine. If you counted each dollar bill of that fortune, I suspect it would cripple your wrist and consume years of your life. That’s the stunning sum that Warren Buffett is going to be donating to mankind. The money will primarily flow into the Bill & Melinda Gates...

December 1, 2007

If you’re the beneficiary of a trust, you may not be a happy camper. And it’s easy to appreciate why. Over the years, bank mergers have swallowed up many hometown banks, which have left plenty of beneficiaries talking with trust officers thousands of miles away. In fact, the concept of a personal trust officer has become endangered. A beneficiary who...

November 28, 2007

I decided to write the post below after Scott Dauenhauer, a financial planner I admire, sent me a link from an annuity firm that rails against all the bad press that Equity Index Annuities have deservedly been receiving. After you read the spiel, I hope you’ll be as appalled as I was. (Though I wasn’t surprised.)...

November 17, 2007

I wrote the following column three years ago, but it’s still as relevant as it was back then. And my son still has the Roth ……. At the top of my son’s Christmas wish list this year is a present that Ben doesn’t expect to touch until he retires. When he hunts for it under the Christmas tree, he’ll find...