Most Baby Boomers (the cohort of Americans born between 1946 and 1964) believe that they will still be working during their retirement years as they move through the boomer retirement crisis.
John Agno: Books for Boomers: Reviews & Coaching Tips (FREE)
Lawrence Rybka, CEO of ValMark Securities, a wealth-advisory firm, says his firm won’t sell the new insurers’ annuities, in part because the providers’ financial-strength ratings from A.M. Best, a credit-rating company that focuses on the insurance industry, aren’t high enough. His Akron-based company’s liability insurance won’t pay for his defense if he’s sued by a client who buys an annuity from a company with less than an A rating that later fails, he says.
With a typical annuity, a customer hands over her retirement nest egg to an insurance company in exchange for a promised future stream of payments. The insurer invests the money and gets to keep any earnings beyond what’s guaranteed to the policyholder. If the bets backfire and the insurance company fails, some losses may be borne by customers and state guarantee funds, Rybka said. “The long-term interests of policyholders are not in alignment with the short-term interests of private equity,” Rybka says. “It’s a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose game.”
Until April 2011, Patrick “Pete” Dodd, a former money manager at Liberty Life Insurance in Greenville, S.C., invested customer premiums in what he calls a “squeaky clean” portfolio: bonds backed by state governments and blue chip corporations. Then Athene Holding, a company funded by private equity firm Apollo Global Management (APO), acquired Liberty and changed its investment strategy. Now the unit’s holdings include securities backed by subprime mortgages, time-share vacation homes, and a railroad in Kazakhstan. “When you look at the business model these guys use, where they’re substantially increasing the risk in the bond portfolio, sooner or later, in my opinion, that has to come home to roost,” says Dodd, who helped manage $4 billion before the sale to Athene.
Wall Street firms such as Apollo, Goldman Sachs Group (GS), Harbinger Group (HRG), and Guggenheim Partners are acquiring life insurance companies that specialize in retirement savings products known as fixed annuities. They’re shaking up a staid industry with investments in everything from the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team to the kind of mortgage-backed securities that cratered during the financial crisis.
The newcomers are meeting resistance from some state insurance regulators, accustomed to plain-vanilla portfolios, who have warned about exposing policyholders to greater risk. “Their focus is on maximizing their immediate financial returns, rather than ensuring that promised retirement benefits are there at the end of the day for policyholders,” Benjamin Lawsky, New York State superintendent of financial services, said in a speech on April 18.
The money managers say their investments are no more dangerous than those of traditional insurers and that they’re managing them with a long-term view. While some of Athene’s investments are unorthodox, “our portfolio is less risky than traditional life-insurance companies,” says Bermuda-based Chief Executive Officer James Belardi.
Source: Bloomberg BusinessWeek, April 29, 2013
Best of Boomer Blogs #306
Come and observe interesting segments of trend-setting happenings that seek life's meaning through passionate living. Be sure to visit SoBabyBoomer's tent at the Best of Boomer Blogs #306 hosted this week by Katie Gustafson Foster at Arabian Tales and Other Amazing Adventures. Katie Foster is a freelance writer and photographer based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates whose main interests include travel, culture, fashion, food and wine.
John Agno: Books for Boomers: Reviews & Coaching Tips (FREE)
To become an independent investor, you have to crawl before you walk and walk before you run.
Even after you're on your feet, the first step isn't easy: A nudge in the right direction can help.
Robert Prechter's recent keynote speech, "How Market Losers Think, and How to Stop Doing It," is that nudge.
It was only a few months ago -- in a packed ballroom at the world's largest investment conference with attendees on the edge of their seats -- that Prechter overturned several of the most widespread investment myths.
In turn, he provided the evidence-based alternative for market causality.
Only the few hundred people who sat in that room have seen this presentation -- until now.
If you mistrust the conventional notions that markets are always efficient, investors are always rational and prices always reflect value, give Prechter 23 minutes of your time.
In those 23 minutes, you will discover …
The video is free, and it's just a couple of clicks away. Find a quite location, and watch it now.
Follow this link to learn more and to watch Prechter's speech now -- it's free >>
About the Publisher, Elliott Wave International
Founded in 1979 by Robert R. Prechter Jr., Elliott Wave International (EWI) is the world's largest market forecasting firm. Its staff of full-time analysts provides 24-hour-a-day market analysis to institutional and private investors around the world.
For many people, being on the far side of 40 in the workplace brings the confidence of experience, of having hit a certain professional stride. It can also bring a nagging insecure feeling that younger colleagues—the ones with 5,000 Twitter followers, who designed their first website in middle school—are fast becoming the new office stars.
SENIOR INITIATIVE: To keep up with his younger colleagues' skills, Doug Gould has taken more than 10 new-technology classes. Gould, a 50-year-old advertising veteran, says some of that anxiety arose when co-workers called him by nicknames like "Uncle Doug" and "Coach."
"I think those were terms of endearment," says Mr. Gould, a creative director for the Boston ad agency Allen & Gerritsen, who started his career back in 1984 using tracing paper and markers to design newspaper ads. "But if you read between the lines, it also meant 'old guy.' I get nervous about what that means."
For many people in the back half of their careers, the meaning is becoming all too clear: To keep from drifting, or being nudged, into an early retirement, it's time to add more high-tech arrows to their professional quiver—to refresh their skills with, say, some social-media or mobile-app expertise. As Mr. Gould has learned, competing with younger colleagues who grew up texting, tweeting, using Facebook and playing videogames requires constant work to stay up-to-date.
Older workers have accumulated knowledge that is hard to replace, research shows. But lagging tech skills are one reason job-loss rates for experienced older workers 55 and over have exceeded those for younger workers by a growing margin for the past decade, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, April 17, 2013
John Agno: Books for Boomers: Reviews & Coaching Tips (FREE)
Here are a few secrets that boomers don't want you to know about:
Boomers might be in denial that they are getting older. They are staying younger longer, but time still marches on. No matter how many vitamins, health regimes, even facelifts you have, we all age.
Baby Boomers already have a very drawn out spirit of youthfulness because of the era they were born into.
Boomers still long for the 'simpler' times of their youth.
They don't want to admit that they are terrified of high technology, or even low technology. Many boomers have classic technophobia. They would almost rather cut off their right arm than learn how anything online functions. Truth be told, most boomers have their kids or grandkids set up their iPhones, iPads or Android systems.
Boomers are relying on the millennial generation/Gen Y for virtual direction. Although boomers are quickly learning the Internet, there are many who are still very intimidated.
Boomers are running out of money. Sad, but true. A lot of boomers thought that life was always going to be good and therefore they never set aside savings or learned how to invest.
Boomers are really into health and fitness. The world of health and fitness is taking on a whole new light. Since the 1970s, the public's interest in health and wellness has soared to become a multi-billion dollar industry. The supplement and pharmaceutical field has exploded. New vitamin stores are popping up all over the place. Most of their clients are the aging Baby Boomers.
Boomers will pay top dollar for most products. They want the best and they want it now. Boomers feel special to begin with and they love top quality.
Source: Jay Conrad Levinson: Guerrilla Marketing to Baby Boomers
John Agno: Books for Boomers: Reviews & Coaching Tips (FREE)
The boomers just keep on living and enjoying life according to "Guerrilla Marketing to Baby Boomers" by authors Jay Kevinson and Kristi Carter.
There are two generations of Baby Boomers, early and late.
The early generations of baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1955, are now "empty nesters" with adult children. Their spending priorities have changed from spending money on children's upkeep and education to upgrading their homes, clothing, travel and funding their retirement accounts. This group travels the most to see their grandchildren or to have adventures all over the world. The early boomers join country clubs, tennis and golf clubs, gardening clubs and participate in community activities.
The early boomers spend a little differently than the late Baby Boomers who were born between 1955 to 1964. More of their disposable income is still going to their children's education. When their children start to have families of their own, the late boomers join the ranks of disposable-income spending just as the early boomers.
Once a boomer, always a boomer continues. You can take the boomer out of the nostalgic decades, but you can't take the nostalgia out of the boomer. Their mentality is an optimistic, tackle-the-world and live-well attitude. Life is full of so many options for the boomers. Second or third careers have become appealing to the boomers.
The Best of Boomer Bloggers illustrate some of the options boomers have as they continue to live and learn well:
On The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide, Rita R. Robison, consumer journalist, writes about two food bloggers who are calling for the removal of the dyes Yellow #5 and Yellow #6 from Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. The bloggers became concerned about the Kraft product after discovering that many countries ban the two artificial dyes and that the Center for Science in the Public Interest has linked the dyes to hyperactivity in children, migraines, and asthma.
Laura Lee aka the Midlife Crisis Queen has been busy reviewing books and films this week. First she provides an analysis of the new book "The Aviator's Wife" from a women's liberation perspective and then discusses aspects of trauma in the new film "The Impossible." Don't miss her new article over at the Huffington Post: "The Truth About Midlife."
Tom Sightings has been struggling through a blizzard of tax forms for the past couple of weeks, and now offers some financial wisdom in his latest post 10 Lessons You Learn from Doing Your Own Taxes.
In her latest blog, Lisa Garon Froman makes the case for “phoning it in” sometimes in order to renew yourself creatively, emotionally, mentally and physically. http://taoflashes.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/phoning-it-in-like-steven-tyler/
Source: Jay Conrad Levinson: Guerrilla Marketing to Baby Boomers
John Agno: Books for Boomers: Reviews & Coaching Tips (FREE)
Baby Boomers are smart enough to realize that they may run out of money sooner than later.
They understand that their life expectancy may go well into their 90s and try to prepare for this in their 50s and 60s. They are hiring business and life coaches. Financial advisors are not just managing their portfolios, but are also tutoring the boomers, since they want to be involved and monitor their finances along with their advisers.
The boomers are not as intimidated as their parents were about money, especially the women boomers. A lot of boomers take care of their own portfolio. They have learned how trade stocks, commodities and currencies work. For example, Robert Prechter from Elliott Wave International shares his one simple insight that will change the way you invest forever in a new 23-minute video presentation called "How Market Losers Think -- and How to Stop Doing It." See the video free for a limited time.
Sources: Jay Conrad Levinson: Guerrilla Marketing to Baby Boomers
Robert R. Prechter Jr.: Conquer the Crash: You Can Survive and Prosper in a Deflationary Depression
John Agno: Books for Boomers: Reviews & Coaching Tips
John Agno: Boomer Retirement Life Tips
Some of the greatest problem solvers in history -- Albert Einstein, for example -- know that the secret to solving complex problems requires simplicity.
Einstein's simple equation (E = mc²) revolutionized math and science because it offered a single simple solution to so many of the world's mysteries.
New research from the desk of market technician Robert Prechter reveals that a relatively small (yet growing) group of investors has discovered a universal truth about investing that stands to revolutionize the fields of finance and economics.
Prechter's insight is simple yet counterintuitive. And in a new 23-minute video presentation called "How Market Losers Think -- and How to Stop Doing It," Prechter shares his one simple insight that will change the way you invest forever.
Prechter's new video is free for a limited time.
About the Publisher, Elliott Wave International
Founded in 1979 by Robert R. Prechter Jr., Elliott Wave International (EWI) is the world's largest market forecasting firm. Its staff of full-time analysts provides 24-hour-a-day market analysis to institutional and private investors around the world.
Workers and employers in the U.S. are bracing for a retirement crisis, even as the stock market sits near highs and the economy shows signs of improvement.
New data show that powerful financial and demographic forces are combining to squeeze individuals and companies that are trying to save for the future and make their money last.
Fifty-seven percent of U.S. workers surveyed reported less than $25,000 in total household savings and investments excluding their homes, according to a report to be released Tuesday by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Only 49% reported having so little money saved in 2008.
The survey also found that 28% of Americans have no confidence they will have enough money to retire comfortably—the highest level in the study's 23-year history.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, March 19, 2013
John Agno: Books for Boomers: Reviews & Coaching Tips (FREE)
We're about to share with you a developing social trend from Europe that may shock you -- it might even enrage you -- so please be forewarned.
A new report from the Socionomics Institute, a U.S.-based think tank that studies developing global trends in social mood, reveals a striking resemblance between modern-day Greece and pre-WWII Germany.
Now, before you write off this warning as a run-of-the-mill, Nazi-name-dropping scare tactic, consider this: A rising political party known as Golden Dawn is resurrecting such practices, all hallmarks of Hitler’s Third Reich, in modern-day Greece, which has suffered a dramatic, 88% stock market decline over the past five years -- a decline far greater than that of Germany's 73% stock rout from 1927 to 1932.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme," goes an old saying attributed to American author Mark Twain. And new research from the Socionomics Institute sees a disturbing pattern of rhymes between modern-day Greece and pre-WWII Germany.
To be sure, market and political developments in Greece will have a significant impact on the future of Europe, the Americas and beyond.
Read the rest the Institute's new February report to learn more about the developing threats out of Greece. The full report is available for free for this month only as part of a special promotion run by the Institute in conjunction with its partners at Elliott Wave International, the world's largest market forecasting firm.
About the Publisher, Elliott Wave International
Founded in 1979 by Robert R. Prechter Jr., Elliott Wave International (EWI) is the world's largest market forecasting firm. Its staff of full-time analysts provides 24-hour-a-day market analysis to institutional and private investors around the world.
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