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I don't have a crystal ball. And if I did I'm not sure I would know how to use it. It seems like having a crystal ball would come in handy to figure out what investments to choose in your 401(k) or 403(b). You look at a list of funds or go online and see a bunch of choices, maybe read about a few...

Sometimes in personal finance - as in the rest of life - you get false clues, things that seem important but lead you astray. Here's how you can spot a false clue and ignore it. Let's assume you are already participating in your employer's retirement plan or are about to start. You have to decide...

Today I'll start the countdown of my Ten Ground Rules for 401(k)/403(b) Success. These are common sense guidelines I have refined from nearly three decades of talking with clients and observing their results within employer-sponsored retirement plans. The first rule seems so simple and obvious as...

When Apple started selling the first iPhone in June 2007, you could buy Apple stock for about $100 per share. Two weeks ago, You'd pay $644 for that same share. During that same time, $100 invested in an S&P 500 mutual fund would be worth about $95. Yet Apple naysayers abound, calling the stock ove...

You can't live in Rochester without knowing Kodak employees and retirees, and those of us who have never worked there draw a lot of our picture of what happens inside the Big Yellow Box from what we hear from family and friends. But an image of Kodak created by secondhand accounts is a little like a...

Time for some startling statistics... According to research by Wells Fargo, affluent women are significantly less confident about retirement than men. The least confident of all are single women, and the most confident are married men. About 700,000 women will lose their husbands this year. The med...

Last Tuesday, the S&P 500 closed below its 50-day moving average for the first time since December, 2011. A sign of trouble, this came after the markets have pulled back recently, due to factors such as European sovereign debt fears and a sluggish jobs report last week. Wednesday saw a nice rebound...

There is a lot of buzz today about Google announcing a stock split. I just wanted to point out one small detail regarding this split. There isn't one. Well, not really. Yes the price of your current shares will be reduced by half and you will receive an additional share for each, but not the same t...

Trading 'volume' is defined as the number of shares bought or sold during a given time period. Technical analysts believe it is a powerful tool for confirming trends in prices, or rather shifts in the market's supply and demand. If a price trend has a lot of volume then the trend is supported and an...

Have you ever thought about time as an investment? Recently I came across an where the author wrote about the best financial advice he had ever received: "invest your time, don't spend it."This led me to a similar article which also discussed the idea of spending vs. investing time.In the end, both...