Practice

The population may be aging, but that hasn’t gotten a lot of Americans to plan for retirement. About 71% of Americans lack a formal investment plan to help them reach their retirement goals, according to one study.

Financial planners who work with households with $1 million in investable assets say the rule makes sense.

Every new year, many financial planners prompt clients to revisit and update their estate plans and wills. In so doing, they should begin teaching clients about a new – but critical – area of estate planning: attending to their digital legacies.

This week, IRA expert Ed Slott fields questions from investors about transferring IRAs to beneficiaries, converting traditional IRAs to Roth IRAs and required minimum distributions from inherited accounts.

The population may be aging, but that hasn’t gotten a lot of Americans to plan for retirement. About 71% of Americans lack a formal investment plan to help them reach their retirement goals, according to one study.

Total retirement assets fell to $17 trillion by the end of the third quarter, down 7.5% from the record high of $18.4 trillion that investors socked away in the prior quarter. The decline corresponded with a 13.9% drop in the S&P 500 during the third quarter.

A FINRA arbitration panel slapped a former Bank of America Merrill Lynch financial advisor – now with U.S. Bancorp Investments – with an injunction that will prohibit him from soliciting his former clients until October 2012.

After a decade marked by two severe bear markets, 401(k) investors have adopted a more balanced approach to their portfolios, according to a report from the Investment Company Institute and the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

Total retirement assets were $17.0 trillion as of Sept. 30, down 7.5% from a record high of $18.4 trillion as of June 30, the Investment Company Institute said Wednesday, attributing most of the decline to the 13.9% decline in the S&P 500 Index in the third quarter. Assets might have declined even further were it not for automatic contributions to 401(k)s, the ICI said.

After a decade marked by two severe bear markets, 401(k) investors have adopted a more balanced approach to their portfolios, according to a report released Wednesday by the Investment Company Institute and the Employee Benefit Research Institute.