Retirement planning

With vastly lowered expectations for retirement, investors appear more amenable to annuities and other income-generating investments whose scaled-down returns they might not have considered before, NAVA found in a survey of 1,500 financial advisers.

Morningstar has developed a series of 18 asset allocation indexes for investors and advisers to use as benchmarks for target-date and target-risk funds.

MIAMI - With the average equity mutual fund portfolio down more than 38% in 2008, money market mutual funds are quickly becoming one of the only safe havens for risk-averse investors. Money market fund assets recently topped $4 trillion for the first time, making money funds the single largest mutual fund group, according to the Investment Company Institute.

Morningstar has developed a series of 18 asset allocation indexes for investors and advisers to use as benchmarks for target-date and target-risk funds.

BOSTON - For decades, annuities were shunned by money managers for their high cost and lack of liquidity.

BOSTON - Like gambling addicts who just need one more big win before they cash out, millions of Baby Boomers on the verge of retirement took extremely risky bets with their life savings, hoping to score that big jackpot that would make up for all their past mistakes.

The economic turmoil has prompted smaller employers who previously hadn’t considered setting up a 401(k) plan to do so in light of the beaten down values, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Financial planners are spending a lot of time these days trying to allay their clients' fears. Anyone who works with a financial adviser most likely has money in the stock market and, therefore, has experienced steep losses in the past year.

Defined contribution plans have been hammered by dropping equity markets, and this chain of losses has caused a ripple effect throughout the fund management industry.

With other safe investments paying so little these days, it's hard to ignore the glowing rates that some insurance companies are guaranteeing on long-term fixed deferred annuities.

Judging from the actions of the 11 million participants Fidelity Investment serves through their 401(k)s, investors remain faithful about retirement savings.

As Baby Boomers head toward retirement, they will likely decrease the number of relationships they have with financial institutions and reshape the entire industry, according to new research from the Retirement Income Industry Association.

Rather than fixate on contributions and current 401(k) balance, a new website, ReviewMy401k.com, gauges investors’ risk tolerance, asks them for a complete list of the choices available in their 401(k) plan and how they are currently invested, and, from that, suggests a portfolio mix of the best funds available to them based upon their needs. It also provides quarterly reviews and updates of the investment mix.

Vanguard has introduced a new, broad market bond fund to be used exclusively by its Target Retirement and LifeStrategy families. The Vanguard Total Bond Market II Index Fund will be benchmarked against the Barclays Capital U.S. Aggregate Bond Index and is a clone of the $65 billion Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund.

Mistakes, bad luck and unexpected events can happen to any firm during good times and bad, but tackling misfortune in a forthright, brutally honest manner rather than trying to sidestep unpleasant truths can mean the difference between a small crisis and a full-blown public relations nightmare.

Fair value reporting seemed anything but fair last October when prices fell off a cliff.

In light of the recent market downturn and the difficult position that has left millions of near-retirees, Charles Schwab has launched a new suite of advice and tools specifically geared to investors within 10 years of retirement, called Real Life Retirement Services. Built as a type of social network, the accompanying website gives investors a place to ask questions and share their own experiences, including a survey that shows them how their retirement expectations compare with their peers.

Reflecting current financial turmoil, most investors are more attuned to whether a company is viable than to its performance, according to the 2009 Investor Brandscape report from Cogent Research.

The events that occurred in the financial services industry over the past year were once thought inconceivable. At this point, regulators are chomping at the bit to reverse how Wall Street does business, and investors are downright spooked. The editors of SourceMedia's business publications offer their views on how these dramatic shifts on Wall Street and in corporate America will impact businesses and investors this year.

Millionaires and affluent investors suffered steep losses in 2008, and most, particularly Baby Boomers, are rolling their remaining assets into cash and stable-value investments for the foreseeable future.