Accumulation Phase and Distribution Phase Differen...

Have you noticed, as you age, that your body needs a little more recovery time to heal from an injury? We don’t bounce back as easily as when we were kids. Your retirement portfolio has different phases in its life too. And what’s fine in one phase, might not work so well in another.  The two main phases are the accumulation and the distribution phases. I’m going to discuss a few general differences between how you...

How Much Should You Save for Retirement?

Drum roll please: the answer is all you can! The real answer is: it depends. If you’ve been saving steadily over the decades, keep up the good work and check with a financial planner if you have any questions about whether you’re on track or not. If you’re 40ish and just starting to save, the first answer applies to you. To give you a rule of thumb (take it for what it’s worth), six times your gross income is low, but...

The Case for Passive Investing

A very wise man once said: “Lethargy, bordering on sloth should remain the cornerstone of an investment style.” That was Warren Buffett, the king of buy and hold. In his defense, he was probably referring to individual, value stocks. However, this advice will serve the everyday mutual fund or exchange traded funds (ETFs) investor very well. Mr. Buffett is famous for finding under valued companies and investing in them....

The Scoop on Bonds

Even though most people have heard of bonds and many have, at least, a bond fund in their portfolio: many people still don’t understand them. I’m going to attempt to give a fairly concise explanation of what bonds are and how bonds react to interest rates. Very basically, a bond is a loan that the bondholder (this could be you) makes to a corporation or government entity. Some bond issues are for hundreds of millions or...

The Beauty of Rebalancing

The most successful investors over the past several decades agree that you should sell an investment when the price is high and buy it when it is low. This doesn’t sound like rocket science. Buy low, sell high — easy! Right? Not so fast. Our emotions, including greed, interfere with what we should do and what we actually do with our investments. Many, people ride the bull all the way to the top without wanting to take...

What, Exactly, Does William Do?

Ask 10 people what a financial planner is and you’re likely to get 10 different answers. The trouble is: all of the answers may be correct, depending on the financial planner. My name is William Duncan, the founder of Duncan Financial Planning, LLC of Henderson, Nevada. I’m not going to attempt to answer the question for other financial planners. I’m going to tell you what I do. First, I’m not in competition with the...