Retirement

Lauren Foster rounds up recent articles and resources that you may have missed during the last couple of week.

In economic and financial matters, paternalism — protecting an individual from himself or herself — comes in many guises with one common theme: the maximization of welfare. Yet it raises a question with no easy answers: When exactly should individuals or investors be protected from making their own bad choices?

In his presentation at the CFA Institute Wealth Management 2013 conference, financial adviser and blogger Michael Kitces offered a framework for tackling two fundamental client questions: How much can I safely spend from this portfolio without needing to worry about the markets? And, if I want to spend X, how much money do I need in the account to safely retire?

Understanding dementia and its financial implications, as well as a host of other eldercare issues, extends well beyond attorneys: It is something every financial adviser with elderly clients, or clients approaching retirement, should know more about.

One of the challenges investment professionals face is figuring out effective ways of helping some clients become smarter about their decisions. This is key to offsetting what Nobel Laureate Robert C. Merton calls "financially dysfunctional behavior."

The slightest rise in rates here in the US could devastate federal, state, and municipal budgets nationwide. All of which goes a long way to explaining the Fed’s brute determination to keep interest rates miniscule.

M. Barton Waring has succeeded in creating one of the definitive works on the structure and management of defined benefit plans. This indispensable guide for pension advisers dispels any notion of easy solutions to the problems of defined benefit plans, especially underfunding. His sensible solutions are within our grasp if we choose to accept them.