Jerry Boyer: "I was a paid CNBC contributor for two years, 2008 and 2009. And my job was principally to appear on Kudlow’s show. I appeared as a guest well over a hundred times ..." Matt Goldwater, a former "news associate" at CNBC wrote in 2014: "I can confirm they get paid per appearance. I do not have any inside information, but presumably they are also paid to exclusively contribute to the network."
Apparently they demand "exclusive rights" from every guest except the A-listers. You're not allowed to appear on Bloomberg or, (by some reports) Fox Business on the same day as you appear on CNBC. When they can, they pursue complete exclusivity.
David

Didn't read the article, but I would think keeping your mind active as you age is just as important as exercise in old age. I can't think of any better mental exercise than following the markets. When I was young I use to sit in the brokerage boardrooms and watch the tape. I was always impressed with the mental vitality of those sitting with me - many in their 80s and even a few in their 90s. I attributed their mental alertness to their years of monitoring the markets and wanted to be just like them when I got old.

Yes. Its important to develop a complete will (or living trust) early and to keep it updated. It is also important to do some contingency financial planning regarding what happens if you do suffer from significant mental decline. And, it is important to self evaluate your financial mental fitness as time passes (and that, if you are in a long term relationship with someone, that you discuss the importance of honestly reporting to each other about what you observe about that significant other).
My father lived with dementia for the last 15 years of his life. He had handled most of my parent's financial affairs during their 60 years together. My parents did very little "what if" planning regarding this possible outcome. Fortunately, I was able to make myself available to handle their financial and many of their other personal affairs during those years. This experience clearly showed me that planning for this possible outcome is important.

It's interesting. I remember being told when I was younger that the first thing you forget when you've been drinking are the things you most recently learned- like driving. At that time, the point was don't drink and drive.
This says that the first things to be forgotten due to mental disease are things you've known for a very long time, rather than the stuff you just learned, like how to use your new iPhone or the name of your second wife who you've only been married to for 10 years rather than the 70 years you've been able to count backwards from 100 by 7.
I'm not trying to make any real point other than finding it interesting, but I guess it must mean the parts of the mind affected by alcohol are different than those affected by mental disease.

""The financial crisis was meant to have exploded the credit bubble once and for all, but there's very little sign of it. Rising public indebtedness has taken over where households and companies left off.""
LOL. The financial crisis would have busted the credit bubble if governments let it. Instead, they scrambled to reflate it (and then some) as soon as possible. As I've noted previously, no one learned anything - the only question was, "How fast can we reboot to a few years prior?"
Now you have:
"The combined public debt of the G7 economies alone has grown by close to 40 percentage points to around 120pc of GDP since the start of the crisis, while globally, the total debt of private non-financial sectors has risen by 30pc, far in advance of economic growth."
"need constant infusions of financially destabilising debt to keep them going."
...which is certain to end well.

This somewhat alarmist headline by Jeremy Warner caught my eye this morning. He is a widely read British financial commentator with about 30 years in the business. Its interesting to read a commentary coming from that side of the pond.
Here are a couple of "facts" I gleaned from the article:
"According to investment bank Jefferies, some 70pc of all German bunds now trade on a negative yield. In France, it's 50pc, and even in Spain, which was widely thought insolvent only a few years ago, it's 17pc."
"The combined public debt of the G7 economies alone has grown by close to 40 percentage points to around 120pc of GDP since the start of the crisis, while globally, the total debt of private non-financial sectors has risen by 30pc, far in advance of economic growth."
Here are three of the author's conclusions:
"The financial crisis was meant to have exploded the credit bubble once and for all, but there's very little sign of it. Rising public indebtedness has taken over where households and companies left off."
"For all kinds of reasons, advanced economies, and perhaps emerging ones too, seem to have run out of productivity-enhancing growth and therefore need constant infusions of financially destabilising debt to keep them going."
"The flip side of the cheap money story is soaring asset prices. The bond market bubble is just the half of it; since most other assets are priced relative to bonds, just about everything else has been going up as well."
The author does not lay out a clear case for why a mass default lies ahead rather than some other less dramatic "muddle our way through" outcome. But perhaps he does successfully argue there is a fat tail risk for that or another similarly disruptive outcome ahead for the global economy in the not too distant future.
Here is the link:
telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/11569329/Jeremy-Warner-Negative-interest-rates-put-world-on-course-for-biggest-mass-default-in-history.html

FYI: Health care stock funds are the top-performing sector category for the past 15 years, but they were bruised Monday by sharp declines in biotech and medical stocks. Health care fund performance has soared above gains by runners-up communications and consumer discretionary in recent years.
Regards,
Ted
http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewFreeUse.act?fuid=MTkyODczMDI=
Enlarged Graphic:
http://news.investors.com/photopopup.aspx?path=WEBlv042815.jpg&docId=749870&xmpSource=&width=1000&height=1152&caption=&id=749871

Hi Dex,
I did not follow your analyses in any detail, but I believe you are being far too pessimistic. A 30-year projected retirement is doable with less funds than your analyses suggest.
How do I know this? I did a few calculations using the Monte Carlo simulator that I referenced on this exchange. Please give it a try using your specific constraints. I believe it offers some hope for initial retirement portfolio values in the one-half to one million dollar range for a COLA adjusted withdrawal rate starting at $30,000 annually.
Using end of period portfolio survival probability as the success criteria, a one-half million dollar initial portfolio worth is only a coin flip likelihood. That’s not acceptable. But a one million dollar portfolio has a survival likelihood in excess of 90%. Those odds were estimated with a diversified portfolio with an average annual return of 8% and a standard deviation of 15%.
I did some what-if scenarios also. For the inadequate one-half million dollar portfolio, the survival likelihood odds can be incrementally improved by about 10% if a more aggressive equity portfolio is postulated, or if a portfolio with a reduction in standard deviation is assembled, or if a flexible drawdown strategy is practiced. Flexible meaning that COLA raises are held to zero for negative return years. These tactics can be individually deployed or used in concert.
My analyses were very incomplete and were done for illustrative purposes only.
Stay strong, all is not lost. And use the referenced Monte Carlo code.
Best Wishes.

i think we have at least 5 more years of this low interest rate environment. It could be more. The debt, aging population, unemployment, wage stagnation will help to keep it down.

I hope you prove prescient. I would be thrilled with just a year or two more of these low yields. But I sure haven't liked the action in TLT (20 year bond) since the bottom in yields around the beginning of February. I worry (I always worry) 2015 will be the reverse of 2014 the former being everyone was shocked how low rates fell with the latter everyone being shocked how quickly rates move back up. Time for the bank loan/floating rate funds?

i think we have at least 5 more years of this low interest rate environment. It could be more. The debt, aging population, unemployment, wage stagnation will help to keep it down.

Europe is at the epicenter of the global experiment with negative interest rates. Bonds trading with negative yields are commonplace there. But, even in the US, JP Morgan Chase will soon begin to charge certain customers a 1% per year fee on deposits. Is my idea that cash sets a floor on interest rates becoming outdated? How unstable are things becoming that I am even asking this question?
This topic is impacting my thinking about my portfolio. (Maybe my next annual portfolio review will find me adding more to my defensive allocation to “cash”.) If anyone has a properly functioning crystal ball I would appreciate some guidance concerning what the next couple of years holds for us!
Anyway, here is a fairly short BloomburgBusiness article about this topic:
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-23/negative-interest-rates-may-spark-existential-crisis-for-cash

I don't think anyone would recommend retiring with just 5 years of cash flow in the bank and $300,000 in other investments. So, let's use $1,000,000 as your goal plus the first 5 years with SS.
Interest rate 5%
Years 30
Starting amount $1,050,000
Future Value: $4,538,039.49
Interest rate 3.5% - same as expense growth rate
Years 30
Starting amount $1,050,000
Future Value: $2,947,133.39
So, give up the hope ...
Here is my 2016 cash flow
(29,500) Spending
152 Cash Back
222 Cecking/Int
28,920 Dividends/Interest
10,713 Money Market
13,814 Pension
24,321 Total

Here's an example:
$50,000 budget/ year
250,000 Spending
-000,000 Pension - you don't have one
-100,000 Social Security
-100,000 Dividends/Interest Apx 300,000 paying dividends/interest You have other $
= 50,000 withdraw from savings - 10,000 into money market, 40,000 into other
So you have:
300,000 paying dividends/interest
10,000 MM
40,000 other
$350,000 Total + your other money
250,000 Spending
-000,000 Pension - you don't have one
-000,000 Social Security - retire before eligible or not there for you
-100,000 Dividends/Interest Apx 300,000 paying dividends/interest You have other $
= 150,000 withdraw from savings - 30,000 into money market, 120,000 into other
So you have:
300,000 paying dividends/interest
30,000 MM
120,000 other
$450,000 Total + your other money
You don't say how old you are but let's assume you are 30.
BUDGET
Interest rate 3.5%
Years 30
Starting amount $50,000 - budget
Future Value: $140,339.69/Year
Dividend/Interest Income:
Interest rate 5%
Years 30
Starting amount $350,000
Future Value: $$1,512,679.83
http://www.investopedia.com/calculator/fvcal.aspx
So, at a minimum, if you get SS you need 1.5M in savings in 30 years.
If, you don't get SS you need $1,944,874.07

Do this exercise and let us know how it affect your retirement investment.
Line item budget for 5 years
- pension
- social security
- dividends
= amount to withdraw from investments (or deposit). Put 1 year of this in a money market account, the remainder in an interest bearing low risk investment.
This does 2 things
1 - when your investments are positive you can withdraw years 6,7... and deposit.
2 - when your investments are negative (market downturn) you have 5 years you don't have withdraw any money.

I sold this fund about four years ago due to concerns about rising interest rates. Silly me! This retiree could fashion a fairly simple "all weather, total return retirement portfolio" I would be comfortable with by combining VWIAX with BERIX, FPACX, SGENX, and RPHYX (those 4 are in my present portfolio). RPHYX would hold enough to see me through about 15 months of planned withdrawals. My brokerage account always also has at least enough cash to take care of my next planned quarterly withdrawal.

Oh goody. We've gone from the four food groups (a 1-dimensional representation) to a food pyramid (2-dimensional). In investing, from stocks/bonds/cash (1-dimensional) to style boxes (2-dimensional). Now let's go to 3D; can HD be far behind?
Seriously, what M* is talking about is nothing new. It looks like they're just seeing a market opportunity, since robo-advisors seem to have made paying for advice (good or bad) more fashionable.
Don't invest your 401(k) in company stock? Enron? WorldCom? Hello? On the other hand, there are tax benefits for doing so (net unrealized appreciation). How do you balance these factors?
Don't invest in your company industry (the example given was real estate for a realtor). Sure, and thousands of articles have been written on this. During the dot com bubble, I was in a tech company where the HR person told me that people were pouring money into American Century Ultra (TWCUX). That was the closest we had to a tech fund.
On the other hand, isn't the adage (attributed to Peter Lynch) "invest in what you know"? Again, a balancing act.
So M* may get into the financial planning business, piggybacking on a couple of trends - robo advisors and big data. Sounds hot, sounds now. (IMHO there really is potential here, but one has to be skeptical about the timing, for something that could have been done years ago, but less easily marketed.)

JABAX is another fine choice, albeit a bit more conservative than VWELX. I've held the latter for nearly 20 years and it's the anchor of my entire portfolio.

Thanks Dex. Very instructive. Wonder how long you've operated on this budget? Ours is set up a little differently and has not failed us over the 20+ years since we developed it.
Three areas:
1. Anticipated Income (for the year)
2. Recurring monthly expenses*(X12)
3. Major itemized expenses
*For #2 we throw in a monthly sum called "pocket money." Covers everything we don't care to log every time we buy it: gas, food, entertainment, incidental purchases, etc. Would drive you nuts trying to log such frequent small outlays.
#3 is a list of things that are large, but paid-out less frequently. Includes vacations, heating fuel, clothing, taxes, home improvements, auto repair, etc. Also a few K in an emergency or reserve fund. I keep a separate page in the budget book for each of these major areas and faithfully record every expenditure. Amounts allocated to some areas, like auto repair, are best-guess estimates.
We maintain an ongoing fund for area #3 by dividing the total amount by 12 and making monthly deposits in that amount into a separate checking account. Wouldn't have to be a separate account. One could work that out on paper. But, running a separate account for those major outlays is much easier.
Probably sounds confusing as hell. Evolves over time and really becomes simple. :)

I do concur that a fund of funds investment, if you have one, is best started in a retirement account. I was not aware that a fund of funds cannot pass along losses to the investor. That pretty much nails using the IRA, Roth IRA or 401k.

At best, the Wiki statement that "A fund of fund ... cannot use [capital] losses" is extremely misleading, at worst, flat out wrong.
Any registered investment company (whether fund of funds or fund of individual securities) cannot distribute capital losses. But it is allowed to carry losses forward to later years, where it may use those losses to offset gains. If memory serves, funds are only allowed to carry forward losses ten years, as opposed to individual taxpayers who can carry forward cap losses indefinitely.
Nothing special about fund of funds here.
In fact, the boggleheads Wiki says just this: Vanguard's Target Retirement Funds' ''rebalancing can result in the realization of capital losses and the creation of tax loss carryforwards in the funds. The existence of loss carryforwards has historically resulted in minimal long-term capital gains distributions."
Vanguard Target Retirement Funds (2005-2025) tax distributions (boggleheads)
So whom do you care to believe: the boggleheads' Wiki, or the boggleheads' Wiki?

Wouldn't give up my younger years (oh the good times) for anything, EXCEPT if I knew then What I know now about investing, I could have retired a very wealthy YOUNG man, instead I retired 60ish with all the money I will ever need...OH Well.....
Maybe carefree young AND financial secure retirement is still the way to go..seems to be working...