Following are edited excerpts from a current Washington Post report:

A government-wide hiring freeze has led the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to yank job offers to more than 200 new examiners, the front-line employees who closely monitor banks to ensure they operate safely and adhere to an extensive rule book.
The FDIC is already facing a staffing challenge, particularly with a lack of examiners, undermining its ability to reduce the risk of bank failures. A chronic shortage of examiners contributed to the failure of Signature Bank, one of three large banks to collapse in 2023, the agency has said.
Examiners are essentially charged with making sure a bank doesn’t fail, a critical function at the roughly 6,000-employee FDIC, of which roughly 2,300 are examiners. The agency oversees about 4,500 banks around the country, most of them small. It also insures trillions of bank deposits and winds down failing banks. Its work is funded through industry assessments.
Perhaps more significantly, the agency is already in need of additional examiners, with frequent turnover and staffing shortages contributing to major setbacks in recent years. Current and former regulators said they feared the situation could snowball if hiring cuts combine with an uptick in the departures of retirement-eligible employees.
A review of the March 2023 failure of Signature Bank found the supervisory group overseeing large financial institutions in the FDIC’s New York office had average vacancies of about 40 percent. For the six years before Signature’s collapse, the FDIC couldn’t adequately staff the team dedicated to the bank.

aren't these 'pools' what keep costs down, e.g., one fidelity client sells shares and another fidelity client picks up that lot?
(this is NOT saying some part of the financial industry will not exploit dark pools, that is to be fully expected given the american worship of capitalism. it even seems unpatriotic these days not to participate in outright grift.)

+1 Good luck. Hope it works for you.
I wasn’t trying to persuade anyone not to invest in these funds. It’s the overall trend across fund managers and the financial services industry that concerns me.
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/comment/186599/#Comment_186599

Thanks @FD. A lot of that is true. Note that @Observant1 actually put quotation marks around “Expert” in the thread’s title - intending perhaps that the term be taken with a large grain of salt. When I worked as a kid at a filling station / garage the owner was occasionally harassed by Standard Oil to maintain the business according to their codes. He dreaded the guys from the company stopping by unannounced to inspect the joint. And he taught me that the definition of expert is: “some SOB from out of town.”
I also think it’s unwise to completely disregard cogent commentary from the likes of Howard Marks or David Giroux. Just maybe …. maybe …. these guys know a little more about investing than you or I. And if you posted all your trades in advance instead of after you’ve made a reported small fortune on them maybe more here would believe you.
PS - I enjoy Bloomberg. But you are spot-on. It’s entertainment. “Woe Is He” who buys and sells financial securities or products based on what the latest talking head recommended.

Hmmm …
I once encountered similar issues with an Elan credit card. That, it turned out, was traced to my incorrectly imputing the 3-digit security code on a purchase which thereby caused an automatic account lock. But I didn’t realize the account was locked until several purchases were declined.
Surprised you were unable to resolve this Monday, MLK Day notwithstanding. According to VG , “In the event a holiday falls on a weekday or weekend, Vanguard is open for business.”
My guess is you inadvertently caused the account to lock as a VG pre-programmed security measure thru a keyboard error. But, who knows? The lock may have “timed-out” after a number of days. But usually it takes several (3) failed login efforts to prompt a lock (based on experiences with various financial institutions). However, with the threats posed by AI, everybody is (or should be) tightening up security.
Another possibility is this outfit (VG) is even more messed up than I’ve imagined from numerous board posts. It’s amazing to me they don’t have some weekend hours (maybe Saturday mornings?) - with “work at home” being pretty prevalent today. As far as I know, Fidelity has 7-Day 24 hour service (or darned close). And (”Knock on wood”) I’ve never been locked out there.
-
Aside: Folks - When you provide those answers to “security questions” (ie: Where were you born? Grandmother’s maiden name?, etc.) avoid giving real answers. Somebody could possibly research that and use it to scam you. I use various scotch whisky brands as answers. (Best friend = Glen Fiddich.) There’s so many different brands it’s easy to come up with half a dozen favorites to answer different queries. :)

@hank Try this:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/american-stock-ownership-by-share-of-financial-assets/

@Observant1 What drives you to purchase addition share of this fund? A quick look on yahoo fin. shows it to be running "way behind" in the category over 1 & 3 years!

If I may opine here, when I look to buy a new car, computer, piece of furniture I don’t just focus on the ones that have risen the most in price over the last 3 years. I sometimes apply the same logic to buying financial products, But perhaps I have it all backwards,

It's not just the big banks that play these games. Many institutions do. One can counter by being ever vigilant and moving money around from bank to bank. I did this for a time when I was between homes and had cash proceeds from the sale of my old home. Now I find it more practical to stick with an institution that consistently pays moderately high rates even if not the very top rates. (And to use MMFs, T-bills, etc.)
Whatever you do, keep your hand on your wallet at all times.
Speaking of wallets and not trusting Big Banksters with a penny of your money, what's in your wallet? If you have Fidelity's card, that's issued by Elan Financial Services, a subsidiary of US Bank, the fifth largest US Bank. Though you wouldn't know that by asking Google what it thinks are the largest banks; it omits US bank from its list.
Elan is behind CCs issued by 1300 different banks and credit unions. As CFSB writes, "The name that you are looking for [may not be] the actual issuer's name (for example, "ABC Card" is issued by XYZ Bank)."
Here's CFPB's page that has the institutions actually issuing cards.
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/credit-cards/agreements/issuer/us-bank-national-association/
250 largest banks and 250 largest credit unions by assets held (Dec 2023):
https://personetics.com/resource-center/largest-banks-and-credit-unions-in-the-united-states/
Bank holding companies with the 20 largest credit card loan portfolios (March 2024):
https://www.americanbanker.com/list/20-bank-holding-companies-with-the-largest-credit-card-loan-portfolios-at-the-end-of-q4

An annuity-like distribution is certainly possible. I'm using a combination of funds such as SCHD, DIVO, NEAR, JPIE and a handful of dividend paying stocks and CEFs ...
Color me skeptical. Money managers like Vanguard and Fidelity tried to do this and failed.

Payout funds got their start during the 2007-2008 financial crisis when Vanguard and Fidelity both launched the products. The idea was appealing: Convert a retirement savings pool into a reliable income stream and offer investors peace of mind that they’d get a monthly paycheck, regardless of the market’s ups and downs.
...
Vanguard initially had three payout funds but merged them into one fund in January 2014. Fidelity developed a series of Income Replacement funds, paired with an optional monthly payout feature, but Fidelity rebranded the funds in 2017 as “Managed Retirement Income” with more of a high-income focus rather than managed payouts.
One hurdle: Managed payout funds have long had trouble hitting their income targets without dipping into capital—simply giving investors part of their money back. Annuities work similarly, though they have an insurance component that can keep the income flowing if the portfolio runs out of money.

Barron's, Vanguard Throws in the Towel on Its Managed Payout Fund, Feb 28, 2020
The insurance component is what is missing in DIY (or professionally managed) alternatives. In order to guarantee (self insure) that you won't run out of money in your lifetime, you have to overfund. That may be okay if you're planning on leaving a legacy and are willing to dip heavily into that legacy if things don't work out. But it reduces the income stream that you could otherwise have.
A similar point about underspending is made in the originally cited paper:

[U]sing a relatively simple model we estimate consumption could increase by approximately 80% for retirees if assets were converted to lifetime income streams, where the improvement rates are significantly higher for joint households

What annuities do is pool risk. Some people die early, others later. Instead of each individual self insuring (collectively overinsuring), individuals pool their risk through an insurance company. This provides larger income streams safely.
The risk is in outliving your money. A traditional immediate annuity is not the only way to protect against this tail risk. A longevity annuity (a form of immediate annuity where payouts are deferred) will also do the job.
T. Rowe Price recognized this and recently came out with a product for employer-sponsored plans (401(k)s, etc.). Its Managed Lifetime Income product provides a managed payout investment for 15 years followed by a QLAC (qualified lifetime annuity contract).
I don't see any reason why one cannot do this oneself, self-managing a portfolio (as @PRESSmUP described) and adding a longevity annuity (either QLAC or nonqualified).
Alternatively, one can annuitize a variable annuity.

Variable payout annuities provide protection against longevity risk and allow for some participation in the higher (but more volatile) returns of corporate equities and other real assets. They also avoid the annuitization risk because their benefit payments vary with investment performance and are not fully determined by the prevailing conditions at the time of retirement. But VPAs are exposed to investment and inflation risks ...

The Mechanics and Regulation of Variable Payout Annuities (50 pages. TL;DR)

Regarding Reverse Mortgages -
Wouldn’t it be smarter to do a traditional refinance of your existing home for whatever you can pull out? Then invest the money and draw it down as you need it? The bank or other institution would of course hold a lien against the property. I’ll add that at 7% (+-) interest rates this would be a last resort. However, it sounds better than a reverse mortgage. Guess I don’t understand RMs very well.
Oops - I should have read @msf’s above link first:
”A reverse mortgage loan, like a traditional mortgage, allows homeowners to borrow money using their home as security for the loan. Also like a traditional mortgage, when you take out a reverse mortgage loan, the title to your home remains in your name. However, unlike a traditional mortgage, with a reverse mortgage loan, borrowers don’t make monthly mortgage payments. The loan is repaid when the borrower no longer lives in the home.”
Psychologically, I’d find that difficult to adjust to. It defies everything I’ve been taught about sound financial management - an open-ended lien. Alas, the concept does have some logic behind it.
@bee - I think @PRESSmUP’s above response / suggestion is spot-on. If you can cope with an occasional down year or two it should be possible to construct a portfolio that at least keeps pace with inflation and allows relatively small annual drawdowns. Let’s assume that pulling out 5% (maybe a bit more) a year isn’t going to kill the goose even if the portfolio sustains 2 or 3 back-to-back negative years, His suggested investments are excellent. Obviously, the more additional risk you can afford comfortably to take the better you’ll do over longer (3-5 year) periods.

I thought I knew a lot about investing until opening a brokerage account at Fido 4-5 years ago. Much wider landscape to work with than just having investments at a few different houses. So am still learning. But I do know my 2022 (bear market) return was better by 2 or 3 points then it would have been if stuck in the previous fund houses. From my (broad) family experience of 70+ years the real issue is convincing someone to save during their working years, Without having something to invest, all the coaching in the world can’t help you in retirement.
I’ll vote for better financial education: ”Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”
Great discussion. Thanks @stillers for the lengthy comment.

According to the Morningstar definition of "other":
"Other"
"The proportion of the fund invested in other securities such as property or other financial instruments"
When I use to do a lot of bond oef investing, and you broke down the funds holdings, "other" often linked back to Derivatives.

Barron’s Funds Quarterly+ (2024/Q4–January 13, 2025)
https://www.barrons.com/topics/mutual-funds-quarterly
(Performance data quoted in this Supplement are for 2024/Q4 and YTD to 12/31/24)
(No Supplement – it’s all within the main issue)
Pg 12:2024 was tough for stockpickers. So, look at the holdings of the top funds – LC-PAGDX, LC-BRAGX, MC-RCMFX, SC-HFCGX. Those included Magnificent 7, big tech, financials, energy. What may work for 2025? AI, energy, materials, infrastructure, travel.
Pg 14: In this Trump market, just follow the leaders. Watch cryptos, the best M* category (Digital Assets) of 2024, followed far behind by the MLPs. Trump and sons have a crypto venture called World Liberty Financial. Bonds and rate sensitive plays (utilities, real estate, etc) were laggards with the exception of financials that should benefit from coming deregulations. Funds related to Trump’s circle of friends did very well – PTIR (2x PLTR), TSLL (2x TSLA), MLXIX (9.6% in ET).
SP500 has 33% in tech and 13% in financials and did quite well in 2024 with +25% despite softness in stocks in 2024/Q4. The total ETF AUM was over $10 trillion with 4 ETFs among the top 10 being the SP500 ETFs. Inflows into ETFs, including the active ETFs, were strong. Mutual funds had outflows. Foreign funds didn’t do well (the US investor returns were also hurt by a strong dollar). (By @LewisBraham at MFO)
More on Funds & Retirement
RETIREMENT. Super Catchup for 401k/403b from 2025. Another Secure 2.0 provision for catchups for 401k, 403b, government 457 and federal TSP kicks in 2025.
For 55+ $7,500 (regular)
For 60-63 $11,250 (higher of $10,000 and 150% of regular catchup)
SIMPLE retirement plan catchups are also adjusted: 55+ $3,500, 60-63 $5,250.
Priority order – 401k to employer match, Roth IRA, HSA, top off 401k.
Barron’s weekend issue has CASH TRACK charts showing 4-wMA of flows.
https://i.ibb.co/dDw0rm1/Barrons-Cash-Track-011125.png
Q4 Top 5 Fund Categories (MFOP)
https://i.ibb.co/5x4xYCK/MFOP-Quarterly-Top5-010925.png
Q4 Bottom 5 Fund Categories (MFOP)
https://i.ibb.co/R69M4pz/MFOP-Quarterly-Bottom5-010925.png
LINK

My parents have an advisor who is about to retire. he said he'll take care of them for as long as he's alive (my father is clergy and helped him through some losses) so thats nice but he's 5 years older than my parents!
I know what they are invested in and nothing is too out of bounds. I'd do it differently in all likelihood but nonetheless I don't want the hassle.
My dad wants me involved in all the meetings which is fine. I assume advisors roll their eyes at the idea of a novice stickign their nose in.
That said, I know one of the guys at his firm and he knows I know my stuff and has tried to get me to turn to a life of financial advice (blech) so its fine.
He asked me one day if I had any ideas I'd like to discuss. I was like I know you agreed to handle this for my parents and I appreciate that, but would it be better to move these 8 funds into a singular balanced fund that spits out a distribution that they can w/d or not w/d for their expenses? It seems like it woudl be easier for everyone involved. He's like thats a great idea but I'm not dead yet lets look at that later on.
I manage my fathers stock account (largely vtsax and john deere) that we use for charitable giving.

I don't have any "urge to manage friends and families investments"! I have a hard enough time just managing the investments for me and my wife. I will encourage families and friends to do as much self-education as possible, and then decide for themselves if they need help from a professional Financial Advisor, or if they want to do it themselves. On these Financial Forums, I try very hard to avoid offering advice to others, but am willing to tell others what I am doing with my own personal investments. I view these forums as opportunities for posters/investors to learn from each other, but ultimately each poster/investor has to decide on what is best for themselves.

Seems to me to be two completely different skill sets-
• A): Insuring that numbers are being computed and accounted for properly, according to established accounting principles.
• B): Manipulating numbers in an attempt to increase their values and sums to the maximum extent possible, while also remaining reasonably consistent with safety.
And like most skill sets, there may be some degree of natural interest or aptitude involved, but education and training are the most important factors.

Yeah, you seem to have missed my point. And other posters routinely missing my points is the primary reason why I don't post a lot. That said...
I said earlier "Conversely, the women, many highly educated and certified in high level finance positions, were largely uninterested, uneducated and inexperienced in wealth mgmt."
I cited their FEAR as the primary reason for this.
Having education and work experience in accounting, finance and bizness administration IMO should increase the likelihood that a person understands investing more than the next person, and is less FEARful in investing. (Duh, we not only read financial statements, we create them, audit them and issue findings and recommendations related to them!)
My family was blue collar. Nobody in my family ever owned a stock or bond until I did. We were collectively FEARful of markets, primarily due to inexperience and lack of financial intelligence.
I did not start investing until I got my degree. I would have remained terrified of financial markets had I not had my base level, formal education in accounting, then LT employment in accounting. So, I overcame my FEAR of markets largely due to formal, financial education and work experience.
Over the course of my 35+ years in the financial work force, and a similar amount of time assisting friends and relatives with their investments, I saw the exact same effect on other men. I did not see the same effect on women.
BUT, when the women I knew who did overcome their FEAR, they generally went on to be highly successful investors. And as some studies show, women tend to be better investors as men. The biggest problem appears to be overcoming their FEAR about it all. (The study I linked notes "stress." Stress is the condition. FEAR is the resulting emotion that is expressed.)
YMMV.

Are there AA-AAA rated companies that would do seller financed purchases, with or without life estate (i.e., lease back)? If not, I would think there is a lucrative market for this product.
I'm having trouble making sense of some of this.
"Do seller financed purchases". What does "do" mean? Are you thinking of brokering (arranging) purchases? That is, finding an interested buyer and/or handling the paperwork? For those types of services I don't see what difference a company's credit rating would make.
Or does "do" mean taking the buyer side in the transactions? There, the credit rating of the company (as borrower) would matter. But what's the business model? Would the company build up an inventory of homes that it is buying "on time" and resell them to other buyers?
"lucrative market"
Would the profit come from paying well under market value, as "we buy homes for cash NOW" companies do? But then the seller wouldn't have any motivation to provide financing.
Or would such a company pay a better price for the seller financed homes? It might hope to make a profit from the use of the cash (full price) it receives from the sale of inventory homes.
It would pay the original seller one rate of interest (the seller financing rate) and earn another rate of interest on the proceeds from reselling the home. But where's the spread? The company would be borrowing long term from the original seller. Or would you expect seller-financed sales to be relatively short term (say, five years) with a correspondingly lower rate of interest?
Can you offer an example of a transaction "done" by such a company? I don't get what you have in mind.
"life estate (i.e., lease back)"
These are two different things. A life estate is actual ownership of property. A lease back is a rental where someone else owns the property. If you want more clarification, look up the difference between freehold estate (ownership) and leasehold estate (rental). See, e.g. here (it's not letter perfect, but gets across the general idea).
As far as Selleck is concerned, it's not a bad ad.

Unfortunately, his message to “explore the potential” has been confused as a recommendation older homeowners should get one. This may not always be the case.
Obviously, the time restrictions of TV commercials limit content. To his credit, though, he created national awareness of a less-known and frequently misunderstood resource that has the potential to increase and extend financial security – a hugely common fear among aging Americans.

https://southshoresenior.com/2024/05/what-tom-selleck-did-not-say-about-reverse-mortgages/

These commercials do a good job of introducing the reverse mortgage product. However, the decision to secure the loan can be complicated and confusing.

https://www.boldin.com/retirement/tom-selleck-reverse-mortgages-telling-truth/

When you take out a reverse mortgage, the lender deducts an upfront fee. It also charges interest over the life of your loan. Reverse mortgage interest rates are usually higher than conventional mortgage interest rates, but similar to rates on home equity loans.

Kiplinger, 10 Things You Should Know About Reverse Mortgages

FDIC is important in my world of investing, with my use of CDs and banks in general. I am now starting to venture into Credit Unions, where the SIF insurance is the FDIC counterpart for government protection. For older Fixed Income investors, there are vivid memories of the 2007/2008 financial crisis, and the many banking failures. I had CDs in numerous banks that failed during that financial crisis periods, and so now I try to use Deposit Insurance tools to evaluate the financial health of banks, in addition to making sure I stay within the limits of FDIC and SIF insurance, for each bank/credit union I use.

There's no sale involved in a reverse mortgage (who would the buyer be?). You may be conflating Yogi's two paragraphs. One is about reverse mortgages where you gradually borrow money against the value of your home. The other is about seller financed transactions where you loan the full sale amount and are gradually repaid.
Since they are different types of transactions, the mechanisms for continuing to live in your home are different. With a mortgage (forward or reverse) you continue to own the property so long as the mortgage isn't foreclosed. With a sale (seller financed or other), the buyer owns the home. You need to make some sort of arrangement (as a renter or as the holder of a life estate or owner for some period of years, or ...) to continue to use the property.

A reverse mortgage loan, like a traditional mortgage, allows homeowners to borrow money using their home as security for the loan.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, What is a Reverse Mortgage?
FHA-approved reverse mortgage lenders
https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/housing/sfh/hecm/hecmlenders

@ Art
My portfolio holdings were generally unchanged in 2024 except for a little tweaking within sectors (mostly during pullbacks to limit taxable gains). The Info Tech and Financial stock sectors contributed the most to my 2024 total portfolio returns. The lower level of Info Tech dividends paid by its holdings during 2024 contributed to the year-end increase in the stock % held in that sector. The higher level of dividends paid by my REIT and Financial sector holdings during the year contributed to their year-end stock sector % declines.
% of Stocks .... % of Stocks
12/31/24 ........ 01/01/24
20% .. Real Estate .. 24%
20% .. Info. Tech. .. 14%
12% .. Utilities .. .. 11%
17% .. Financials .. .. 18%
13% .. Energy .. .. 13%
82% .. Total .. .. 80%