Don't know if Ted posted it, but he always pushed index funds, which makes MFO superfluous. (I still hope that new small funds can beat their index for a while.)
Considering MFS's location on the graph of the first link, they probably want part of their ad budget returned, unless they get their banner posted somewhere else for free.
I do feel nervous putting money into any stock fund currently, although I'm sure some sophisticated readers are into the shorts. I hope I have the conviction to move whole-heartedly into the index funds after the next "correction."
Introspectively, it's interesting how difficult I find it to keep cash in my retirement funds, while I put my contribution to my children's Roth IRAs into cash and told them to wait.

Title should be How America Saves - 2014 edition. It's all great information on retirement data, but I was hoping for biting commentary from Vanguard on exactly how "America saves 2014".

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2110/000119312514233448/d743683d497.htm
497 1 d743683d497.htm COLUMBIA ACORN TRUST
COLUMBIA ACORN TRUST
Columbia Acorn Emerging Markets FundSM
(the “Fund”)
Supplement dated June 12, 2014 to the Fund’s Prospectus
and Statement of Additional Information (“SAI”) dated May 1, 2014
COLUMBIA ACORN EMERGING MARKETS FUND CLOSING
TO MOST NEW INVESTORS AND NEW ACCOUNTS
Effective as of the close of business on July 11, 2014 (the “Closing Date”), the Fund will close to most new investors and new accounts, subject to certain limited exceptions, as described below.
These changes will affect new investors seeking to purchase Fund shares directly or through third party intermediaries. The Fund reserves the right to re-open the Fund to new investors or new accounts and to otherwise modify the extent to which sales of Fund shares are limited. If you have any questions about your ability to purchase shares of the Fund, please call Columbia Management Investment Services Corp. (the “Transfer Agent”) at 800.345.6611.
Accordingly, effective as of the date of this supplement, the Fund’s prospectus is hereby supplemented as follows:
(1) The following footnote is added to the table that appears under the heading Summary of the Fund – Purchase and Sale of Fund Shares – Minimum Initial Investment:
± Effective July 11, 2014, the Fund is generally closed to new investors and new accounts. See Buying, Selling and Exchanging Shares — Buying Shares — Eligible Investors — Fund Generally Closed to New Investors and New Accounts in the prospectus for more information.
(2) The following is added immediately above the table that appears under the heading Choosing a Share Class – Summary of Share Class Features:
Effective as of the close of business on July 11, 2014 (the “Closing Date”), the Fund is generally closed to new investors and new accounts, except that, subject to the eligibility requirements of the Fund’s various share classes: (i) shareholders who had opened and funded an account with the Fund as of the Closing Date may continue to make additional purchases of Fund shares in their existing accounts; (ii) a retirement plan generally may continue to make additional purchases of Fund shares and to add new accounts that may purchase Fund shares if the retirement plan or a retirement plan with the same or an affiliated plan sponsor holding Fund shares at the plan level had invested in the Fund as of the Closing Date; and (iii) a discretionary wrap program or similar advisory program that held Fund shares as of the Closing Date generally may continue to make additional purchases of Fund shares and add new accounts that may purchase Fund shares. There is no minimum additional investment for any share class. See Buying, Selling and Exchanging Shares — Buying Shares — Eligible Investors — Fund Generally Closed to New Investors and New Accounts for more information.
1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(3) The following is added as the first sub-section under the heading Buying, Selling and Exchanging Shares — Buying Shares — Eligible Investors:
Fund Generally Closed to New Investors and New Accounts
The Fund is generally closed to new investors and new accounts effective as of the Closing Date, subject to the following limited exceptions:
• Shareholders who had opened and funded an account with the Fund as of the Closing Date may continue to make additional purchases of Fund shares in their existing accounts, subject to the eligibility requirements of the Fund’s various share classes.
• A retirement plan generally may continue to make additional purchases of Fund shares and to add new accounts that may purchase Fund shares if the retirement plan or a retirement plan with the same or an affiliated plan sponsor holding Fund shares at the plan level had invested in the Fund as of the Closing Date, subject to the eligibility requirements of the Fund’s various share classes. A retirement plan that has approved the Fund as an investment option as of the Closing Date may open an account and make purchases of Fund shares and add new accounts, even if the retirement plan had not opened an account as of the Closing Date, provided that it opened its initial account with the Fund prior to October 9, 2014.
• A discretionary wrap program or similar advisory program that holds Fund shares as of the Closing Date generally may continue to make additional purchases of Fund shares and add new accounts that may purchase Fund shares, subject to the eligibility requirements of the Fund’s various share classes.
• A discretionary wrap program and discretionary model retirement asset allocation program that follows an asset allocation model that included the Fund as an investment option as of the Closing Date may open an account and make additional purchases of Fund shares and add new accounts.
• A Columbia Management state tuition plan organized under Section 529 of the Internal Revenue Code that had accounts that held Fund shares as of the Closing Date may continue to make additional purchases of Fund shares and to add new accounts that may purchase Fund shares, subject to the eligibility requirements of the Fund’s various share classes.
In the event that an order to purchase shares is received by the Fund or the Transfer Agent after the Closing Date from a new investor or a new account that is not eligible to purchase shares, the order will be refused by the Fund or the Transfer Agent and any money that the Fund or the Transfer Agent received with the order will be returned to the investor, account or selling agent, as appropriate, without interest.
The Fund reserves the right to re-open the Fund to new investors or new accounts and to otherwise modify the extent to which sales of Fund shares are limited...
2

You won't go wrong with either, and of course you can get the other's penchant post-questionnaire (which is kinda false dichotomy in many spots, btw) with either outfit too --- meaning you can get cheapo indexing with Fido and good active management with Vanguard. I who am in Fido (and ML) steered a sibling with moderate retirement moneys to Vanguard, and she likes it fine but spends an awful lot of slightly frustrating time on the phone and writing letters getting questions answered. Much of that's on her, of course, but she sure would do well to have a Fido center to be able walk into and chat.

......And some of us get pushed into retirement, without the chance to implement a longer-term plan. I'm playing catch-up for a couple of more years, until SS kicks in. Life isn't fair. My wife? She is a STAR. The best.

And thanks to you all, Ted most especially, for your patience and exemplary good spirits. We posted at 23:23:30, server time, on June 1st. It only looked like June 2nd to insomniacs in the Central and Eastern time zones. We might yet add a story or two. Ed had been working on a piece but, even in retirement, his life is vastly more complex than mine.
And, with luck, I'll never have another month like the last one.
Some highlights:
we lead with a story on investor skittishness and the incoherence of financial journalism: by "incoherence," I'm thinking of it in the physics sense of coherent and incoherent waves. "Waves having no stable definite or stable phase relation," rather than mere babbling. Journalists face the tyranny of having a clear explanation now of phenomena for which there is, I suspect, no clear explanation. Every transitory twitch and wriggle becomes Something Significant. I tried to illustrate that by looking at the flood of competing risk-on/risk-off stories in the past month, some of them occurring in the same publication, on the same day and in the same section. Ted's recent link to the Business Week, "Small Investors Show No Fear," story is another link in that chain.
The story ends with a discussion of a recent call, by the Reformed Broker and Abnormal Returns folks, for investors to exercise more care and discipline in their use of the media. I'd planned on adding my two cents' worth but was tired and ended up contributing just over the penny.
My general sense of things is that folks are, rather thoughtlessly, moving toward riskier assets at a time when the market is its least stable. Leuthold made a worrisome observation in the May Perception for the Professional report, that there are two enduring, stable and overlapping calendar patterns in the investing world: the four-year presidential election cycle and the seasonal summer/winter one. They note that, in general and based on data since 1926, the summer in the second year of a presidential cycle are frequently disastrous for the market. "May 1st," they write "marked the beginning of the statistically weakest six-month stock market period for the entire four-year pattern." The market as a whole books an average gain of 1.1% during those six months. The effect is amplified for small-cap stocks: they, on average across time, would typically decline 10.4% in value over these next six months. Happily, the succeeding six months are (with those same caveats) the strongest period in the market's four-year cycle. I didn't include much of that in the cover essay because the last thing I want to do is encourage market timing on the part of folks who are apt to get it really wrong. Still, I'm not sure that "risk on" is a brilliant move.
My general sense of things, too, is that we'd be a lot better off with far more extensive media filters. The problem with our media scanning is what I think of as "the bright, shiny object problem." (Hmmm. BOS Problem? BOSP?) You walk down the beach, not noticing the million bits of stone beneath your feet but then you see and latch onto the one bright, shiny object in the sand. Likely behavioral finance folks would refer to it as "confirmatory bias." The more we scan, the more likely we are to find that one BOS ("frontier markets -- they're immune!") that overrides all else.
Oh, right, back to the highlights.
Charles did an immense amount of digging to address the question how good is your fund family? He's got more intriguing ways of approaching the same question than you'd think possible.
We profiled two high income funds (Dodge & Cox Global Bond and RiverNorth/Oaktree High Income) with two more in the works. I'd intended a profile of Artisan High Income (ARTFX), but the Artisan folks proposed meeting with the manager at Morningstar for a face-to-face rather than trying to squeeze in a phone call. That seemed like a generous, productive offer so I took them up on it. At Koshy's request, I've been looking into West Shore Real Return Income (AWSFX) but my conversations with one of the managers left me a bit unsettled and then they requested that I delay the profile until I had the chance to talk with another of the managers but they haven't quite followed up on that offer yet. Hmmm. Similarly, Charles suggested looking at the new Whitebox Tactical Income (WBIVX) fund but the Whitebox folks also asked for a delay in the conversation until mid-June. Those delays are slightly goofing with my tidy plan to focus on income in June and innovators (GaveKal Knowledge Leaders, G A Global Innovators, Firsthand Tech Value) in July.
There's an Elevator Talk with the folks at Barrow Street. Their Barrow Street All-Cap Core (BALAX) has a flashy record as a private partnership with two caveats: they need to stock the portfolio with 200 deeply-discounted high-quality names at a time when a lot of managers can't find two names that meet those criteria and their record was compiled in an internally-funded account. Still, they've got a long record as private equity investors (rather like the Oakseed Opportunity guys) and it might well be that private equity eyes see values that others miss. If we move coverage from an Elevator Talk (which is designed to be informational rather than judgmental) to full coverage, we're going to have to ask about those two issues.
Finally, the site has been relatively stable this month. Heck, we've been a paragon of stability and performance in comparison to whatever's going down at Morningstar.com. We'll go offline briefly twice in June, once to move to a higher-security server and the other time to clean at database. Neither should be extensive and we'll certainly give you a heads up a day or so before we do it. If those changes don't get us where we need to go, we might face the ugly prospect of needing to rebuild the site from the ground up because there might well be some conflict buried deep, deep in the coding (you'd be amazed at the number of processes, many of them customized, that are running simultaneously and that all need to play well together) that we can't track down. On whole, that's just a little below "get a colonoscopy" on my list of preferred ways to spend summer.
As ever,
David

As someone said recently "I found out I was extremely unqualified for retirement".

Good news.
That said, sorry retirement did not work out for Mr. McCulley.

From the time I read 'government's most popular and effective program', I knew this was going to be an idiotic article. Not criticizing you Ted but the author. There's another article out there by Chuck Jaffe where he notes that only 1 in 4 people are saving for retirement. With those numbers the apocalypse is more likely to occur. Apathy and ignorance are comforting in the present. Hunger and desperation are only the concerns of those who plan to live that long.

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20140526/FREE/140529951?template=printart

@Ted: "TIPS are for investors who fear the future without cause."
Maybe you are only referring to their purchase right now, but not to TIPS in general?
TIPS can be a great investment. I purchased a 10-year TIPS somewhere around the 1997 time frame. It had a coupon of 4 and 1/8 or 4 and 1/4, don't recall which. I held it to maturity, and received the 4 1/8 or 4 1/4 each year for 10 years, plus inflation adjustments. I purchased it directly from Treasury Direct with no fees. The total return was very acceptable, especially since I took no risk. I did not "fear" the future.
Check out what some notables such as David Swensen, Larry Swedroe, Bill Gross, William Bernstein, Rick Ferri and others (who highly favor them) have said about TIPS. A lot of academics, e.g., PhD economists and finance professors at universities, have great things to say about TIPS. William Bernstein and others recommend laddered TIPS, held to maturity, as an excellent risk free retirement planning tool.
I wouldn't buy a TIPS currently, because the yield is way too low for me to think that this is an attractive investment at this time. But when the real yields on TIPS are attractive, I play to buy them. I find it amazing that some have purchased them at times when real yields were negative. That's not a Ben Graham type value proposition to me.
You don't need to "fear the future without cause" to buy TIPS. You just need to be a student of market history, and inflation history.
Historically, inflation has been one of the biggest threats to the portfolio of a retired person. Or perhaps the biggest threat. This is very fundamental.
I have no forecast for inflation and interest rates. I'm not a market forecaster.
In 1979, inflation averaged 11.3%; In 1980, 13.5%; In 1981, inflation averaged 10.3%.
Even in 1990 it was 5.4%
http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/historical-inflation-rates/
It can happen. TIPS can be a very prudent investment for the risk averse investor, when he is compensated with a decent coupon, a decent real yield.

All true. Perhaps a bit ironic that at the stage where we most need some "hand-holding" (from broker dealers or active fund managers), we are also in a position to benefit the most from low-fee index funds. Put differently: Those of us in the later stages of investing and tilted heavily towards the actively managed funds we've owned for 20, 30, or 40 years might well have put ourselves mostly into index funds had we had today's knowledge back when we first started investing.
Fees are critically important to me. I find D&C very reasonable for the actively managed segment, and TRP isn't too far behind with some of their offerings (notably PRWCX and their dedicated retirement funds.) However, neither comes close to the very low fees available on index funds.

Housing cost being the one of the largest living expense. The Bay area is among the highest on the west coast. So is Santa Barbara. Nevertheless it is encouraging that workers are contribute more to their retirement account.

A couple of decades ago, when the cold war was still around, I read about about Russian military planning. They used a scheme of three hierarchical plans.
The Strategic Plan: this plan sets out the goals, usually long-term goals. This plan is political and given to the military to accomplish.
The Operational Plan: this plan defines the allocation of resources. Basic ideas are objectives, timing, and amounts of resources. Generals do this planning.
The Tactical Plan: this plan implements the operational plan; it is basically the maneuvers using the resources provided by the operational plan to achieve the operational plan objectives in a timely manner. In general there are a series of these short-term plans to satisfy the Operational Plan requirements.
In terms of financial portfolios:
A Strategic Plan is devised by the portfolio owner, possibly with the help of an advisor. Typical goals might be retirement income, fund a college education, buy a house, etc. Also some goals may overlap parts of the Operational Plan, e.g. drawdown 4% of portfolio annually.
An Operational Plan is devised by the portfolio owner, possibly with the help of an advisor. For example an asset allocation scheme would indicate which kinds and quantities of assets are to be in a portfolio. The frequency of rebalancing would address the timing issue. Whether and how to use Dollar Cost Averaging is another timing issue
A Tactical Plan is the responsibility of the portfolio owner. This involves selecting a broker or mutual fund company to execute the trades. Then there are trading decisions such as using mutual funds or ETFs (may also be part of the Operational Plan). If using ETFs there are decisions about whether to use market orders, or limit orders, or stop-loss orders, etc.

FYI: Copy & Paste 5/20/14: Kelly Kearsley: WSJ
Regards,
Ted
The couple had been investing and saving for years, accumulating $4 million.
However, they had been too busy with work and travel to manage their investments according to an organized strategy, and as a result had 18 different accounts that held 150 mutual-fund positions.
They planned to retire within three years, but they couldn't decipher whether their assets would support this next life stage.
"They needed us to look at their entire portfolio, analyze it and then figure out if it was appropriate for them." says Marilyn Plum, director of portfolio management for Ballou Plum Wealth Advisors, which manages $273 million for 180 clients in Lafayette, Calif.
Ms. Plum's analysis revealed that the couple's accounts included old IRAs and 401(k)s that hadn't been monitored for decades, as well many underperforming mutual funds.
Most of the accounts were allocated primarily to stocks and far too aggressive for clients who were now more concerned with preserving their assets. Additionally, the couple had both nontaxable and taxable accounts, which meant that Ms. Plum had to pay attention to potential capital-gains taxes as she consolidated those investments.
So she crafted a plan that turned their scattered assets into a strategic portfolio, spreading the capital gains over three years to minimize taxes. "We had to develop a battle plan for moving from point A to point B," Ms. Plum says.
The first priority was to get rid of the funds that were severely underperforming. The adviser jettisoned several funds that had been high-performers years ago, but now provided lackluster returns. Ms. Plum also sold funds that were too volatile for the couple's needs.
"Portfolio management isn't set it and forget it," she says.
Next, she focused on eliminating several small holdings that had little to no impact on the couple's portfolio. The positions accounted for less 2% of the couple's investments, with most just languishing inside old 401(k)s or IRAs. Eliminating these holdings made the portfolio easier to manage and freed up cash for Ms. Plum to invest in funds that were better aligned with the couple's investment goals.
Within the first year, Ms. Plum reduced the couple's accounts from 18 to five and eliminated more than half of their 150 mutual-fund holdings. Throughout the process, the adviser worked closely with the couple's certified public accountant, who had determined that the couple needed to keep their capital-gains income under $80,000 to avoid climbing into a higher tax bracket and creating other additional taxes.
To that end, Ms. Plum timed fund sales with the couple's tax picture in mind, knowing that she must divest more of the holdings in another year or two. In the meantime, Ms. Plum is letting the dividends and earnings from those funds go to cash so that it can then be reinvested into funds that fit better with the couple's portfolio.
She also sold bond funds with no gains, or with losses, to diversify the couple's fixed-income holdings. Then, she added municipal-bond ladders to their non-retirement accounts to lower their risk and add more tax-free income.
All told, the adviser's moves generated only $36,000 in capital gains in the first year. And the couple's revised portfolio allocation is now a more appropriate 65% stocks and 35% fixed income.
Ms. Plum's work isn't done, and she'll continue refining the couple's asset mix in the two years remaining until their planned retirement. But now, they at least have a portfolio with a strategy that matches their life goals.
"Sometimes people just need help looking at the big picture," she says.

I admit this comment is pretty far down in the thread, but:
Gundlach's argument that retirees will be buying bonds yielding under 3% because they need stable income must apply to a more successful class than mine. I had assumed that foreign governments or rich people (of any nationality) bought US treasuries because the bonds' security was more important than their yield.
If you can afford to buy $1M in bonds to earn $25K before taxes and inflation, you must either be a multimillionaire or have a very frugal life style (which may be forced upon some of us).
The argument that we should intentionally use up our principal for retirement income is partially valid, but most of us do not plan for our funds and our existence to expire simultaneously, because we hope to insure our progeny against an uncertain future.
Gundlach is obviously a smart guy, and I invest in his funds, but it seems one would need to have significant retirement savings for this view to prevail. I think that higher return on US bonds vs other developed countries is a more valid reason.

I max out my Roth IRA every year, and currently contribute up to the maximum company match in my traditional 401k (I have the option to contribute to a Roth 401K). As it stands my total retirement accounts are about one-third in Roth IRA, and two-thirds in traditional IRA/401K. My goal is to be able to retire at 60 (I'm 45). My guess is I will be in the same tax bracket when I retire. I like having money in both Roth and non-Roth to hedge against the unknown of what taxes will be in 15 years compared to today. Since my non-Roth accounts total more than my Roth, I am thinking of changing to contributing to the Roth 401K instead. I think it might be good to have a balance. Another thing to consider: what if you are paying state income tax during your working years, but move to a state such as Florida when you retire, and won't have to pay state income tax. In that case, putting money in a Roth might be disadvantageous.

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2014-05-08/one-of-the-best-retirement-deals-9-out-of-10-people-ignore.html

Tough crowd indeed. I'm with Charles.
He did close FAIRX for a while, then opened it after it got hit with redemptions and he saw an opportunity in Fannie and Freddie. He opened FAAFX for smaller investments and closed it promptly. It's only got $370 million in AUM. FOCIX, an astonishing overperformer, he also closed quickly. It has only $240 million in AUM. Has there every been a bond fund that closed with so little AUM?
He's been quite transparent: FAIRX is for big investments, in the style of Berkshire Hathaway, and FAAFX is for smaller ones. He's got pretty much his whole net worth in his funds.
I think his huge investment in AIG is because he believes it to be as conservative and rock solid a bet as Berkshire Hathaway was a few years ago. So far that's worked out well, but of course time will tell.
That said, I understand and respect anyone who dislikes his funds' volatility and Bruce's superstar airs. He doesn't seem great at admitting mistakes (including, yes, personnel moves) and no, I wouldn't want to have all my money invested with him, especially if I were near retirement.
But the man is delivering true active management and superior returns over the long term, while putting his money where his mouth is. Personally, that's what I want from my equity mutual funds. My other big holding, a similar long-term outperformer with above-average volatility and a fund manager fully invested in his own funds, is Bridgeway, through BRAGX and BRUSX.

Rjb, you really might want to look into Soviero's work, since you know what you are doing, or think you do :). Quite a ride but not quite as lumpy as these two guys.
An investment friend of mine in Boston who would know (quite a mucka, with a big firm and himself extremely wealthy) says that Heebner is, famously, an amazing nerd, sitting and researching for hours and hours reading and taking notes. I left his funds only upon forced retirement a year or two ago.