When Personal Finance Jumps the Shark
I was planning on writing a post on personal finance columns and how to distinguish reasonable advice versus not-so-reasonable advice. And then, I came across this article, reasonably entitled, “Your 401K: Getting Back What You Lost.” And my first thought was that personal finance has jumped the shark. The article has charts of how long it will take, by making additional contributions to your retirement savings, to reach your previous peak level. Ummm, so if I had $1 in my account. And now deposit $1000 new dollars of savings, I’ve just increased my portfolio by a gazillion percent?!? Or how about this, if, starting from a zero balance, you deposit $200 per month instead of $100 per month, it will take only half as long to reach $400. Uh, what useful advice did the article have? Rather than continuing to grouse, here are the things that I would like to see in personal financial advice:
–Advice on what strategies to pursue if markets move sharply against you. It’s one thing to offer standard, canned advice, it’s another to recognize that the bear market we have experienced goes beyong the past experience of most investors. Rather than sticking to the same old, same old, financial advisers should consider the impact on portfolios, and on investor psychology.
--Asset Allocation suggestions that have historical data to back them up — all of the asset allocation models assume that equities will have a higher return than bonds (or cash). But, over what time period? and with what risk appetite? Interestingly, it looks like bonds would have outperformed US stocks over the past decade (cumulative).
–Advice with a plan B, like when to abandon your current strategy and to try something else. I have seen very few financial advisors approach financial planning the way most people would apply strategic planning, trip planning, sports strategies, etc… this could lead to some interesting analsyis.
–Finally, I would like to see advisors that are more critical of investors, rather than cheerleaders for poor strategies. Advisors have a role to play to inject a dose of financial reality to their clients. Ultimately, this reality will be much more useful than cheerleading.
posted at this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance
[...] was a war hero in the Civil War, but he sort of jumped the shark as President Grant. What do you do When Personal Finance Jumps the Shark? Modern Gal can help you out [...]
all of the asset allocation models assume that equities will have a higher return than bonds (or cash). But, over what time period? and with what risk appetite?
You are hitting on something extremely important with this comment, Modern Gal.
I have been studying the conventional investing advice in great depth for seven years now. I can report that just about every slogan that you have heard repeated thousands and thousands of times is rooted primarily in marketing considerations and is just as much false as it is true. There’s always some half-truth being expressed (I presume that this offer legal protections). But the parts that are false advance insanely dangerous ideas, the ideas that became the primary cause of our economic crisis.
You hint at the realities in the words quoted above. I have a calculator at my site that uses a regression analysis of the historical stock-return data to reveal the most likely 10-year return of stocks from all of the possible valuation levels. The calculator reports that those buying stocks in 2000 were more likely than not going to see a negative long-term return. How many of the “experts” told us this?
The primary reason why we don’t hear this sort of thing is that most of those quoted as “experts” work in The Stock-Selling industry and The Stock-Selling Industry obviously benefits if millions of people come to believe that it is always a good time to buy stocks. The half-truth is that, if you go 30 years out, stocks really do offer the best return, even when purchased at insanely high prices.
The practical problem is that overpriced stocks offer such a poor value proposition at five years out and ten years out and 15 years out and 20 years out that it is not possible for any but a tiny number of super-wealthy investors to hold them long enough for the “Stocks for the Long Run” claims to come true.
How often have you heard any of the “experts” define “long-term?” They don’t define it because defining terms would bring an end to the gamesmanship. If we define terms clearly, we learn the realities.
My view is that we need to organize a number of blogs that will agree to offer the best investment advice for the investor who buys stocks, not for the industry that profits from selling them.
Here is a link to the calculator for those interested:
http://www.passionsaving.com/stock-valuation.html
Rob
I agree with Rob’s comments, that you are rarely going to get objective advice from planners engaged in the business of selling stocks.
There is a fundamental conflict of interest in the financial services industry which weighs the needs of the investor against the comissions of the planner and the profits of the brokerage.
Novice investors need to learn this quickly and either pay a fee for planning services or learn how to plan for themselves.
Rob, thanks for your comment and link.
Bret, I agree. I think there should be better disclosure requirements of conflicts of interest and full disclosure of fees.