You know you pay stock brokers too much for investment advice. That’s a given. But can we put a number on the cost of their often-conflicted advice? Try this on for size: Up to $17 billion a year, according a White House memo leaked to the press. The “conflict” comes in when stock brokers give… Continue reading →

Jay Vivian, former managing director of the IBM Retirement Funds, on why so few are able to beat the stock market. Continue reading →

Mad Money host Jim Cramer, best known for offering stock tips on cable TV, is quickly becoming famous for taking what would seem for him a contrarian viewpoint — that investors should avoid stock-picking mutual funds like the plague. Actively managed funds are in one business and one business only, Cramer argues. They must grow… Continue reading →

Mitch Tuchman, Managing Director of Rebalance, on understanding why conflict-free investing matters to you. Continue reading →

If you make the mistake of watching the stock market on cable TV, the drumbeat of nearly every minute of airtime is this: Anyone can pick stocks. It’s easy. It’s not a surprising message. The bulk of advertising on financial TV is from big Wall Street firms and brokerage houses. They too rely heavily on the… Continue reading →

Professor Charles D. Ellis of the Rebalance Investment Committee on why he joined Rebalance. Continue reading →

As you read this, the furor over the DeflateGate scandal will have subsided and the intense roar of a million corner sports bars will be dying down following the most revered of American holidays, Super Bowl Sunday. As always, the best team wins these things. But there’s the rub. As with all high-stakes sports events,… Continue reading →

Money is a real puzzler for most of us. We work hard to get it and there never seems to be enough. When we manage to scrape together a pile of money, we worry about losing it. It’s even more mysterious when you’re an outsider, which I once was. Having made a bit of it… Continue reading →

Amid the relentless news coverage about how unready Americans are for retirement, it can be easy to miss the bright spots. As Charle​y Ellis points out in his new book, Falling Short: The Coming Retirement Crisis and What to Do About It, many people mistakenly take the easy way out of jobs, leaving at 62 — the earliest possible… Continue reading →