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Settling into middle age means adjusting to gray temples, a shuttered metabolism and the urge to refer to youngsters as “son” or “young lady.” On the bright side I still have a few years before hitting the canasta circuit or eating breakfast before I go to bed. The final step, I suppose, was the bifocal contact lenses I picked up about 18 months ago.

A lot of people get great satisfaction from living debt free including not having a mortgage on their home.  Certainly, keeping expenses lower than income is a great way to live, and I’m not suggesting anyone do otherwise.  However, I do believe it might make sense for some people to use the current low mortgage rates to their advantage.
 
Let me give you an example.  Let’s say you have $2 million invested at TCI and...

While preparing our presentation for this year’s TCI Spring Conference, we tracked down the latest available DALBAR study, which happens to be for the period ending December 31, 2011.

College basketball fans turn their attention to Atlanta this weekend for the Men’s Final Four. Louisville,  Wichita State, Syracuse and Michigan are the last teams standing from the field of 68. March Madness is unique in the world of sports—a mad, three week scramble which celebrates teamwork, leadership and the desire to be the very best.  

A number of people have asked me recently if we recommend that clients subscribe to a credit monitoring service in an effort to avoid and / or detect identity theft. I don’t think there is anything wrong with these services, but they can be expensive and security experts disagree about their effectiveness. I believe your best defense against becoming a victim of financial crime of any kind, including identity theft, is to simply be mindful of a few key ideas as you go about your day. I have collected these tips from a host of authoritative sources and I have included some key steps that I have shared in the past because they are worth repeating.
 
1. Never provide information to...

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at an all-time high yesterday for the first time since Oct. 2007 but the response seems to be a collective "ho hum."

We spend so much time bemoaning poor asset valuations and dismal secular trends that we sometimes feel that we are in danger of becoming perma-bears.  We don't want to be perma-bears - we want to be happy!

I’m always amazed when I hear people casually talking about how they ‘just decided to start taking social security benefits,’ often at the first moment possible at age 62.　 Their reasoning is often, "I am going to get it while I can.　 You can’t trust the government..."　 What is ignored when they take benefits early is that they could be giving up hundreds of thousands of dollars...

TCI's Investment Committe has made changes to our Wealth Management asset allocation portfolios.  We are re-modeling accounts starting today to transition to the new target allocations.  What follows is a summary of the changes we are making:

Change:

Replacing Absolute Strategies Fund (ASFIX) with GMO Benchmark Free Fund (GBMRX).  The GBMRX ticker is brand new, info about the fund and strategy can be found under the ticker GBMFX.