Episode Details

The focus of most of the work we do at The Merriman Financial Education Foundation is to help investors put together portfolios that we believe will produce higher rates of return per unit of risk. In this podcast we look at the math of making more money, as well as specific decisions that are likely to lead to better returns.  

The podcast references our following Tables: Fine Tuning Your Asset Allocation, Sound Investing Portfolios and Fixed Distributions and Flexible Distribution.  The math portion of the podcast focuses on the impact of small increases in return, along with small increases in annual investments and a lifetime of accumulating, distributing and passing money to others. The discussion covers the tables in this PDF.

Leaving the simple math, Paul uses historical returns to compare hypothetical returns and the choices investors must make. Everyone of these choices is likely a million dollar decision:

• Save vs. spend
• Start saving early vs. waiting
• Selecting stocks vs. bonds
• Select a few vs. many companies
• Choose the S&P vs. other equity asset classes
• Choose the S&P vs. combinations of equity asset classes
• Add 10% more equity
• Taxable vs. tax-deferred
• Tax-deferred vs. tax free
• Load vs. no-load
• Index funds vs. actively managed funds
• Buy and hold vs. market timing
• Target date funds vs. do it yourself
• Target date funds plus small cap value
• Gifting one million dollars with $365 vs. major gift at death
• The make or break decision of distributions