When things feel stressful or uncertain, it can be tempting to give in to the overwhelm and surrender your sense of agency. The future isn’t certain for anyone. But there are things you can do to find your way and find reassurance when things feel chaotic.
The arrival of a baby is an exciting event, but it also brings additional financial challenges and decisions for the whole family. Outlined below are four key financial considerations to help new parents prepare for many of life's unknowns.
Bond investors have been worried about a rise in interest rates for years now, pretty much ever since the Fed lowered rates in response to the 2008–09 financial crisis. Any rise in rates hurts the value of existing bonds (on the contrary, a drop in rates helps it), and rates have been hovering near historic lows for quite a while.
Fund-flow data can be a useful for analyzing where investor money is going and how fund-flow trends are correlated with asset-class performance. Between 1994 and 2001, equity flows were higher than bond flows, but all that changed after the dot-com crash when investors started losing confidence in stocks.
If you want to take a tax- and penalty-free withdrawal of the portion of a Roth that consists of investment earnings (amount above your initial contribution), you need to be age 59 1/2, disabled, or using the money to pay for a first-time home. However, there’s more to this rule.
Market cycles represent fluctuations in stock, bond and investment markets. These cycles are closely tied with large-scale economic business cycles and have an important impact on investment, financial, cash flow and personal planning.
