529 Plans – Are they worth it?

One of the biggest expenses to hit households is college education for their kids. 529 plans are the most common vehicle available for parents to save for their kids education. Via the SEC

A 529 plan is a tax-advantaged savings plan designed to encourage saving for future college costs. 529 plans, legally known as “qualified tuition plans,” are sponsored by states, state agencies, or educational institutions and are authorized by Section 529 of the Internal Revenue Code.

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Some truths for the individual investor Part 2

In a previous post there was tough love, lets move on to happier things, what are the things that are going well for the individual investor?

Indexing
Index funds are pretty prevalent and everybody knows about them. Indexing  leads to lower fees and fees are the biggest killer of your portfolio. Lower the fees, less the hit. Today’s investor has many more low cost choices available. You can construct a good diversified portfolio with minimal cost yourself without needing a Phd.

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What is your personal capital structure?

If you ever talk to MBA’s (especially those into finance) you will hear them wax eloquent about a company’s capital structure. Capital structure is nothing but how a firm finances itself. Firms need money to operate. How do they get that money? They have a couple of choices – just rely on the profit they generate, issue shares to investors (issue equity) or borrow money from investors (issue debt). The choices that a firm makes and the mix of self financing vs equity vs debt is what is termed as the capital structure of the firm. Having a structure formalizes things, makes company profitability easy to analyze, brings predictability.
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