TheLiveBigWay* Digest – At the Cliff’s Edge with Bulls, Bears, and Pigs
In this edition of the Digest, we review recent investment updates, revisit the Fiscal Cliff discussion, and highlight the Money Savvy Pig’s spotlight in The Wall Street Journal.
New Blended Benchmark
We’ve added a new blended benchmark to our monthly portfolio performance reports that we thought you’d like to hear about. Beginning with the current batch of reports posted a few days ago, a new blended benchmark appears in several places. First, the graph on page three showing the cumulative return to your portfolio “since inception,” is now accompanied by a blended benchmark designed to match your portfolio’s relative allocation to stocks and bonds. The returns to this blended benchmark also appear on the Portfolio Performance Page, matched to each of the four reporting periods (Year-to-Date, 12-months, 3-Years, and since inception).
Find out more about the blended benchmark.
New Small Account Portfolio
One of the challenges we face when managing portfolios is keeping transaction costs as low as possible. In recent years, Schwab has been developing a growing number of low-cost, no-transaction-fee index funds, which now represent enough depth and breadth that we feel we can build a much more attractive small-account portfolio exclusively from these Schwab index funds. A further advantage is that these can be purchased in increments as low as $100 each, making this new model feasible for the smallest of accounts. If you have a small account, a rollover IRA for example, we have recently reallocated that account to this new portfolio.
Revisiting the Fiscal Cliff
For those of you who missed the last Digest, here’s our take on the year-end tax planning implications of the “Fiscal Cliff.”
Money Savvy Pig featured in The Wall Street Journal
The Money Savvy Pig was cited as one of five gifts to encourage good financial education/management in an article in the WSJ’s Personal Finance section entitled, “Gifts for the Financially Inclined”. In the article, journalist Simon Constable talks about the story behind the Money Savvy Pig.
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-The YeBu Team
*SM