Robert Powell

Draining IRAs too soon poses big risks

marketwatch.com — By , MarketWatch Americans between the ages of 61 and 70 are withdrawing money from their IRAs in amounts that are larger, both in absolute dollar amounts and as a percentage of their IRA account balance, than those taken by older households, according to a new report from the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

In your IRA: Show horses and rock bands

blogs.marketwatch.com — Most of us park our retirement savings in stocks, bonds and maybe a sliver of something exotic like commodities. But about 2% of the nation's IRAs, with assets of more than $100 billion in all, are "self-directed" -managed under special custodial arrangements that let the investors put their money in, well, almost anything they want, as long as they don't use or profit from those investments before they retire.

When your home state taxes your estate

blogs.marketwatch.com — Many affluent retirees breathed a sigh of relief when the fiscal-cliff compromise locked in a new estate tax threshold at the beginning of this year. Not only did the tax deal make permanent an exemption rate that had been a source of confounding uncertainty, it also set that rate at a level ($5.25 million for 2013) that was higher than many people had expected.

Is Marijuana Booming Among Boomers?

forbes.com — Brand X Pictures/Thinkstock Like many of her peers, Zoe Helene, 48, smoked marijuana in her early 20s but gave it up as her career in the digital world took off in the 1990s. Today the multidisciplinary artist and environmental activist lives in Amherst, Mass., and is building a global network of trailblazers called Cosmic Sister.

Future retirees at risk of downward mobility, Pew finds

washingtonpost.com — The report estimates that, at the median, Americans born between 1966 and 1975 - so-called Gen-Xers - will be able to replace just half their pre-retirement income once they stop working, well below the minimum 70 percent replacement rates recommended by most financial planners.

When Medicare launched, nobody had any clue whether it would work

washingtonpost.com — Welcome to Health Reform Watch, Sarah Kliff's regular look at how the Affordable Care Act is changing the American health-care system - and being changed by it. You can reach Sarah with questions, comments and suggestions here. Check back every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon for the latest edition, and read previous columns here.

Book Review: The Hour between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings, and the Biology of Boom and Bust

blogs.cfainstitute.org — The Hour between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings, and the Biology of Boom and Bust. 2012. John Coates. Reviewed by Mark K. Bhasin, CFA John Coates, senior research fellow in neuroscience and finance at the University of Cambridge, offers a number of fascinating lessons from a booming new field, the biology of risk, in The Hour between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings, and the Biology of Boom and Bust.

How bond investors can avoid becoming losers

marketwatch.com — PRINCETON, N.J. (MarketWatch) - Investors throughout the world are flocking to so-called safe havens. The 10-year Treasury has recently been yielding between 1.5% and 2%. Short-term Treasury interest rates are near zero. Even if inflation stays at 2% over the next decade (the informal target of the Federal Reserve), government bonds will provide negative real (after inflation) rates of return.