Financial Planning for Life

Work and unemployment in this country are constantly in the news. Here are three central ideas that are not in the news that you should be thinking about.

1. Some of the unemployment is a direct result of structural changes in the workforce, caused directly and indirectly by the march of technology. Their affects will be long-term, i.e. they will last longer than the current business cycle:

• Transportation and communication have improved. It is now feasible to hire lower paid workers overseas.
• Computers easily transmit information from the top to the bottom of a business and vice versa. Therefore, businesses need fewer middle managers.
• Robots and other machines can do some of the work instead of people.
• Human creativity, in general, results in getting the work done with fewer people.

2. There are and will always be jobs available. Some require technical training; some jobs support other more highly trained specialists. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, as listed in the AARP Bulletin, July-August 2011, says that the jobs in highest demand will be:

• Medical and Healthcare: aide, both home health and home care; medical assistant; skin-care specialist; dental assistant and hygienist; veterinarian technician; physical therapist assistant and aide; skin-care specialist; biomedical engineer.
• Technical: computer software engineer; network systems and communications analyst.
• Financial: compliance officer; financial examiner.

3. The leading edge of baby boomers has not yet retired. They are behind schedule, because in general they have not been good savers and their investments have fallen with the market decline in 2007 - 2009. Eventually, they will retire, and there will not be enough younger workers to replace them. There will then be a substantial shortage of trained workers.

Perhaps you are thinking of changing jobs or careers. Maybe you are thinking of an encore career where you can give back to your community and still be paid. Or you may have children or grandchildren who are looking for work. Even in these times of high unemployment there are many opportunities. When times are tough like now, you should do your research and get more creative in your job strategy.

General Disclosure Statement
Plan for Life offers securities through Multi-Financial Securities Corporation, a member FINRA, SIPC. Plan for Life, LLC, is not affiliated with Multi-Financial Securities Corporation. The views are those of Mark Fischer and should not be construed as investment advice. All information is believed to be from reliable sources; however, we make no representation as to its completeness or accuracy.

How do you know if your investments are behaving as they should? Are you on track to achieve your objectives? The idea behind a benchmark is to measure your own progress and compare it to some standard. Then you can measure effectiveness and take appropriate action.

Here are three ways of answering this question, for which you can use entirely different benchmarks.

a. Benchmark: S&P 500 Index. Here you could compare your own portfolio to this unmanaged market-value weighted average of the prices of the 500 largest companies traded on the NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ exchanges. You can compare price appreciation, i.e. performance, return. You can also compare drawdown, i.e. maximum decline from the peak, a measure of risk. With this benchmark you can evaluate your investments from the standpoint of growth and safety - do you have the right mix for your situation and risk tolerance?

b. Benchmark: a mix of indexes that parallels the mix in your own portfolio. For example, if your portfolio is a mix of 40% US stocks, 20% foreign stocks, 35% US bonds, and 5% cash, then your benchmarks could be a mix of the S&P 500 Index for US stocks, the EAFE Index for foreign stocks, an Index of long-term bonds, and the Consumer Price Index for cash - in the same proportions. A benchmark of this type could help you evaluate the effectiveness of your money managers in selecting individual investments. The more closely this benchmark parallels the composition of your own portfolio of investments, the better it will work for this purpose.

c. Benchmark: your own goals. For example, let's assume that you had estimated that you needed to save 12% of your income and have your investments grow at a 7% rate in order to be "on-track" for retiring or being financially independent in 7 years. You should compare what has happened with what you had hoped to happen. This comparison will give you some ideas about your choices, progress, and changes you need to make.

Here are some key questions to ask yourself as you establish benchmarks:

• What do you really want to accomplish, before you go to the trouble of monitoring progress?
• What can you control and what not?
• Will a proposed benchmark be appropriate for answering the questions you have and guiding you to take the right actions?

Remember, investors cannot directly invest in indices, and past performance does not guarantee future returns.