General News & Insights

In our new TOP TIPS feature our experts provide essential information and guidance on the issues that affect expats in the USA.

In our new FAQ feature, Chris Thornton, Country Manager in the US, answers a frequently asked question about the relevance of currency and exchange rates in retirement planning.

It’s funny to think that our investing decisions might be coloured by the way society views certain words – i.e. ‘active’ is good, ‘passive’ is bad.

But when it comes to retirement investing, the decision just isn’t that binary. And attempting to make a decision between passive investing versus active investing is likely to be a false dichotomy as elements of both should be utilised together to form a part of a successful retirement strategy.

Here we take a look at these retirement investment approaches and how they might form part of your retirement investment planning.

For a long time economists formulated their theories on the assumption that investors behave rationally and make explicable decisions. In fact, this belief helped underpin the very notion of the Efficient Market Hypothesis; a theory developed by Eugene Fama (University of Chicago) and Ken French (MIT), which states that share prices reflect all information which is readily available

Nowadays, even the proponents of EMH know that randomness and irrationality are constant features of investor behaviour, if not the market as a whole. However, such behaviours are likely to prove detrimental to an investors’ long-term financial goals and are precisely why a wealth manager or financial advisor should be considered as an essential part of the investing journey. Professional advice brings discipline and guards against the kind of irrational and emotionally-motivated investment decisions that have the ability to undermine even the best-laid plans.

An independent financial advisor and wealth manager can help you decide upon an investment strategy and asset allocation that aligns with your time horizon, retirement goals and risk tolerance wherever you are in the world and wherever your assets are situated. Blacktower (US) LLC brings together the management of UK and US retirement assets in one holistic provision.

Here we examine the nature of risk, particularly in relation to “conservative” investments and shorter time horizons when planning for your retirement.

If you read the financial sections of the newspapers you could be forgiven for thinking that younger people today are likely to be ill prepared for retirement and that there is little to nothing anyone can do about it.

However, there is no reason why, if a young person is able to put aside regular monthly savings and is diligent about how and where they invest them, they should not be able to adequately prepare for a financially free and secure retirement.

How much money will you need for medical costs when you retire?

Unfortunately the medical costs burden is much higher than many might imagine: a 65-year-old couple retiring in 2019 in the US will need to have saved $280,000 between them in order to meet the health and medical costs they will face through their retirement years.*

Individual retirees face a similar financial burden: $150,000 for women and $135,000 for men. These figures contrast sharply with what people predict they will need: around half expect their medical costs will be below $100,000 and 33% said they have no idea how much they will need.*