How I became Charles Barkley's financial advisor (ThinkAdvisor)
Back in February, Charles Barkley was asked about his financial advisor and he answered, "My guy's name is Glenn Guthrie. I've been with him for 27 years and I trust him with my life." So how did the relationship begin? Guthrie says he began watching Barkley play basketball as a senior in high school and tracked his career throughout college and into the NBA. The two developed a relationship over time and one day Barkley asked Guthrie to investigate some tax matters for him. Barkley has been his client since 1989, and the two chat on the phone a few times a year.
Workers are getting priced out of housing in these cities (Business Insider)
A RealtyTrac study comparing government data of average weekly wages and median home prices from 2012 to 2014 showed home prices have grown 13 times faster than wages. Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac, noted, "Those markets with the biggest disconnect between price growth and wage growth during the last two years are most likely to see plateauing home prices in 2015 until wages catch up." The biggest discrepancies can be seen in Detroit, San Fransisco, and Atlanta.
America has $24.7 trillion saved for retirement (Financial Planning)
Money in American retirement accounts rose 6% in 2014 to $24.7 trillion. According to the Investment Company Institute, "Retirement assets accounted for 36% of all household financial assets in the United States at the end of the fourth quarter of 2014." Individual retirement accounts made up approximately 30% of all retirement savings with nearly half of that money (48%) being invested in mutual funds.
Not having a retirement plan is stressful (FinancialAdvisor)
Approximately two-thirds of the 2,002 Americans surveyed in the The Franklin Templeton 2015 "Retirement Income Strategies and Expectations" survey said they experience some stress over the amount of money they have saved for retirement. Some 36% of respondents between the ages of 27 and 34 said their biggest concern was running out of money during retirement while 52% of respondents between 65 and 74 were most concerned about health and medical issues. FinancialAdvisor noted, "The survey found that while Americans are reasonably good at estimating their expenses at retirement, they tend to underestimate the impact of inflation later in retirement. Many expect their expenses to remain flat throughout."
Building investor trust (InvestmentNews)
The 2007/2008 financial crisis caused many investors to leave their advisers and combat their financial futures alone. However, people realized they simply don't have enough time or are simply unable to monitor their investments, leading to the birth of the robo-adviser movement. But, robo-advisers are not the answer for everything as they cannot deal with complex situations, and have never been tested during a market selloff. InvestmentNews says social networks and websites help investors "identify and vet human advisers; they can find financial advocates who share a similar philosophy, get to know a bit about them on a personal level and research them in a pretty thorough manner before ever picking up the phone or scheduling a meeting."