The financial experts know a lot more about the markets and how the markets will perform in the future than the ordinary rest of us.  Right?

“You’re doing what?” inquired Tim incredulously. Tim and I were discussing college savings for his 10^th grade daughter, and he knew that I too was saving for college for my high school daughter and college son. “You heard me right the first time,” I said, “my 25-year-old is funding his siblings’ 529s.”

Unfortunately, Tim doesn’t have the same secret weapon that I have and so can’t take advantage of my strategy.

If you’re a fan of political dramas on televisions, you’ll know that the turbulent world of politics has an affect on the global financial markets. But what about in real life? How much does art - if you can call shows like Scandal, Veep, and House of Cards art - imitate life, and vice versa?

The truth of the matter is that 2017 is turning out to be a bit of an unpredictable political year, and a lot of that can be boiled down to the win in November 2016, when Trump was elected President of the United States. And whether you are a pro or anti of his presidency, I think we all can agree that the political climate is ever changing. The truth of the matter is that surprisingly politics don’t have as much of an influence over markets as much as TV would like us to believe - in the long term.

You receive portfolio performance reports every three months—a form of transparency that financial planning professionals introduced at a time when the typical brokerage statement was impossible to decipher.  But it might surprise you to know that most professionals think there is actually little value to any quarterly performance information, other than to reassure you that you actually do own a diversified portfolio of investments.  It’s very difficult to know if you’re staying abreast of the market, and for most of us, that’s not really relevant anyway.

The current bull market in stocks will reach its 8th anniversary tomorrow, and for about the last four years, professional investors and financial planners have been scratching their heads.  The markets have gone up and up and up, and we all know that they won’t go up forever, which means there’s a correction looming somewhere on the horizon.

Every year, the Morningstar mutual fund tracking organization releases a list of the worst new ETF investments—and generally, these tend to be trendy new offerings that are designed to catch the eye of investors who are responding to yesterday’s  headlines rather than their long-term economic future.

This year’s top nomination is something called the VelocityShares Leveraged Crude Oil ETN, closely followed by the VelocityShares 3x Inverse Crude Oil Fund. 

What do you get when you invest in these shares?  Every day, the VelocityShares products give you  three times the daily movements of the price of oil on the global markets.  The first fund gives you three times the amount that the price changes in the same direction, while the second gives you three times the movement in the opposite direction.

Set aside the fact that there is no conceivable reason why you would want daily exposure to an investment as volatile as crude oil.  For the moment, ignore the fact that the typical portfolio already has plenty of oil exposure, since energy companies are among the largest of the large caps, and just about every U.S. and global organization uses energy as one of its major expense items. 

No doubt you know the statistics: the Social Security program’s reserves are due to run out in 2034.  At that point, the only money available to be paid out will be money collected that month from those current workers who are paying into the system.  Current estimates say that this will amount to about 75% of scheduled benefits.

There are, of course, a number of solutions.  Congress could gradually raise the ages at which future retirees could qualify for Social Security benefits.  They could (yet again) increase the ceiling on income on which Social Security payments are collected.  Or they could raise the various Social Security and Medicare tax rates on the income below that ceiling.

Caught in an extraordinary convergence of unhinged stock market volatility and historically low interest rates on savings, many people are rethinking their plans and their vision for the future, especially as they consider the prospect of having to stretch their retirement income over 25 or 30 years.  A study conducted in 2015 by the Employee Benefit Research Institute found workers of all ages are continuing to lose confidence in their ability to afford a comfortable retirement.  But instead of adjusting their investment strategies to confront the challenge, many are simply retreating into a “winning by not losing” mentality and avoiding the stock market altogether. That can be the biggest mistake anyone can make in their retirement planning.

There’s no question that we experience emotional pain and anxiety when our portfolios are losing money due to market downturns. Behavioral scientists tell us that we feel losses twice as keenly as positive returns.

But that doesn’t tell us what we really want to know, which is: other than selling at the wrong time and locking in losses, how do we make these downturns less painful?