Women & Planning

Central bankers need to speak up about economic barriers prompted by racism and the need for inclusion and diversity, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Raphael Bostic said.

What makes life worth living? This question is at the heart of financial life planning and financial therapy.

Federal Reserve officials have begun debating how to approach shrinking a stockpile of more than $8 trillion of bonds as a key element of a policy-normalization campaign in the wake of unprecedented moves to shore up the economy during the pandemic.

We're sharing four areas of work female advisors should resolve to pay special attention to in 2022 –plus, how you can give those resolutions staying power.

Bob Huebscher’s mother passed away on December 23, 2021.

Are we living in 1858 or 1968?

That is, are America’s divisions so profound and political institutions so crippled that we are poised for a breakdown akin to the Civil War? Or is the current polarization the product of conflicting social forces that can be gradually reconciled or redirected into more healthy electoral competition?

The reason that few predicted Soviet collapse was that the Soviet Union outwardly appeared to be a mighty military power with an extensive security apparatus. Few observers understood just how little legitimacy the system possessed; that it was eaten away on the inside by the rot of corruption, by the loss of faith in ideology, by the dismal standards of living, and, lastly, by elite in-fighting.

President Joe Biden extended the pause on federal student-loan repayments by another three months as the U.S. faces a fresh wave of Covid-19 cases from the omicron variant, removing a near-term threat to millions of Americans’ finances.

Capitalism’s death warrant was signed on March 19, 1968. That is when President Lyndon Johnson eliminated the requirement that the Federal Reserve back the U.S. dollar with gold reserves.

I haven’t written one of these rips in a while, so I thought as an end of the year celebration I’d bring the “six phrases” series back and the first roast will focus on my personal favorite: brokers.

New research shows that companies that engender high employee satisfaction are rewarded with higher stock prices and investor returns.

It has been my tradition to informally rate the investment-related books I read in the past year. I have also included some novels and books of general interest. Here is my list of winners and losers.

I’ve seen a lot of celebrity and CEO couples who have been married for a long time go through a divorce. The usual norm is that marital assets are subject to division. But where do financial investments fit into this equation?

Advisors breach their fiduciary duty when they fail to recommend guaranteed income products.

A corporate pledge to hire and promote one million Black workers into middle-class jobs within a decade needs to increase fivefold over the next year to get on pace to reach that goal.

As you near the end of Q4 and gather your thoughts, goals, and priorities for 2022, we have one piece of advice: Streamline your business!

We mix up logic with emotion, data with information, and information with wisdom. Steven Pinker’s new book, Rationality, is a step-by-step guide to unmixing these and using hard-headed logic to arrive at useful conclusions.

This is one of a series of interviews by Bloomberg Opinion columnists on how to solve the world’s most pressing policy challenges. It has been edited for length and clarity.

How can advisors help clients who lack sufficient savings for retirement – those who accept the need to take on risk to achieve capital growth, but insist on a minimum income to fund essential expenses?

The popular yet embattled statue known as “Fearless Girl” might have to find a new home again, while its creator also contemplates making nonfungible tokens of the Wall Street icon.

The justification for the 4% rule was based upon historical investment performance from 1925 to 1995. But what is the value of relying on those results when today’s economy is so different?

Financial advisory practices using only a handful of team members to prospect and engage in traditional business development will be usurped by teams that are trained to be causative.

Depending upon the decisions advisors make in the near term, their practices will either be setup for monumental growth or inevitable decline.

Is there a gender-based promotion gap? Are there too many women who do well on the job, but are not considered seriously for career advancement?

The golden rule has a huge flaw that needs to be exposed. It sets you up for failure on a big assumption that everyone does want to be treated the way you want to be treated.

We’re all salespeople in some sense, fiduciary financial advisors included.

The message from two new pieces of proposed Social Security legislation is clear: We have passed the point where we can expand benefits.

Women in the U.S. have been among those hardest hit economically by the Covid-19 pandemic, knocked out of the workforce by the double whammy of a child care crisis and the pandemic recession.

On Nov. 17, I led a TOPLive discussion with Benjamin Ho, Vassar College professor and author of “Why Trust Matters: An Economist’s Guide to the Ties That Bind Us,” which explores how relationships, expectations and human interaction shape the world around us — be it in trade, employment or democracy.

The majority of the wealth in the U.S. is controlled by baby boomers. However, two rising trends in this dominant demographic are creating complications, not only for boomers and their advisors, but also for the children of boomers who constitute an increasingly vital current and future client group.

I explored the first four of 12 lasting effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy and financial markets in my previous column. Here are four more: greater use of telecommunications, a shift in preferred residences, more employee independence and an increased emphasis on online shopping.

This is the time when you are preparing an end-of-year/holiday letter for your clients. Unfortunately, fewer than 1% of them are going to derive any meaning from it. Use this template to create a holiday letter with some pizzazz.

The economy is at maximum employment. Inflation is running red hot and increasingly showing signs it is persistent. Having neglected one mandate and largely fulfilled the other, why is the Fed so slow to reduce asset purchases and unwilling to contemplate hiking interest rates?

The trading desk was just embarking on a second banner year when senior executives started defecting to the likes of Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Millennium Management. By this fall, many of the team’s heaviest hitters had gone.

The employment-to-population ratio of Americans ages 25 through 54, the most straightforward measure of the health of the job market, has now clawed back about 80% of its pandemic losses.

Gender-based stereotypes have an insidious impact on how women advisors are perceived, their ability to attract clients, and their career path in corporate environments. I blame it on John Gray.

This summer, when Fame Lady Squad launched, claiming to be the first ever female-led crypto art collective, it quickly raised $1.5 million from people who wanted to support underrepresented artists.

Americans are racking up bills on credit cards, returning to pre-pandemic habits after emergency relief programs ended and the economy reopened.

Here are nine things every female solo advisor should know about launching and growing a wealth management practice.

Asset management firms are increasingly tempted to meet their environmental obligations by withdrawing capital from companies and industries that do the most damage to the planet. But there’s a risk that the assets they offload will drift into the shadows of private ownership, where polluting practices will receive less scrutiny and therefore stand even less chance of being curbed.

The unprecedented exodus of women from the workplace during the pandemic is empowering those who remain, helping spur a resurgence in labor organizing as industries such as health care, education and retail confront an acute shortage of jobseekers.

Here is my interview with Eric Negron, an advisor, about how he uses the Asset-Map software.

RIA owner Michelle Smith shares an observation that illustrates the dilemma independent financial advisors face in recruiting advisory talent.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg took paternity leave and, while he nested, the critics feasted.

If you are responsible for bringing in prospective clients, closing those prospects and servicing clients, you’re in sales.

A year-and-a-half into a pandemic, leaders are gathering at the two-day Bloomberg Equality Summit to take stock of the damage to the global economy and chart a way forward toward greater equality for all.

The brief-but-sharp 2020 recession and its aftermath are already shaping up a lot differently for college enrollment. Census Bureau data released last week, included in the above chart, shows a modest 0.7-percentage-point overall enrollment decline from the previous year as of October 2020 — albeit with an interesting divergence between men (down 1.5 points) and women (down 0.2).

Let’s look ahead at where we should be going as we finish out yet another year of unprecedented events.

To show how exclusive you are, there’s nothing like turning away a billionaire. Two members of the three comma club were among those nominated to join R360, a new, invitation-only investment and networking group for people with net worth of $100 million or more.

It’s being called the Great Resignation. Quits are at their highest rate in 20 years and no one seems to understand why. One thing is for sure: the labor market has gone weird.

We have been ranked as the most-read electronic newsletter among financial advisors for the third year in a row by Erdos & Morgan.

New research shows that funds with a good track record of social responsibility have attracted more assets. But that is a historical effect; additional fund flows do not lead to further improvements in social responsibility.