Life Insurance Issues to Be Wary of: Surrender Charges & Leaps of Faith

Financial Planning
A Guide to Dealing With an Estate Planning Attorney
Estate Planning: An up-to-date estate plan maximizes the chance that your wishes with respect to both medical and financial affairs will be carried out in the event of your death or disability.

Insurance Products
Life Insurance Issues to Be Wary of: Surrender Charges & Leaps of Faith
There are many permanent life insurance policies that have zero surrender value for as long as five years, and very depressed surrender values for as long as 15 or 20 years. Why insurance buyers don't notice this.

A Matter of Opinion
Measures of Portfolio Risk and How You Can Apply Them
Risk measures are only meaningful when looking at a complete portfolio. The risk of a single stock can be reduced by diversifying among different kinds of stocks, so that the overall portfolio risk is much lower.

Portfolio Strategies
Valuing Your Pension Benefits and the Asset Allocation Implications
Asset allocation should be based on the family's extended portfolio that includes the present values of income from Social Security and pension plans. Including these values may have dramatic investment implications.

Estate Planning
A Guide to Dealing With an Estate Planning Attorney
An up-to-date estate plan maximizes the chance that your wishes with respect to both medical and financial affairs will be carried out in the event of your death or disability.

Portfolio Manager Interview
An Interview With Thomas J. Huber, T. Rowe Price Dividend Growth Fund
A search for dividend growth and reasonable valuations.

Mutual Funds
What You Need to Know About Investing in Bond Mutual Funds
While bond funds share a number of characteristics with individual bonds, they should not be viewed as interchangeable investments. Indeed, bond funds differ from individual bonds in some important respects.

Stock Screens
Which Stock Strategies Did Best? A Mid-Year Performance Review
So far the top-performing screens during 2002 were also the leading strategies during 2001: The Piotroski value screen, the Philip Fisher growth & value screen, and O'Neil's CANSLIM growth screen.