A K.I.S.S. Guide To Retirement Investing

By Thomas Kuffel

The complex issue of investing for retirement is reduced to simple steps. This pamphlet is a cookbook style description of how to establish and maintain your retirement nest egg or to maximize it if you are already retired. What actions to take or not take are given with historical justifications. The optimum strategy of equity stock investing is demonstrated. Included are simple steps to do your own on-line trading, which stocks to buy and when to sell them. The negative role of inflation on retirement income is emphasized.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Kuffel
• Release date: Jan 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301393466

Thomas Kuffel

Besides being a computer consultant and financial advisor, Tom is an avid pilot and ham radio operator (call sign: AL7AU), both for over 50 years. He is an FAA recognized Flight Test pilot and instructor. Over the years he has had many articles published on radio construction, Porsche driving, computer programming, aviation electronics and piloting techniques. He is a Montanan political liberal. (For you Easterners, that is a liberal with a bunch of guns he likes to shoot for fun.) His wife Betty is a semi-retired Emergency Room Medical Doctor and author. Her true crime book about child sexual predators, Eyes of a Pedophile, is available on-line. She has also written several novels. They live in Whitefish Montana with their dog, Valkyrie, and the experimental airplane they built together.

Book preview

A K.I.S.S. Guide to Retirement Investing

by

Thomas C. Kuffel

Copyright 2013 by Thomas C. Kuffel

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal education and enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book please purchase additional copies. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please go to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Why Save For Retirement

How Much To Save

Retirement Investing = Stock Market Investing

Why All Stocks All The Time

You're Retired And Your Portfolio Of 100% Stocks Just Crashed, So What

What's Wrong With Government Bonds, T-Bills, Money Market Funds, Etc.

What's Wrong With Gold

What's Wrong With Real Estate, Art, Rare Coins, Stamps, Etc.

If You Must Buy Fixed Income, A Few Hints

What's Wrong With Actively Managed Funds

Mechanical Models Work Better Than Human Judgment

Annual vs. Quarter vs. Monthly Hold (Forget Day Trading)

Getting Started – Employer IRA

How To Open An Online Brokerage Account

Self-Employed Extra Savings – SEP

What To Invest In – Stage I

What To Invest In - Stage II

What To Invest In – Stage III

Rebalance Example

Diversity: The Lesson Of GM, Fanny Mae And Freddy Mac

Withdrawal Plan

Appendix I – Condensed Retirement Investing Recipe

Appendix II – Great Depression Data

Bibliography

About The Author

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Introduction

This Guide is not for the super rich. They should have platoons of experts to manage their money. (But the facts in this Guide will serve as a check on the performance of their experts.) Rather, it shows the working-class and middle-class person how to setup and manage their savings to have a comfortable retirement. It is intended to be a complete informational, stand-alone cookbook style exposition for anyone to follow. It describes how to manage your portfolio effectively without spending your life minutely examining stock data. In fact, the recipe requires from one to only a few hours of your time per year. If you wish to skip all the justifications and history and go direct to the do this, then do that part of the book, jump to Getting Started – Employer IRA.

Qualifications: The author does not make a living as a money manager. But his management of numerous portfolios for many years has consistently achieved higher than market average returns. His degree is in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University, attended on a National Merit Scholarship. He has been programming computers for over 50 years. His computer consulting company, Kuffel Information System Services (hence K.I.S.S.), has been active since 1977. Much of this time has been spent transforming complex, ambiguous statements of a problem into their simplest, essential elements. Elements so simple even a computer can follow them.

This experience is applied to the question of how to invest for retirement. Neither his investing performance nor passing the Financial Advisor examination validates