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[P615]Pregnant Still Getting Period

by Fern Larocca, Fer

I'm losing money and you should be, too! Here is why - a good diversified portfolio should have winners and losers in it at all times. If you have all winners all the time, then you are taking unnecessary risk because you are concentrated in one asset class. See what happened to all those concentrated real estate portfolios! You can avoid the same disaster in your investment portfolio. Let's look at some smart and dumb strategies:

Situation-You look at your brokerage statement and panic. It keeps going down in value!

Dumb- You sell all your losers and stay in cash. Don't do it! You may have to pay a transaction fee for the loss but you also will have a tax loss. Now you moved into cash where it will be hard to keep up with taxes and inflation.

Smart- You look at the particular assets that are losing and see if you truly have a loss since you acquired it. If not, you keep your paper loss. If it has been a consistent loser within the last three out of five years compared to its peers, then you sell into the same asset class but with a better long term performance record. This is a good example of investing correctly for the long term and sticking to your asset allocation strategy even in a down market.

Situation- Your retirement plan assets (IRA, 401K, 403b, etc.) are going down in value!

Dumb-You panic and stop contributing money to your plan and spend the cash or keep it in a money market.

Smart- You make sure your money is diversified in different asset classes and if so, you put new cash into those that are going down. You essentially are buying bargains to increase your potential future capital gains. Great strategy!

Situation- You retired and your income from the fixed income portion of your portfolio is going down!

Dumb- You take all of your retirement income from the fixed income portion of your portfolio and switch more of the equity portion that is going down in value to safer investments.

Smart-You take no more than a 4% withdrawal from your portfolio and you take dividends from your fixed income portion and long term capital gains from your equity portion. This keeps your taxes down and your net after-tax income high. You stick with your asset allocation strategy and review the long term performance of each security that you hold. If it is just one or two bad years, you don't sell, because you are in it for the long term. Great plan!

But don't take my word for it. Here is a quote from John Myers President and CEO (retired) of GE Asset Management in a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal, 4/7/08 -
"GE results are an example of how a well-diversified portfolio will perform over the long term. In 1986 when I joined GE pension, assets were $11 billion, the plan was underfunded, and GE was making annual contributions. When I retired 21 years later, assets were $56 billion and the plan was $12 billion overfunded despite more than $30 billion paid out to retirees and zero cash contributions from GE."

Good investment strategies start with a well diversified portfolio that contains winners and losers all the time.

Paul Zimmet is Foundation Director of the International Diabetes Institute, and Professor of Diabetes at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, at Deakin University, Victoria, Australia, and at the Graduate School of Public Health of the University of Pittsburgh, USA. He is also co-Chair of the IDF Task Force on Epidemiology.

Acording to the World Health Organization, more than 1 billion adults are overweight with 300 million of them are obese.

People have been getting fatter and fatter every year for the past 25 years. And this increase is not limited to adults. The percentage of young people who are overweight has more than tripled since 1980. Among children and teens aged 6-19 years, 16 percent (over 9 million young people) are considered overweight.

Why is this of concern? Mainly because it puts people at much higher risk for diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure), coronary heart disease, stroke, and some forms of cancer.

Of special concern is the growing obesity rates among children. This is not only leading to a high degree of type 2 diabetes among teenagers but also setting them up for shortened life spans and more health problems in their later years.

The main culprits in the alarmingly fast growth of child obesity are, without a doubt, fast foods. Fast foods tend to be loaded with what has become the new primary food groups - salt, fat, and sugar. Any one of these ingredients in excess can easily lead to problems, but with all three you're basically begging for trouble.

What's even worse is that even so called 'health foods' are not helping with the problem. Foods advertised as "low-fat" tend to compensate with "high sugar". Foods low in sugar are high in salt. And fats are in food everywhere.

So what can we do? Some of the experts are pushing for governments to impose bans on junk foods. But that's not going to happen.

The answer is moderation. We are never going to completely get rid of fast foods. Our entire economy is geared for it. But what we can do is to watch more closely what we eat by religiously choosing the low-calorie options at your restaurants and shopping marts.

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Both Fern Larocca & Janice Kaszursky are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Fern Larocca has sinced written about articles on various topics from Finances, Adsense and Finances. Fern Alix-LaRocca is a Certified Financial Planner™ with over 24 years experience as a fee-only Financial Advisor. Stop losing money and increase your net worth by subscribing to her. Fern Larocca's top article generates over 40500 views. to your Favourites.

Janice Kaszursky has sinced written about articles on various topics from Finances. Janice Kaszursky is a writer for .. Janice Kaszursky's top article generates over 590 views. to your Favourites.