To read the article in its entirety – Wall Street Journal Article

To read the article in its entirety -  Wall Street Journal Article

To read the article in its entirety – Wall Street Journal Article

To read the article click here – Read Wall Street Journal Article

Click the following link to read the article – AARP Article

Mary Dean, Marc Roland, and Andrew Russell were selected as 2013 Five Star Wealth Managers awarded by Five Star Professional and published in San Diego Magazine (January 2013).

Five Star Wealth Managers are a select group, representing less than 4 percent of the wealth managers in the San Diego area. To receive the Five Star Wealth Manager award, a wealth manager must satisfy objective eligibility and evaluation criteria that are associated with those advisors who provide high quality service to their clients.

“We are all honored to be selected for this award,” says Mary Dean managing partner and certified financial planner at Dean Roland Russell. “Much of the credit for our success goes to the hard working staff at the firm. We believe our clients deserve to receive the best service possible. Our staff helps us make sure that is what happens.”

About Dean Roland Russell Family Wealth Management
Dean Roland Russell (DRR Wealth) is a “fee-only” SEC registered investment advisory firm located in San Diego, CA. DRR Wealth provides financial planning, investment management, and other wealth management services to high net-worth individuals and families located across the nation. Communities frequently served within San Diego include: La Jolla, Rancho Santa Fe, Carmel Valley, Del Sur, Torrey Highlands, Encinitas, Solana Beach, Del Mar, Rancho Bernardo, Rancho Penasquitos, Escondido, Carmel Mountain, Scripps Ranch, and Poway.

The firm manages roughly $125 million in client assets. To learn more about DRR Wealth you can email info (at) drrwealth (dot) com or visit us at http://www.drrwealth.com.

About the Partners at Dean Roland Russell
Mary Katherine Dean is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), Certified Financial Planner (CFP®), and MBA (UCLA). She has provided financial planning and investment advice for over 25 years. She has been named as a “Top Wealth Advisor” by Worth Magazine on five separate occasions. Mary is a long time member of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) and the California Society of CPA’s (CalCPA).

Marc Roland is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), Certified Financial Planner (CFP®), and MBA (SDSU). He holds a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He has over 15 years of professional experience. He is an active member of the National Association of Personal Financial Planners (NAPFA) and serves on the board of directors for Cygnet Theatre in San Diego.

Andrew Russell is a Certified Financial Planner (CFP®), and MBA (CSUS). He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from San Diego State University. He has over 13 years of professional experience. He is an active member of the National Association of Personal Financial Planners (NAPFA) and serves on the board of directors for the Community Resource Center in Encinitas.

About Five Star Professional:
The Five Star program is the largest and most widely published award program in North America. Five Star Professional conducts market-specific research throughout the U.S. and Canada to identify service professionals who provide quality services to their clients. Research results undergo a thorough regulatory review. Five Star Wealth Managers do not pay a fee to be included in the research or the final list of Five Star Wealth Managers.

Follow the link to the press release.

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Vintage Financial Services

Many investors today are very concerned about their retirement income. People that are close to retirement fear that they won’t be able to sustain another event like the 2008-09 credit crisis. And they look to the federal debt, the trillion dollar annual budget deficits and the Federal Reserve’s non-stop printing press and wonder how they can protect their life savings.

Unfortunately most investors are making the classic mistake of buying yesterday’s (or 2008’s) best investment for tomorrow. They really want something safe yet they don’t really understand how different investments work.

So far in 2012 investors have pulled about $70 billion out of stock mutual funds while adding nearly $230 billion to bond funds (through Sept. 19 according to Investment Company Institute). Yet stocks, as measured by the S&P 500 index, currently pay a dividend yield of about 2.1% while the ten year US Treasury bond yields just 1.6%. Not only are investors accepting a lower income yield from bonds but that rate is fixed while stock dividends have generally risen over time.

The Federal Reserve has made no secret that they want inflation higher than the recent 1.9% rate for the year through August. Their focus has shifted to unemployment and they’ve promised to keep printing money until the unemployment rate falls from today’s high level. And some inflation may not be the worst thing for America. It will be easier to repay our $16 trillion federal debt with dollars that are worth less in the years ahead.

A higher cost of living, though, is a retiree’s biggest financial threat. Once you stop working no one will be giving you a raise. Social Security promises to increase benefits with inflation but those gains have been largely offset by higher Medicare premiums in recent years. Investing your life savings into fixed rate investments like bonds, bank CDs and fixed rate annuities may feel safe but living on a fixed income means your standard of living will decline by the rate of inflation every year. In the short term with low inflation there’s not much impact but in the 1970’s the cost of living doubled leaving retirees with half their real income in just a decade.

Source: Stern/NYU, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bond interest is illustrative, not historical

The graph above illustrates investor’s choices today. Today’s investor can buy ten year US Treasury bonds that yield 1.6% or they can invest in stocks that pay dividends of about 2.1%. The US Treasury interest is guaranteed, but remains the same. Dividends have fluctuated but have risen in 43 of the last 50 years. The cost of living has increased more than seven fold over the last 50 years yet dividends have risen even more. They kept up with the high inflation in the 1970’s and have significantly outpaced inflation over the past 25 years.

Safe is a relative term. Do you want a guaranteed dollar amount or do you want a good chance of being able to maintain your purchasing power throughout your retirement years? Today’s choice seems pretty obvious.

Written by Ray Mignone | 18 September 2012

Many investors don’t have a disciplined approach to investing and therefore don’t maximize their performance. A professional fee-only certified financial planner or investment advisor usually has better performance than the individual investor even after fees, why? I believe the reason involves two main criteria neither of which has anything to do with consistent outstanding investment selection. I believe the reason for the better performance has to do with putting discipline into the investment process and taking emotions out of the investment process.

Emotions Cause Bad Investment Decisions

Individual investors allow their emotions to cause them to make bad investment decisions, study after study show how most people buy when the market is already sky high and sell when the market is down and cheap. In this article I want to discuss the other area that I think you could increase your investment returns and that is by having a disciplined strategy of rebalancing your portfolio.

Rebalance Portfolios Periodically

Now most investors know they should rebalance their portfolios periodically to ensure they stay in line with a targeted asset allocation strategy, good investment management practices require it. Why, then, is it so difficult for most investors to do this? The pri­mary reason is that rebalancing goes against our basic instincts. With rebalancing, you are generally sell­ing those investments performing well to purchase those that are underperforming, which just doesn’t seem to make sense. It might help to remember that by rebalancing, you are following a fundamental invest­ment principle — you are buying low (those investments that are underperforming) and selling high (those investments that are perform­ing well).

Numerous studies have shown that rebalancing reduces the volatili­ty in portfolios, often with increased returns. Keep in mind that you set your asset allocation strategy because you believed those were the appropriate percentages of various investments that you should own. Thus, you need to make rebalancing a habit so your portfolio doesn’t become more risky than intended.

You can choose a date to rebalance, per­haps at the beginning of the year, when you receive your annual statements, or at the end of each quarter. With our clients we review each portfolio every quarter to see if rebalancing is needed. You should compare your current allo­cation to your target allocation. Any allocations off by a designat­ed percentage would require rebalancing.

Monitor Market Conditions

In addition you might want to rebalance due to changes in market conditions. For example we combine tactical portfolio moves with rebalancing. Say for example we decide to put 5% of foreign bonds into all clients’ portfolios because we believe the dollar is overvalued. We will rebalance the portfolio according to the client’s overall strategy taking the 5% from an investment with less potential. This brings other investments back to their desired allocation level while adding the new investment.

Be Tax Efficient

Of course you want to be tax efficient when doing the rebalancing. Too often I see new clients who have managed mutual fund portfolios at the large brokerage firms that are managed in a cookie cutter strategy not being very tax efficient. For example say you have 3 brokerage accounts, your taxable joint account, your IRA and your spouse’s IRA. The typical broker wrap account would put the exact same mix of investments in each account and their automated system would generate the same rebalancing (buys/sales) in each account at the same time.

To save on taxes the investments that are rebalanced more frequently should be placed in your IRAs where the gains are tax deferred and the taxable joint account should hold the more strategic core investments. Over the years you can save significant taxes by intelligent placement of investments and disciplined rebalancing.

Maintain Your Asset Correlations

Another advantage of rebalancing is to maintain your portfolio’s overall investment correlations. Correlation is a statistical measure of how one asset class (type of investment) performs in relation to another asset class. Assets that are not highly correlated can help reduce the volatility in a portfolio. Thus, the lower the correlation between assets, the less variation you should tolerate. Being off tar­get will have a greater impact on your portfolio when the variation is between low correlation assets.

We at Ray Mignone & Associates, Inc. believe if you establish a good disciplined investment strategy with regular rebalancing you too will enjoy better performance from your investments.