Understanding TIAA-CREF

Understanding TIAA-CREF
Author: Irving S. Schloss
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2001-03-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0195351126

TIAA-CREF is the largest private pension plan in the world, with more than $260 billion under management, including an estimated 1% of all shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange. And yet, while there is a wealth of information on IRAs, 401(k)s and other investment vehicles, until now there has been little guidance for the millions of TIAA-CREF plan participants and their advisors. The TIAA-CREF Book offers the definitive guide to TIAA-CREF for participants, estate planners, and financial advisors. Simply and clearly--and with a droll sense of humor--the authors explain the often complex legal and financial aspects of how the TIAA-CREF plan works, how the investment choices new participants make can affect the funds available at retirement, what the distribution options are for withdrawing money either before or after retirement, and how to leave the fund as an inheritance. For participants in the accumulation stage of their careers, the authors explain the important differences between fixed income securities (TIAA) and equity securities (CREF), and examine the investment choices for both. They address such important issues as how to allocate contributions, how portable an account really is, and how plans differ from employer to employer. In addition to the valuable primer on estate planning--from how to quantify assets, needs, and income to how the Federal Estate Tax affects TIAA-CREF accounts--the authors explore in detail the distribution options available and help weigh the pros and cons of each choice. Drawing on their extensive work in the field of estate planning, the authors cover the gamut of what it takes to make the most out of a TIAA-CREF plan. TIAA-CREF is a registered trademark of the Teachers Insurance and Annunity Association/College Retirement Equities Fund Corporation.

Understanding TIAA-CREF

Understanding TIAA-CREF
Author: Irving S. Schloss
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2001-03-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780195351125

TIAA-CREF is the largest private pension plan in the world, with more than $260 billion under management, including an estimated 1% of all shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange. And yet, while there is a wealth of information on IRAs, 401(k)s and other investment vehicles, until now there has been little guidance for the millions of TIAA-CREF plan participants and their advisors. The TIAA-CREF Book offers the definitive guide to TIAA-CREF for participants, estate planners, and financial advisors. Simply and clearly--and with a droll sense of humor--the authors explain the often complex legal and financial aspects of how the TIAA-CREF plan works, how the investment choices new participants make can affect the funds available at retirement, what the distribution options are for withdrawing money either before or after retirement, and how to leave the fund as an inheritance. For participants in the accumulation stage of their careers, the authors explain the important differences between fixed income securities (TIAA) and equity securities (CREF), and examine the investment choices for both. They address such important issues as how to allocate contributions, how portable an account really is, and how plans differ from employer to employer. In addition to the valuable primer on estate planning--from how to quantify assets, needs, and income to how the Federal Estate Tax affects TIAA-CREF accounts--the authors explore in detail the distribution options available and help weigh the pros and cons of each choice. Drawing on their extensive work in the field of estate planning, the authors cover the gamut of what it takes to make the most out of a TIAA-CREF plan. TIAA-CREF is a registered trademark of the Teachers Insurance and Annunity Association/College Retirement Equities Fund Corporation.

Retirement 101

Retirement 101
Author: Willard F. Enteman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 256
Release: 1992
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Employee Pensions

Employee Pensions
Author: Teresa Ghilarducci
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2007
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780913447956

Describes policy directions, especially defined benefit plans and defined contribution plans, and their implications for both employers and employees. Reflects on issues of partial retirement, multi-employers plans, savings plans, and the potential and pitfalls of US Federal pension policy.

Strategic Asset Allocation

Strategic Asset Allocation
Author: John Y. Campbell
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2002-01-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 019160691X

Academic finance has had a remarkable impact on many financial services. Yet long-term investors have received curiously little guidance from academic financial economists. Mean-variance analysis, developed almost fifty years ago, has provided a basic paradigm for portfolio choice. This approach usefully emphasizes the ability of diversification to reduce risk, but it ignores several critically important factors. Most notably, the analysis is static; it assumes that investors care only about risks to wealth one period ahead. However, many investors—-both individuals and institutions such as charitable foundations or universities—-seek to finance a stream of consumption over a long lifetime. In addition, mean-variance analysis treats financial wealth in isolation from income. Long-term investors typically receive a stream of income and use it, along with financial wealth, to support their consumption. At the theoretical level, it is well understood that the solution to a long-term portfolio choice problem can be very different from the solution to a short-term problem. Long-term investors care about intertemporal shocks to investment opportunities and labor income as well as shocks to wealth itself, and they may use financial assets to hedge their intertemporal risks. This should be important in practice because there is a great deal of empirical evidence that investment opportunities—-both interest rates and risk premia on bonds and stocks—-vary through time. Yet this insight has had little influence on investment practice because it is hard to solve for optimal portfolios in intertemporal models. This book seeks to develop the intertemporal approach into an empirical paradigm that can compete with the standard mean-variance analysis. The book shows that long-term inflation-indexed bonds are the riskless asset for long-term investors, it explains the conditions under which stocks are safer assets for long-term than for short-term investors, and it shows how labor income influences portfolio choice. These results shed new light on the rules of thumb used by financial planners. The book explains recent advances in both analytical and numerical methods, and shows how they can be used to understand the portfolio choice problems of long-term investors.

Animal Spirits

Animal Spirits
Author: George A. Akerlof
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2010-02-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1400834724

From acclaimed economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller, the case for why government is needed to restore confidence in the economy The global financial crisis has made it painfully clear that powerful psychological forces are imperiling the wealth of nations today. From blind faith in ever-rising housing prices to plummeting confidence in capital markets, "animal spirits" are driving financial events worldwide. In this book, acclaimed economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller challenge the economic wisdom that got us into this mess, and put forward a bold new vision that will transform economics and restore prosperity. Akerlof and Shiller reassert the necessity of an active government role in economic policymaking by recovering the idea of animal spirits, a term John Maynard Keynes used to describe the gloom and despondence that led to the Great Depression and the changing psychology that accompanied recovery. Like Keynes, Akerlof and Shiller know that managing these animal spirits requires the steady hand of government—simply allowing markets to work won't do it. In rebuilding the case for a more robust, behaviorally informed Keynesianism, they detail the most pervasive effects of animal spirits in contemporary economic life—such as confidence, fear, bad faith, corruption, a concern for fairness, and the stories we tell ourselves about our economic fortunes—and show how Reaganomics, Thatcherism, and the rational expectations revolution failed to account for them. Animal Spirits offers a road map for reversing the financial misfortunes besetting us today. Read it and learn how leaders can channel animal spirits—the powerful forces of human psychology that are afoot in the world economy today. In a new preface, they describe why our economic troubles may linger for some time—unless we are prepared to take further, decisive action.

Understanding A3 Thinking

Understanding A3 Thinking
Author: Durward K. Sobek II.
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2011-03-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1439814058

Winner of a 2009 Shingo Research and Professional Publication Prize. Notably flexible and brief, the A3 report has proven to be a key tool In Toyota’s successful move toward organizational efficiency, effectiveness, and improvement, especially within its engineering and R&D organizations. The power of the A3 report, however, derives not from the report itself, but rather from the development of the culture and mindset required for the implementation of the A3 system. In Understanding A3 Thinking, the authors first show that the A3 report is an effective tool when it is implemented in conjunction with a PDCA-based management philosophy. Toyota views A3 Reports as just one piece in their PDCA management approach. Second, the authors show that the process leading to the development and management of A3 reports is at least as important as the reports themselves, because of the deep learning and professional development that occurs in the process. And finally, the authors provide a number of examples as well as some very practical advice on how to write and review A3 reports.