Media Reviews - January 24-31, 2010

Normally, each magazine issue has a small number of "high" relevance articles flagged near the top, and the bulk of the magazine articles are listed below, with low or moderate relevance ratings. But this issue of the Journal of Financial Planning is reversed; a majority of the articles are unusually relevant.

The degree varies; Dan Moisand makes some good points about the incredibly lax attitude of our regulators when it comes to brokers gleefully exercising their conflicts of interest, and Bonnie Hughes is surely right that we need to create a workable business model for serving the middle market. Dennis Stearns does a great job of pulling the tastiest nuggets from Jim Collins' latest management book, and the contributed article on how to work with widows--a potentially huge subset of the planning clientele as baby boomer men fall into declining health--offers some great suggestions.

However, the highlights of the issue are Harold Evensky's review of various professional articles, including how to navigate through four different kinds of markets, and the article that examines the ability of various portfolios to grow and survive decumulation. And the final article offers an interesting new model for working with clients at a depth which is at least two long steps beyond the industry standard.