Regret is one of the most powerful emotions, and it affects everyone everywhere, particularly when it comes to financial planning. According to a recent survey undertaken by The deVere Group, a U.K.-based financial advisory firm that works with wealthy individuals across the globe, high-net-worth individuals are no exception when it comes to regret. What they regret most is not having put in place a regularly reviewed personal financial plan earlier in their lives. Their second biggest financial regret lies in inconsistently scrutinizing their personal investments and taking on too much unnecessary debt.
This has become a concern to many wealthy individuals after the 2008 financial crisis, says Nigel Greene, founder and chief executive of the deVere Group. “It’s clear that wealthy individuals value highly the benefits and opportunities that long-term financial planning brings them and their families, and that they understand the importance of routinely reviewing those plans to ensure that they always remain ‘on track’ to reach their financial goals,” Greene says.
Even though high-net-worth individuals have greater access to a financial advisor and a greater financial cushion than others for any bad decisions, the regret they feel with respect to not having planned thoroughly can impede their ability to future financial planning as much as those who aren’t so wealthy, he says.
“It’s up to financial planners, then, to work through that regret and to get people to understand that no matter how big a regret they might have with something they have done or not done in the past, a bigger regret is coming if they don’t do something now,” he says.
The impact of financial regret is even greater for those whose means are not so extensive, says Richard Peterson, managing director at MarketPsych.
Whenever people regret a financial decision, they tend to evaluate themselves compared to others and more importantly, compared to where they think they should be and where they’re at.
“This can result in a kind of paralysis that stops people from taking any more financial decisions,” Peterson says. “After the financial crisis, everyone felt a sense of regret and it came together to make this huge pool of common regret.”
Although many people have moved beyond the financial crisis – in fact, Peterson says, some are now ruing the fact that they weren’t as financially adventurous as they could have been when the market was rallying – advisors will always have to address their clients’ regrets, because regret happens in both negative and positive market environments.
“The first step an advisor needs to take is to acknowledge the regret and then work to push it out, because regret is always diffused by the passage of time,” Peterson says. “An advisor needs to move their clients to the state of reappraisal, and get them to think of future decisions they will take.”
And the best way to do that is to give clients a sense of what they can and can’t control going forward.
“People can control what loans they take out, for example, how much they borrow and so on, but they can’t control larger things like the direction of interest rates, and advisors need to make their clients aware that despite those larger happenings, they still need to take decisions for their financial future,” Peterson says.
Note the y-axis on the chart above is scaled in thousands and begins at 300K.The trend in data shown above is certainly optimistic. In fact, the four-week moving average of 335.5K is at its lowest level since November 2007.However the Initial Jobless Claims does not tell the whole labor market story. The labor force participation rate is at 63.4%, compared to 66.0% in November 2007. Needless to say, numerous variables need to be considered to affirm labor market development. The Fed will need to decide whether the economy is indeed strong enough before it consider tapering asset purchases at the September meeting. Ideally for the Fed, NFPs will be around +200K for several months. Thus additional labor market data will need to be closely watched in coming weeks before any further deliberation can take place.USDJPY 1-minute Chart: August 8, 2013
Charts Created using Marketscope – prepared by Kevin JinThe USDJPY is slightly lower after the marginally positive US labor data. The pair is down about -25 pips at the time of writing and even attempted to reach ¥96.00 before turning slightly higher.--- Written by Kevin Jin, DailyFX ResearchAre you new to trading? Watch this.original source
Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesElva Garcia gets help signing up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act at a Miami Enrollment Assistance Center on Monday. CHICAGO -- The deadline has passed, and so too the surprise grace period, for signing up for health insurance as part of the nation's health care law. Now what? For those who were able to navigate the glitch-prone and often overwhelmed HealthCare.gov website, there's still work to be done to make sure success online leads to actual coverage come the new year. The first step experts recommend is to call your insurance company and double-check they received your payment. What if you missed the Christmas Eve deadline and still want insurance in 2014, as the health law requires of most Americans? You may be without health insurance for a month, but you can still sign up for coverage that will start in February. "Be patient, because they're trying to help you," said Tina Stewart, a 25-year-old graduate student in Salt Lake City who succeeded in enrolling in a health plan Tuesday morning. "It will take time." The historic changes made by the Affordable Care Act take full effect on Jan. 1. People with chronic health conditions can no longer be denied health insurance. Those who get sick and start piling up medical bills will no longer lose their coverage. Out-of-pocket limits arrive that are designed to protect patients from going bankrupt. But unless the 1 million Americans who have so far enrolled for coverage via the new marketplaces make sure their applications have arrived at their new insurance companies without errors, some may find they're still uninsured when they try to refill a prescription or make a doctor's appointment. "The enrollment files have been getting better and more accurate, but there is still work that needs to be done," said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, a trade group that represents the private insurance industry. "The health plans are still having to go back and fix some of data errors coming through in these files." If everything went smoothly, consumers can expect to see a welcome packet arrive in the mail from their insurance company, Zirkelbach said. If not, a phone call to the insurer might clear things up. "If a consumer signed up yesterday, they shouldn't expect the health plan to have their enrollment application today," Zirkelbach said. "Allow a couple of days to receive and process those enrollments." Paying the first premium is crucial. Because of the changing deadlines for enrollment, most insurers have agreed to allow payments through Jan. 10 and will make coverage retroactive to Jan. 1, he said. Anyone who missed the Christmas Eve deadline to enroll for insurance to start in January can still apply at HealthCare.gov for coverage to begin later. The federal website serves 36 states, but also directs people elsewhere to the online insurance site serving their state. The site also offers directions to local agencies offering in-person help. After the disastrous rollout in October, the federal website received 2 million visits on Monday, and heavy -- but not as heavy -- traffic on Tuesday. White House spokeswoman Tara McGuinness said she had no immediate estimate of visitors Tuesday or how many succeeded in obtaining insurance before the midnight Christmas Eve deadline. The unexpected one-day grace period was just the latest in a string of delays and reversals. Unless you qualify for Medicaid, you'll pay a monthly "premium" fee to an insurance company for coverage. Before the company covers actual medical costs, you may have to pay a certain amount called a deductible, in addition to a possible set fee for a doctor visit (copay) or a percentage of the cost of a medical service (coinsurance). Federal tax credits are aimed at helping make premiums more affordable for households earning between 100 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty line. That's $11,490 to $45,960 for an individual, $23,550 to $94,200 for a family of four. Finally, note the next significant deadline isn't for a few more months. If you don't have coverage by March 31, you'll pay a tax penalty next year of $95 or 1 percent of your income, whichever is higher. Ron Pollack, president of Families USA, a liberal advocacy group that has led efforts to get uninsured people signed up for coverage next year, said that's the deadline that matters most. "The real significant deadline is March 31," Pollack said. "The enrollment period extends for another three months." 
Stepping forward to defend the use of ETFs in client portfolios was speaker Ron DeLegge (left), editor of ETFguide, who pointed out that ETFs now total $1.4 trillion under management, with 2008 being the only year in the last 10 years when the market hasn’t grown. In June 2013, assets decreased 4.0%, driven by a $15 billion drop in the international-emerging category.
