In The News
Northstar is frequently featured in business and investing articles in national and local leading publications. Below is a sampling of recent mentions.
A 3-Step Financial Checkup
MSN Money
"According to an article written by Charles Farrell and published in the Journal of Financial Planning, the goal is to retire with at least 12 times your annual income. I think this number will vary significantly based on individual circumstances. My personal goal is 15 times annual income."
--Rob Berger
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read full article
Investors Brace for a Rocky 2012
The Denver Post
"The only game in town is the large-cap, multinational, dividend-paying stocks," said Fred Taylor, president of Northstar Investment Advisors, in Denver. "You don't have any alternatives for getting cash for your investments." Taylor recommends looking at nonfinancial companies with a dividend yield above 3 percent, but more importantly, ones that have consistently raised dividends 7 percent or more a year.
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2012 Outlook: Brace for Another Weak Year
Inc.com
"If European leaders hold the eurozone together for the time being, that means the U.S. economy will probably grow in the 1.5 percent to 3 percent range, which would be considered a weak economic environment. But all in all, not bad for the challenges we face."
--Charlie Farrell
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How Can I Keep My Standard of Living Throughout My Retirement?
CNNMoney
And, indeed, a few years ago a financial adviser I've known for years, Charles Farrell of Northstar Investment Advisors, wrote a book titled "Your Money Ratios: 8 Simple Tools for Financial Security" that does just that. It lays out at various ages -- 25, 35, 45, etc. -- the multiple of salary you should have tucked away in order to retire at a reasonable standard of living.
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A Financial Tug-of-War. Don't Ignore the Good News About the U.S. Economy
coloradobiz: cobizmag.com
"Because of Europe's troubles, investors are ignoring the good news from corporate America and the improving U.S. economy. The S&P 500 earnings for third quarter were 17 percent above last year and should come in at an average of $25.43 a share, which marks the eleventh consecutive quarterly increase since the first quarter of 2009."
--Fred Taylor
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How Does Your Savings Rate Measure Up for Your Age?
The Baltimore Sun
Farrell says financial ratios are used to simplify complicated data for investment professionals analyzing companies. He figured workers could use a similar shortcut for personal finance.
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How to Tap Your Retirement Accounts: How Much is Too Much?
The Wall Street Journal
Before you can think about your "asset-drawdown" approach, you need to get your "asset accumulation" strategy in order. Investment adviser Charles Farrell has developed a quick ballpark gauge of how much you will need to save for retirement: Multiply your current gross income by 12. A more time-intensive, but more accurate, way to do it is to make an inventory of your living expenses so you know how much you actually will need.
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Colorado Public Radio Sponsor Spotlight
Colorado Public Radio.org
Fred Taylor and Northstar are featured in the Colorado Public Radio Sponsor Spotlight.
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Denver Business Journal's 2011 Power Book Top 10 Financial Newsmakers
Denver Business Journal
Congratulations to Northstar CEO Charlie Farrell for being named one of the Denver Business Journal's Top 10 Financial Newsmakers!
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Read All About It: Writing Your Way to a Higher Public Profile
LifeHealthPro
"You generally are doing four or five [marketing] things at the same time and you try to do things you’re good at."
--Charlie Farrell
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Multinationals Yield Income in a Down Market
CNBC.com
"If your long-term horizon is more than five years, there just aren't many other good choices. Some multinationals are paying bigger dividends than 10-year bonds, sometimes twice as big. Buy companies with meaningful dividend yields of at least 2.5 percent annually that increase seven to ten percent a year and you're way ahead of the game."
--Fred Taylor
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And Now - The Good News: Here are some biz stats to brighten your day
coloradobiz: cobizmag.com
"Our markets have been tested before, and have experienced long and frustrating periods of low returns or declines. But those who abandoned them ended up selling at the lows only to buy in after America demonstrated once again how resilient, creative and powerful it is as an economic engine."
--Charlie Farrell
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POINT: Rising Dividends for Retirement Income
Investment Advisor Magazine
"With interest rates this low, the best you can hope for is low to no inflation. Otherwise, the rising cost of living will ravage the income stream, and if interest rates increase, the portfolio could get hammered by declining values."
--Charlie Farrell
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Gold: hedge, yes; Investment? That's another story
coloradobiz: cobizmag.com
"But before you jump on the bandwagon, consider the recent losses gold sustained after hitting a high of $1,917 an ounce. The commodity fell more than 5 percent in two days, prompting talk of an impending correction. Now, I don't know where the price of gold is going, but I do know that buying at these levels can be dangerous. If you are wrong, it could be analogous to buying Cisco Systems in March of 2000, when it was trading at $80 a share and had the largest market capitalization on the NASDAQ. Today Cisco trades $15 a share."
--Fred Taylor
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Voices: Charlie Farrell, On Writing on a Book
The Wall Street Journal
"Most importantly, you have to write for yourself. You have to believe that the concept or theory you’re exploring makes a positive contribution to the field of finance and is of significance and value to the public. The commercial success of a book is a crap shoot. Because of that uncertainty, you have to be willing to take the risk that your investment maybe not pan out – in terms of sale or exposure – exactly as you had planned."
--Charlie Farrell
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Many Baby Boomers Face Retirement of Tight Budgets, Fading Dreams
The Denver Post
""The market hasn't built wealth like they expected," said Charlie Farrell, author of "Your Money Ratios" and an investment adviser with Northstar Investment Advisors in Denver. "People are nowhere near the returns that were being projected back in the late 1990s."
--Charlie Farrell
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Finance Pros Examine Fallout from Economic Upheavals
Denver Business Journal
"The market volatility makes perfect sense. Investors have been deluged by a tsunami of bad news, from the debt-ceiling fiasco to the S&P downgrade and finally fears that European banks will be brought under by bad loans. With four consecutive days of 400-point moves in both directions [Aug. 8-11], the only people making money in this market environment are hedge funds, speculators and day traders. The takeaway from all this volatility is to have enough cash on hand to pay your bills and invest in dividend-paying stocks for income now and growth down the road."
--Fred Taylor
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Are You Photoshopping Your Finances?
DailyFinance
"I suspect if people aren't using a detailed budgeting program to track expenses, they easily underestimate things by 20% or more."
--Charlie Farrell
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Playing Chicken With the Nation's Credit Rating
coloradobiz.com
"Despite the political uncertainty, I am convinced that stocks remain a good buy thanks to strong corporate fundamentals."
--Fred Taylor
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Financial Expert: "Don't Panic During Debt-Ceiling Debate"
9NEWS.com
"Don't worry about bonds. There is an ironclad guarantee that you will get your money. However, the problem with the bond market right now is interest rates are really low. Stay shorter term."
--Charlie Farrell
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Financial Experts Pessimistic About Debt Ceiling Debate
Denver Business Journal
"For the most part, people are angry about Washington. But they're not panicking. I don't care whether you're Republican or Democrat, people are angry because our [elected officials] are willing to throw us under the bus."
--Fred Taylor
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Investor Advises Clients to Sit Tight and Avoid Panic
Denver Post - Beltway Blog
"Many stocks that are producing strong earnings are underpriced, making it an especially prime time to invest."
--Fred Taylor
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More Women Stepping Up Their Plans for Retirement
Denver Business Journal
"Women realize their house is not an ATM machine anymore. It's a place to live. We talk to them about budgeting and they're much better about sitting down and saying realistically, 'What do I need to live on?' Women tend to listen to you better about planning for unforseen events."
--Fred Taylor
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Retirement - Ask the Expert
Money
"By 35 you should have 1.4 times your pay tucked away."
--Charlie Farrell
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Take Your Eyes Off the Price
coloradobiz.com
Fred Taylor and Charlie Farrell discuss why investors shouldn't place so much of a focus on the price of stocks.
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Colorado divorce rate plummets during recession
The Denver Post
"I've been advising my divorcee clients not to take the house if there's any way not to take it. I tell them, 'Why do you want an asset that's declining in value and costs a fortune in maintenance and property taxes at a time when you have to watch every dime and live on a budget?' "
--Fred Taylor
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Raising the Debt Ceiling
The Denver Post
"It would be dangerous for members of Congress to use the nation's credit rating as 'political fodder.' It's not worth the risk in screwing around with it. It scares me to death what the domino effect would be."
--Fred Taylor
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Is Your Adviser Still Right for Your Retirement?
SmartMoney.com
"The latter [retirement-income manager] is (or should be) focused on several chores at once: producing income, reducing taxes, and growing your portfolio, all for 20 to 30 years, regardless of market conditions. That's hard work."
--Charlie Farrell
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Fred Taylor and Children's Hospital Colorado Foundation
Children's Hospital Annual Report
› >read about Fred's involvement with the Children's Hospital
Experts Talk About Economic Issues
Denver Business Journal
"Despite all the headline risk and "black swan" events of the last two months, the markets are still positive for the year. Strong corporate earnings and the easy monetary policy by the Fed are driving this phenomenon. Once QE2 [second round of quantitative easing] ends in June or corporations fail to beat earnings expectations, the market may be in trouble, although the third year of a presidential term has always been a net positive for the stock market."
--Fred Taylor
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The Debt Ceiling is the Real Battle
CBS MoneyWatch
"Bottom line. The debt ceiling debate will rage for years until we figure out a way to limit health care costs."
--Charlie Farrell
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Measuring a client's financial health
InvestmentNews
"The easier you can make the goals for people, the more likely they can achieve them. The more math you can take out, the better."
--Charlie Farrell
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What's in your wallet? Likely not enough
MarketWatch.com
"The last 10 years has taken a lot out of people’s finances. If you were 45 in 2000, and today you are 55 or 56, you may not be where you were going to be. You projected market returns that were better than what you got, and housing values are down — and people bought more house than they needed or could afford — and you are feeling the pain, but you have no idea just how far off you might be."
--Charlie Farrell
› >read full article
Retirement savings goal is no magic number
CNBC.com
"People are generally overoptimistic about what they can do with their personal finances. Income is used to establish our lifestyle, so I think it's the most honest way of looking into the future and deciding what your needs might be."
--Charlie Farrell
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Expert: Get your finances in shape in 2011
9NEWS.com
"Northstar Investment Advisors co-founder Fred Taylor says it may be easier than you think to get out of debt or stash away a bit of cash in 2011. He says the first source of "new" money to look for could be found in your own paycheck, thanks to a temporary 2 percent cut in payroll deductions for 2011. Taylor says homeowners may also have some savings waiting for them by refinancing their mortgages. 'Mortgage rates haven't been this low since the 1950s. So, the first thing you might want to do is see what you're paying on your mortgage,' he said. 'Let's say you have a $300,000 mortgage at 6 percent. You're paying $18,000 a year. If you refinance at 5 percent, which is very doable today, you could save $3,000 a year."
--TaRhonda Thomas
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The new diversification class: taxes
Denver Business Journal
"Based on those two premises, I think you have a two-pronged approach. One is obviously to buy tax-exempt bonds, because you want to avoid taxes when you can. But you have two things going on - you have interest-rate risk, because interest rates more than likely will go up...and you have credit risk, which people didn't really worry about much three years ago. We're also looking at diversifying outside Colorado by buying other states' [bonds], because you can't take the risk of owning one state's bonds, particularly if you live in California, New Jersey or Nevada, which are the states that have the biggest issues on the credit side. The other place that we're looking is Build America Bonds. They're not tax-free, but you're getting investment-grade, corporate-like credit, and you're getting higher yields than investment-grade corporates. We really haven't changed our policy of using dividend-income stocks, even though you may have to pay a higher income tax on the dividends. If the dividend-paying stocks that we buy have a history of increasing their dividend every single year, it will mitigate some of the higher income tax...I'd rather pay higher taxes on income than take the risk of trying to buy stock that goes way up in value so I can sell it for the gain."
--Fred Taylor
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Resolved: Aim to Improve 2 Numbers
New York Times.com, Bucks Blog
"In a nutshell, next year I’m going to push up my Capital to Income Ratio and push down my Mortgage to Income Ratio. I think about those ratios as two big financial levers. I have to push up on the one and down on the other. Those are easy goals for me to understand and measure. And if I get it right, I’ll be making good progress toward my retirement."
--Charlie Farrell
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Hard Times Investing: Shareholders Count on Dividends More Than Ever
CNBC
"There has never been a better time to buy US large-cap, dividend-paying stocks. For the first time since 1958, you can get more in dividend income—more than 3 percent—from great companies than from the ten-year U.S. Treasury note, which is now yielding less than 3 percent."
--Fred Taylor
How to Keep Cash Coming in Retirement
SmartMoney Magazine.com
"A good litmus test comes from Charles Farrell, a principal with Northstar Investment Advisors in Denver, whose investment strategy starts with an asset allocation of about 45 percent equities and 55 percent fixed income. The latter, a mix of corporate debt, Treasury bonds and agency bonds, provides a healthy dose of defense against another crash, he says. On the equities side, he aims for roughly four dozen dividend-paying stocks, domestic and international, in 10 sectors, including energy, health care and consumer staples. When sizing up prospects, Farrell and his partners look first for a current “meaningful” yield and second for a company’s ability to increase its dividend faster than the rate of inflation."
--Glenn Ruffenach
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Fed Minutes: Economy Operating at Lower Potential Than Previously Thought
Investment Advisor.com
"Bottom line, the committee is walking a fine line between appearing desperate and appearing reassuring. With so much uncertainty, no one wants to invest before the November election."
--Fred Taylor
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Fed Minutes: Economy Operating at Lower Potential Than Previously Thought
The Wall Street Journal
"[Charles Farrell] has developed, in recent years, some of the smartest tools we've seen for gauging the health of your nest egg. Now, he has combined these calculators with additional guidelines in a new book, Your Money Ratios: Eight Simple Tools for Financial Security. Mr. Farrell uses easy-to-understand ratios to help individuals manage savings, debt, investments and insurance, all with the goal of achieving a secure retirement. In short, one of the best financial books to cross our desks this year."
--The Wall Street Journal
Investment professionals offer guidance
Denver Business Journal
"An investor buying U.S. Treasuries at these record low yields is betting on no inflation or growth in the U.S. economy for the next two to 10 years. I am not willing to make that bet. If an investor can buy shares in a large multi-national U.S. company that pays a dividend of at least 3 percent a year, has a record of increasing that dividend 7 to 10 percent annually, and trades at a low price earnings multiple, then I would rather own the U.S. company that sells to China, India and Brazil than a 10-year U.S. Treasury bond that yields only 2.5 percent. With $45 billion coming out of U.S. stock funds since 2009 and $500 billion going into U.S. bond funds in that same period of time, I can't see why it makes sense to follow the herd."
--Fred Taylor
2011 Looking Ok for 401(k)s
The Denver Post
"Fundamentally, it's to your benefit to be optimistic over the long term. Earnings and valuations in global capital markets will rise as we create more wealth," said Charles Farrell, author of "Your Money Ratios" and an investment adviser with Northstar Investment Advisors in Denver. "But you have to be realistic about the short term now and the next decade. We have some big hurdles to get over in order to be on more solid footing financially. Farrell sees a decade of disappointing stock returns as the U.S. government and households get their financial houses in order and reduce their debt loads. He recommends a balanced portfolio of bonds and stocks weighted toward companies that provide reliable dividend income." --Greg Griffin
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As Retirement Income Symposium Ends, Speech on Benchmarking Gets Advisors Buzzing
AdvisorOne.com
If none of the other indexes and benchmarks works for you, create your own. Charlie Farrell did. His Farrell-Northstar Retirement Income (FNRI) Index tracks dividend-producing companies to ensure an adequate stream of income for his clients. He explained its importance and how it works in the closing session Tuesday of the Retirement Income Symposium in Chicago.
--John Sullivan
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Don't Get Complacent With Retirement Funds
SmartMoney Magazine.com
"For too long, individual investors have followed an approach that is essentially very risky - hoping for or anticipating capital gains in their portfolios without any concern for the income return."
--Charles Farrell
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