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This is the Sensible-Investor honor roll, first unveiled in
2001 (and updated in 2004). It includes many of the
best Web sites for long-term investors:
Budgeting
For most people, the skills of budgeting must precede the skills
of investing. Currently the best
budgeting site is "All
About Budgeting" on About.Com,
which starts with "Guilt-free Budgeting: No Blame, No
Shame."
Asset
allocation
Two Web sites are a place to start for investors who need basic
help in divvying up their assets to best advantage:
401(k) analysis
Financial
Engines,
founded by Nobel Prize-winning economist William Sharpe, used to
analyze your portfolio for free (if you reenter your holdings each
time) by simulating thousands of scenarios for future years’
interest rates, inflation, and returns on stocks and bonds. (It’s
still a valuable site, but it’s no longer free.)
401(k) advocacy
(Seeking replacement for
now-defunct site..)
Finding
a financial planner
PlannerSearch
from the Financial Planning Association accepts searches by city,
ZIP code or partial ZIP code (which defines a wider area than an
individual ZIP code). It lists Certified Financial Planners who
either are taking new clients, or have agreed to help people who are
looking for a financial advisor.
Saving for college
T.
Rowe Price’s college funding pages
are easy to use -- just the thing for a quick overview of
how much college money you'll need to save before a child's freshman
year, and how close you are to having enough. The site's
calculator tells you how much you'd need to set aside each month,
(based on your current savings, expected rate of return, expected
tuition expenses, expected level of financial aid, and
expected rate of return on your investments between now and
then). In case you're unsure how to fill in any of those
blanks, the site offers suggestions.
529 plans
SavingforCollege.com
provides the most comprehensive look at the relatively new
state-sponsored 529 Plans for college savings. Each state’s
program gets a "one-cap" to "five-cap" rating
based on an evaluation of its overall usefulness and flexibility,
but (wisely) not on its past investment performance.
Links
Efficient
Frontier, a Web site focusing on asset allocation, has a good
list of links on its page titled “What
the Investment Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know.”
They range from simple to “arcane beyond belief.” The site needs
to be updated: A few of the links are now defunct.
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