RiverDog wrote:You mean semi annual. Biannual would be once every two years.
There's not a week that goes by when I don't receive some sort of summary on one or more of my investments in publicly held corporations. Some are bound books as thick as a small city's telephone book. Some even include CD's. I've never bothered to read any of it and it generally goes straight into the garbage can. IMO they'd be better off disclosing less information and put it on a single sheet of paper than they would this huge flood of information that they currently give us. It's a big waste of money to produce those reports. Heck, most of the time, I don't even realize that I have money in the corporation as all my investments are done by my financial counselor and he'll select multiple mutual funds on my behalf.
How people manage their money is one of my biggest pet peeves from my former employment. We had a very good 401K program with a lot of options and I would have scores of people asking me for help, but my plan was different than our hourly workers so I didn't have the same familiarity with it and I plain felt uncomfortable giving people financial advice. I literally begged any manager that would listen to put on some voluntary classes hosted by a financial expert, but to no avail. They never did.
Nevertheless, anyone can easily get free financial advice, at least on a one time basis, from scores of financial institutions if they'll just ask. They're all more than willing to get an opportunity to manage your money for you. I'm always getting these invitations to seminars that offer a free dinner at a 5 star restaurant. Same goes with Social Security and Medicare. There's lots and lots of free workshops advertised in the newspapers, on Facebook, and through the mail, although you'll have to endure a sales pitch as they're usually put on by a private investment company like Merrill Lynch or Edward Jones. One of our local hospitals puts on a twice a month free Medicare clinic that my wife and I attended. AARP has a lot of resources that one can utilize. Here locally, there's even an advocacy group that will help you select a Medicare supplement plan, even fills out your application and mails it in for you.
The problem isn't access to information. The problem is that too many people are scared, naïve, or just plain too lazy to educate themselves.
I agree about the free financial education, but to use that education Information is vital. I know how to read a financial report and bypass unimportant information that is nothing more than disclosures meant to act as legal protections. Absent financial reports you would be shooting in the dark and leaving all your decisions to money managers that may not have your best interests in mind as they lazily push investing vehicles with compromised stocks or investments. Learning how to bypass the useless sections of a financial report is part of financial education. Corporate reporting is vital to the investor, big or small.
At least you're not complaining about the 1% or Wall Street like so many others that are bored by all the activities necessary to investing like listening to earnings conference calls, reading earnings reports, and keeping up on the financial news that at least applies to the companies you invest in and macroeconomic conditions. If you want to make money using a financial education, then you need information. It is essential.
As with all things you can also learn simpler means of money management. As long as you're saving, have a quality skill, plan to purchase a piece of property at a reasonable price and pay it off, don't overuse credit, and invest in some low risk investment like an index fund or bonds that grows at at steady rate above inflation, you would likely be well-prepared for retirement. Maybe you won't be rich, but well off enough for a retired person receiving social security and medicare.
That being said I reiterate that information is vital to investment. You absolutely have to have it to make sound investment decisions be it property, stocks, bonds, or the like. You may throw out those big corporate reports they send you that detail the financials of your investments, but I read them carefully, usually online. You learn very quickly to sift the unimportant parts and get to the important parts of the report. There is a lot of fluff in investment reports because when dealing with money they have a lot of legal protections they must declare that take up pages that you bypass to get to the nuts and bolts. They do save paper when investors sign up to have financial reports online. Lots of ways to get the information without paper.
I do hope even if they don't require quarterly reporting and move to semiannual, they still require the release of important information that concerns the investment good or bad. That information should not be for institutional or big money investors only.
