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Tablet Weekender: Highlights from Week of August 8

Follow Tablet Magazine: Weekend Edition   Zabar's Lobster Salad Under Fire Iconic Jewish-owned food store sells trayf, gets it wrong Community Rallies Behind London Barber After Aaron Biber's barbershop was looted, he received an outpouring of support Met Cancels Art Loan to Russia September exhibit in Russia without art as Chabad dispute intensifies A Very Chutzpadik Justice Yiddish meets the Supreme Court Max Brenner and the Chocolate Boycott Anti-Israel activists target Australian branch of Israeli chocolate chain More from THE SCROLL Unmolested Avrohom Mondrowitz, an accused serial pedophile who fled ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn for Israel, has never faced trial, thanks to extradition complications, a community that may have preferred to keep things quiet, and, critics charge, a D.A. who had political reasons not to pursue the case BY MICHAEL ORBACH Most people have never heard the story of Avrohom Mondrowitz, which has received only a smattering of headlines in the Jewish media. A charismatic and eloquent member of the Ger Hasidic sect of ultra-Orthodox Jews, the 63-year-old claimed to be both a rabbi and a Columbia-trained psychologist. Though he was neither, for years he ran a psychology practice out of his basement, as well as a school for troubled youth. He is also alleged to be one of the worst sexual predators in Brooklyn history. More Mother Russia The new Lifetime reality show Russian Dolls portrays the Russian-American Jews of Brighton Beach as celebrating neither America nor their Judaism but the freedom to be stereotypically Russian More BY Allison Hoffman Semiteseeing Some families go to the Caribbean to enjoy the sun. Ours visited out-of-the-way shuls. I took a recent trip to the Mediterranean island of Corsica and was reminded that Jews travel to see other Jews. More BY SARAH LAZAROVIC Closed Kitchen On Shabbat, the day of rest, cooking is prohibited. But for a chef-turned-rabbinical student, cooking is key to celebration, and food prepared in advance will never taste as good. More BY BENJAMIN RESNICK This email was sent to you by Tablet Magazine. To ensure delivery to your inbox, please add digest@tabletmag.com to your address book. To unsubscribe to this email, reply to this email with "Unsubscribe" in the subject line. Tablet Magazine | 37 West 28th Street, 8th floor | New York, NY 10001 Unsubscribe | Forward to a Friend

Fixed-Income Bear-Market Strategies

One of the biggest risks to your retirement is facing a bear market during the early years after you stop working. If you must sell stocks in a falling market, you risk depleting your nest egg at exactly the moment you need it — leaving you with too little savings to cover your needs for your retirement.

More from Bankrate.com: 

• 7 Investment Strategies That Defy Downturn 

• U.S. Credit Rating slide: What It Means

• Fear of Losing Money Can Set Investors Back
If you withdraw regular amounts from your portfolio to cover your living expenses during a market downdraft, you must sell more shares at a lower price. It's essentially the reverse of dollar-cost averaging, which is what you did during the accumulation phase when you invested money at regular intervals. Dollar-cost averaging involves buying more shares when the market is down or fewer shares when it's up.

"You're liquidating a portion of the portfolio and locking in those negative returns and creating some very bad outcomes," says Stephen Horan, head of private wealth management for the CFA Institute and co-author of "The New Wealth Management."

"We call that sequence-of-return risk," he says.

In such a scenario, it's best to leave stocks alone to recover from the loss and to draw instead on the fixed-income portion of your portfolio. Retirement experts recommend employing one of the top five fixed-income strategies to ensure enough income in a bear market. Following are the pros and cons of each method.

CD ladder

A solid fixed-income strategy begins with calculating your bare-bones expenses and looking at what you will receive from Social Security and any defined-benefit pension. Next, choose a vehicle to ensure enough income each year to make up the difference.

One simple option is to design a CD ladder, such as a combination of one-, three- and five-year CDs, the principal amounts of which will cover your income needs in case stocks fall, says Rick Rodgers, a Certified Financial Planner in Lancaster, Pa. If thestock market is up, you can reinvest funds from the maturing CDs in higher-rate CDs rather than spending the principal.

"You're never going to make money in fixed income; that's not the purpose of it. After taxes and inflation, it's break-even at best," Rodgers says. This is particularly true in these times of low yields.

"When the market is going up, I am going to be overweighted in stocks so I will be selling some stocks and putting it into fixed income," says Rodgers. "It smooths out the ups and downs."

The downside of a CD ladder: low yields, no upside as the market fluctuates and continual effort to reinvest maturing CDs, says Lynn Mayabb, CFP, a senior managing adviser at BKD Wealth Advisors in the Kansas City, Mo., office.

Don't let CD penalties prevent you from withdrawing your cash early, though. Weigh the penalty against the potential gain or need, Mayabb says.

Bond ladder

If you're looking for a little higher yield, consider creating a ladder of bonds with sequential maturities. "Having that money come due on a regular basis eliminates the need to have a lot of money sitting in cash," Rodgers says.

The two key risks to investing in bonds are interest rates rising and credit quality declining. "We address both of those issues by laddering it. Each one of those bonds that makes up the bond ladder is different," he says.

It's a good idea to stick with highly rated bonds and stable companies, and be sure to monitor your picks for any decline in quality.

One danger of a bond ladder is that you can inadvertently shift the asset allocation of your portfolio if you don't manage carefully, Horan says. As the front of the ladder matures, the makeup of your investments shifts. On the plus side, you've guaranteed enough income for the critical first years of retirement, which "set the initial path" for your retirement portfolio, he says.

For an individual investor, a properly diversified bond ladder is likely to be too much work, says Carlo Panaccione, CFP and founder of the Navigation Group in Redwood City, Calif. A good financial planner can set this up for you, but you generally need a minimum of $100,000 to construct a properly diversified bond ladder.

Variants on bond ladders

"Sometimes a bond ladder doesn't always make sense, depending on what the yield curve looks like," Mayabb says. Often, the middle-term maturities tie up your cash longer but fail to reward you with higher rates.

Instead, she favors a barbell approach, in which you divide your money equally between short-term bonds and those with 10- to 15-year maturities, skipping intermediate-term bonds altogether. "Those are the sweeter spots for getting the rates."

Or consider laddering the coupon payments on a bond, rather than the bonds themselves, Horan says. For instance, if you need $50,000 each year, you could buy a five-year bond with a 5 percent coupon and $1 million face value. At the end of the five years, you'd get $1 million back.

It may be more efficient to find a single bond with the desired payment structure, rather than piecing together five different bonds in a laddered structure, he says.

As with a traditional bond ladder, these variants may also suffer from a lack of diversification and need to be monitored for credit quality, says Panaccione.

Floating-rate fund

If all this seems like too much work, consider investing in a floating-rate fund -- also called a bank-loan fund -- which holds a variety of bonds or bank loans with adjustable rates, giving you exposure to a range of credits. "In fixed income, you have to be realistic about how closely you're willing to watch" credit quality, Panaccione says. "If you're not willing to review things on a regular basis, don't buy individual bonds."

Unlike individual bonds, floating-rate funds have no maturity date, so you can lose principal if market fluctuations cause fixed-income investments to drop in value. "I don't like bond funds because they don't guarantee my principal," Rodgers says, while conceding that they can be a good choice in some cases. "For the individual investor who's not using an adviser, they should be using a bond fund."

Focus on the total return of your portfolio, rather than the rise or fall in a particular fund, says Anthony Valeri, CFA, a senior vice president and market strategist at LPL Financial in San Diego. Liquidity is an issue, since these bonds don't trade on an exchange. "If we have a recessionyou'll see price declines" in floating-rate funds, Valeri says.

Annuity

The classic strategy for ensuring a stream of income in retirement, of course, is purchasing an immediate annuity. This insurance product guarantees that you will receive a stream of payments for as long as you live.

The downside: You pay a premium for that guarantee and lose control of your assets forever.

"I've done annuities this year only because of clients demanding them," Panaccione says. The insurance companies are "probably investing in what you would've invested in and charging you a premium. Is that what you need to sleep at night? Then it's probably worth paying the premium."

If you're married, the question of an annuity becomes more complicated. You can buy a joint life and survivor annuity for a smaller payout, or opt for provisions that guarantee some portion of your payment goes to your spouse if you die. But it will cost you, Mayabb says.

By choosing an annuity, you lose the flexibility of changing your mind. "Once you annuitize, those assets are no longer yours," she says. "With a bond ladder, CD ladder or investment account, if something happens and you need $20,000, you go sell something."

Fixed-Income Bear-Market Strategies

One of the biggest risks to your retirement is facing a bear market during the early years after you stop working. If you must sell stocks in a falling market, you risk depleting your nest egg at exactly the moment you need it — leaving you with too little savings to cover your needs for your retirement.

More from Bankrate.com: 

• 7 Investment Strategies That Defy Downturn 

• U.S. Credit Rating slide: What It Means

• Fear of Losing Money Can Set Investors Back
If you withdraw regular amounts from your portfolio to cover your living expenses during a market downdraft, you must sell more shares at a lower price. It's essentially the reverse of dollar-cost averaging, which is what you did during the accumulation phase when you invested money at regular intervals. Dollar-cost averaging involves buying more shares when the market is down or fewer shares when it's up.

"You're liquidating a portion of the portfolio and locking in those negative returns and creating some very bad outcomes," says Stephen Horan, head of private wealth management for the CFA Institute and co-author of "The New Wealth Management."

"We call that sequence-of-return risk," he says.

In such a scenario, it's best to leave stocks alone to recover from the loss and to draw instead on the fixed-income portion of your portfolio. Retirement experts recommend employing one of the top five fixed-income strategies to ensure enough income in a bear market. Following are the pros and cons of each method.

CD ladder

A solid fixed-income strategy begins with calculating your bare-bones expenses and looking at what you will receive from Social Security and any defined-benefit pension. Next, choose a vehicle to ensure enough income each year to make up the difference.

One simple option is to design a CD ladder, such as a combination of one-, three- and five-year CDs, the principal amounts of which will cover your income needs in case stocks fall, says Rick Rodgers, a Certified Financial Planner in Lancaster, Pa. If thestock market is up, you can reinvest funds from the maturing CDs in higher-rate CDs rather than spending the principal.

"You're never going to make money in fixed income; that's not the purpose of it. After taxes and inflation, it's break-even at best," Rodgers says. This is particularly true in these times of low yields.

"When the market is going up, I am going to be overweighted in stocks so I will be selling some stocks and putting it into fixed income," says Rodgers. "It smooths out the ups and downs."

The downside of a CD ladder: low yields, no upside as the market fluctuates and continual effort to reinvest maturing CDs, says Lynn Mayabb, CFP, a senior managing adviser at BKD Wealth Advisors in the Kansas City, Mo., office.

Don't let CD penalties prevent you from withdrawing your cash early, though. Weigh the penalty against the potential gain or need, Mayabb says.

Bond ladder

If you're looking for a little higher yield, consider creating a ladder of bonds with sequential maturities. "Having that money come due on a regular basis eliminates the need to have a lot of money sitting in cash," Rodgers says.

The two key risks to investing in bonds are interest rates rising and credit quality declining. "We address both of those issues by laddering it. Each one of those bonds that makes up the bond ladder is different," he says.

It's a good idea to stick with highly rated bonds and stable companies, and be sure to monitor your picks for any decline in quality.

One danger of a bond ladder is that you can inadvertently shift the asset allocation of your portfolio if you don't manage carefully, Horan says. As the front of the ladder matures, the makeup of your investments shifts. On the plus side, you've guaranteed enough income for the critical first years of retirement, which "set the initial path" for your retirement portfolio, he says.

For an individual investor, a properly diversified bond ladder is likely to be too much work, says Carlo Panaccione, CFP and founder of the Navigation Group in Redwood City, Calif. A good financial planner can set this up for you, but you generally need a minimum of $100,000 to construct a properly diversified bond ladder.

Variants on bond ladders

"Sometimes a bond ladder doesn't always make sense, depending on what the yield curve looks like," Mayabb says. Often, the middle-term maturities tie up your cash longer but fail to reward you with higher rates.

Instead, she favors a barbell approach, in which you divide your money equally between short-term bonds and those with 10- to 15-year maturities, skipping intermediate-term bonds altogether. "Those are the sweeter spots for getting the rates."

Or consider laddering the coupon payments on a bond, rather than the bonds themselves, Horan says. For instance, if you need $50,000 each year, you could buy a five-year bond with a 5 percent coupon and $1 million face value. At the end of the five years, you'd get $1 million back.

It may be more efficient to find a single bond with the desired payment structure, rather than piecing together five different bonds in a laddered structure, he says.

As with a traditional bond ladder, these variants may also suffer from a lack of diversification and need to be monitored for credit quality, says Panaccione.

Floating-rate fund

If all this seems like too much work, consider investing in a floating-rate fund -- also called a bank-loan fund -- which holds a variety of bonds or bank loans with adjustable rates, giving you exposure to a range of credits. "In fixed income, you have to be realistic about how closely you're willing to watch" credit quality, Panaccione says. "If you're not willing to review things on a regular basis, don't buy individual bonds."

Unlike individual bonds, floating-rate funds have no maturity date, so you can lose principal if market fluctuations cause fixed-income investments to drop in value. "I don't like bond funds because they don't guarantee my principal," Rodgers says, while conceding that they can be a good choice in some cases. "For the individual investor who's not using an adviser, they should be using a bond fund."

Focus on the total return of your portfolio, rather than the rise or fall in a particular fund, says Anthony Valeri, CFA, a senior vice president and market strategist at LPL Financial in San Diego. Liquidity is an issue, since these bonds don't trade on an exchange. "If we have a recessionyou'll see price declines" in floating-rate funds, Valeri says.

Annuity

The classic strategy for ensuring a stream of income in retirement, of course, is purchasing an immediate annuity. This insurance product guarantees that you will receive a stream of payments for as long as you live.

The downside: You pay a premium for that guarantee and lose control of your assets forever.

"I've done annuities this year only because of clients demanding them," Panaccione says. The insurance companies are "probably investing in what you would've invested in and charging you a premium. Is that what you need to sleep at night? Then it's probably worth paying the premium."

If you're married, the question of an annuity becomes more complicated. You can buy a joint life and survivor annuity for a smaller payout, or opt for provisions that guarantee some portion of your payment goes to your spouse if you die. But it will cost you, Mayabb says.

By choosing an annuity, you lose the flexibility of changing your mind. "Once you annuitize, those assets are no longer yours," she says. "With a bond ladder, CD ladder or investment account, if something happens and you need $20,000, you go sell something."

What to buy your sweetheart for her happiness | www.ibibz.com

Coming up with the perfect Christmas present for your significant other can be daunting, especially when you've been dating such a short time that you're not quite familiar with the eccentricities of his or her music taste but you still want to impress with an unexpectedly thoughtful and insightful gift that will buy you a few more weeks, at least.

Flowers and chocolates, a la Valentine's Day, are very sweet, but they pretty much prove you don't know your honey at all, unless she's super into exotic buds or something. If you don't happen to be dating a horticulturist, don't go this route. Here's a quick-and-dirty list of our top picks for new couples:

A book -- Unless your lover is an English major, you probably can't go wrong with a classic that has something to do with romance. Go with "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" or "Love in Time of Cholera." It gives you the perfect chance to hint at your deeper, tortured, artistic side, and you get to write a sappy inscription. (Hint: If you haven't read the book, stay away from comparing you and your sweetie to the characters. Fiction authors are not to be trusted with your relationship.)

A soulful hits compilation -- Even if it's not his style, no one is going to balk at a sexy collection of slow-danceable love songs (at least not to your face). It gives the two of you a chance to get close, and if the cheese factor is over the top, y'all can laugh about it together and then put on something good.

Massage oil -- Ok, you might want to be careful with this one, but if you play your cards right, it's a great gift. If you're ready to take things to the next level, it implies that it's time to get physical. If you're not, this present can come off as a little presumptuous, but you can always backtrack and offer up a neck-and-shoulder massage to smooth things over.

No matter what gift you go with, the fact that you're putting some effort into it bodes well for the  future of your union. Don't be afraid to dive in and find something your new love will really like -- just take our advice and stay away from gift cards!

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