Retirement News : Seniors : Invest for retirement? Sure, but where?

Invest for retirement? Sure, but where?

Date Added: 11-10-2005

Baby boomers will start investing for retirement.  But will the cupboard be bare?  Read the excerpt below.

Seattle Post Intelligencer - USA

Saturday, October 8, 2005

By CHET CURRIER
BLOOMBERG NEWS

A hungry multitude of investors is about to open the doors to a cupboard that is almost bare.

The throng we speak of is the U.S. baby-boom generation, born after World War II. Its 75 million members will soon start hitting age 60, reaching the time of life when savers' and investors' minds start turning seriously to income.

The meager store that awaits them is the menu of current interest- and dividend- paying offerings in bonds, stocks and money-market securities.

"We're all growing older," says Margo Cook, who oversees $5.7 billion in bonds and other fixed-income investments at Bank of New York Co. "There's just not a lot to buy."

Bonds? Well, somebody who might have put together a retirement plan 10 or 15 years ago figuring on typical yields of about 8 percent now finds Treasury bonds and notes paying 4.3 percent to 4.6 percent.

After 15 months of increases in short-term interest rates by the Federal Reserve, the average seven-day yield of money market mutual funds has just recently edged up to 3.1 percent. Stock dividend yields average a measly 2 percent, as measured by the latest Bloomberg data for the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

Read the entire article:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/money/243846_mutu08.html