Newlyweds need to reconcile investment styles

Laura Evans

Updated: Jun 12, 2008, 9:00 AM

Published: May 27, 2008, 10:39 PM

June is one of the most popular months for weddings. This may be due, in part, to June being named for Juno, the Roman goddess of women and marriage. Of course, Juno and her husband, Jupiter, probably had very little trouble with money, but if you are getting married this month, you and your spouse will need to work together on your finances - which means, among other things, that you will have to reconcile your investment styles.

As you set up a household together and establish common long-term financial goals, you will need to make investing a priority. But you and your spouse may well have different attitudes about investing, and some of those differences may be due to your respective genders. A major, long-term study by researchers at the University of California found that women trade stocks less often than men, do more research before making an investment decision, and tend to stick with their investments longer.

The results? Women investors’ portfolios outperformed those of men by 1.4 percent a year, according to the study. So, one might conclude that women’s "buy-and-hold" investing style can pay off in the long run.

While it may be useful for you and your spouse to keep these gender-based tendencies in mind, you will still have to work out some common ground as you create investment strategies to meet your objectives. The key is open and frequent communication. Talk to each other and learn what the other is thinking. Ask yourselves these types of questions: Do we both want to save for a house? If so, when do want to buy it? If we have children, do we want to help them pay for college? Do we want to retire at about the same time? What do each of us want to do during retirement?

Once you’ve started talking about these and other issues, you’ll be able to start creating appropriate investment strategies. And after you begin investing, you may well find that you can discover ways to "complement" each other’s tendencies and preferences - that is, your "aggressive" choices can balance your spouse’s "conservative" ones, or vice versa.

However - and this is an important "however" - both you and your spouse still need to be aware of the potential dangers of staying too much in your "comfort zone." If you are an aggressive investor, willing to take greater risks with your principal in exchange for potentially higher returns, you still could get "burned" by chasing after too many "hot" stocks, many of which will have already cooled by the time you invest, and, in any case, may not be suitable for your needs. On the other hand, if your spouse is a conservative investor and consistently favors "conservative" investments such as bonds and Certificates of Deposit, he or she might not get the growth potential needed to help you achieve your joint goals. Furthermore, fixed-rate investments can incur "inflation risk" - the risk that their returns may not even keep up with the inflation rate.

As newlyweds, it’s important for you and your spouse to learn to adapt to each other’s personal styles in many ways - and it’s just as important to accommodate each other’s investment styles. It can take some work, but it’s well worth the effort.

Record April boosts Savannah's container trade at port

The Port of Savannah moved 356,700 20-foot equivalent container units in April, an increase of 7.1 percent. - photo by Provided

GardenCityTerminal — The Port of Savannah moved 356,700 20-foot equivalent container units in April, an increase of 7.1 percent. - photo by Provided

Bryan County News

Updated: May 23, 2018, 1:59 AM

Published: May 23, 2018, 2:00 AM

The Georgia Ports Authority's busiest April ever pushed its fiscal year-to-date totals to more than 3.4 million 20-foot equivalent container units (TEUs), an increase of 8.8 percent, or 280,000 TEUs, compared to the first 10 months of fiscal 2017.

"We're on track to move more than 300,000 TEUs in every month of the fiscal year, which will be a first for the authority," said GPA Executive Director Griff Lynch. "We're also anticipating this to be the first fiscal year for the Port of Savannah to handle more than 4 million TEUs."

April volumes reached 356,700 20-foot equivalent container units, up 7.1 percent or 23,700 units. As the fastest growing containerport in the nation, the Port of Savannah has achieved a compound annual growth rate of more than 5 percent a year over the past decade.

"As reported in the recent economic impact study by UGA's Terry College of Business, trade through Georgia's deepwater ports translates into jobs, higher incomes and greater productivity," said GPA Board Chairman Jimmy Allgood. "In every region of Georgia, employers rely on the ports of Savannah and Brunswick to help them become more competitive on the global stage."

To strengthen the Port of Savannah's ability to support the state's future economic growth, the GPA Board approved $66 million in terminal upgrades, including $24 million for the purchase of 10 additional rubber-tired gantry cranes.

"The authority is committed to building additional capacity ahead of demand to ensure the Port of Savannah remains a trusted link in the supply chain serving Georgia and the Southeast," Lynch said.

The crane purchase will bring the fleet at Garden City Terminal to 156 RTGs. The new cranes will support three new container rows, which the board approved in March. The additional container rows will increase annual capacity at the Port of Savannah by 150,000 TEUs.

The RTGs will work over stacks that are five containers high and six deep, with a truck lane running alongside the stacks. Capable of running on electricity, the cranes will have a lift capacity of 50 metric tons.

The cranes will arrive in two batches of five in the first and second quarters of calendar year 2019.

Also at Monday's meeting, the GPA Board elected its officers, with Jimmy Allgood as chairman, Will McKnight taking the position of vice chairman and Joel Wooten elected as the next secretary/treasurer.

For more information, visit gaports.com, or contact GPA Senior Director of Corporate Communications Robert Morris at (912) 964-3855 or rmorris@gaports.com.

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