This is a fairly common question and one that people ask me quite often. I recently spoke to a journalist at Kiplinger's Personal Finance for an article that appeared in their May issue.

A reader asked: Since the stock market seems so fragile, and in the long term it seems far from certain that it is safe to entrust with a majority of our retirement and college investments, how else could we diversify and save? I know about the standard ways of diversifying like bonds, real estate, but are there other more creative ways?

One of our readers asked how should people make better saving and spending decisions. This is a great question and one that probably bedevils most folks. Part of the problem is the overwhelming number of advertisements we see each day compared to the number of messages we see urging us to save.

This is a guest post by attorney Kevin Pollock of Pennington, NJ. I would like to thank Kevin for contributing to this blog.

Forces beyond your control of any one person can send your hard-earned retirement up in smoke, as so many saw in the 2008 financial crisis. How can you repair the damage? One couple’s story shows how this can work.

At the recommendation of an existing client, Larry and Lois became clients of Weingarten Associates in early 2005. Larry was 60 years old, and Lois was 59. They had a modest income, a very modest investment portfolio, and like many folks, a fair degree of liabilities including a mortgage, two auto loans, and a small credit card balance.

Last week I was quoted in an article in the Wall Street Journal regarding the use of the Private College 529 savings plan. In the article I described a strategy of segmenting the fixed income portion of college savings and targeting that in the 529 plan. I thought I would use this blog post to go into a bit more detail on this strategy.

Now that the dust has settled a bit over the much-hyped ‘fiscal cliff’ with regards to the tax portion of the issue, I thought it would be helpful to put some thoughts together regarding what this all means for you. I have decided to break this post into categories based on whether or not one is working/retired and level of income.

Question: by saving $400 per month over the next 20 years, earning 7%, one can accumulate $208,370. How much would you have after 40 years?

Would it be double? More than double? How much more?

I thought it would be a good time to pass along timely information about what is, and what is not covered under many property insurance policies. If you clickhere you will find an excellent FAQ article.