VOL. TMN-6 | NO. 23 | Saturday, June 1, 2013

Financial advisers rethink the 60/40 investment model
It’s past time to rethink the old 60/40 notion of investing, say a wide range of Memphis financial professionals, as the ground continues to shift beneath the feet of investors in this low-yield world of investing dominated by unprecedented action from the Federal Reserve.
A few Memphis-area community banks are starting to add investment services to their mix of offerings.
The hiring of Phil Buchanan by Argent Financial Group as the company’s new president underscores what’s been a continual growth story at Argent.
Emily Walker, vice president and trust officer with Commercial Bank & Trust Co., has worked in Trust for the past 16 years and feels blessed to have been a part of so many lives.
Shoemaker Financial has risen from the ashes since its building burned in 2010. The firm has enjoyed 30 percent growth each year since then, and its client list has swelled to more than 15,000.
Invest and hold has become invest and monitor in the world of personal finance, which means the days of forgetting about where a substantial part of your money is parked is probably over.
THE MEMPHIS NEWS ALMANAC
2012: The Overton Bark dog park opens in Overton Park between Rainbow Lake and the park’s golf course. The 1.3-acre area whose construction was funded by Hollywood Feed is divided into two sections – one for smaller dogs and the other for large dogs.

Whitehaven stakeholders hopeful Kroger investment only beginning
When leaders of the Delta Division of Kroger kicked off the $5 million renovation of the chain’s Whitehaven supermarket, some of the area’s community and business leaders were looking beyond the store’s parking lot.
Some people get up early to look at the sports pages or comics in the local newspaper, but Tim Bolding wakes up early to look at foreclosure notices.
Ever since Bon Ton Café reopened Downtown, the eatery has been rolling out incremental improvements.
The city of Memphis has raised the matching funds to build the “Main to Main Connector” thanks to local donations, the latest of which is $50,000 from Memphis-based Boyle Investment Co.
After setting policies on school uniforms and labor unions, next up for the countywide school board is a single policy for the two combined school systems on student access to cell phones.

Weight-loss procedures on rise to fight obesity epidemic
When Ashley Hopper crawled into bed each night she would pray it wasn’t the night she was going to have a heart attack in her sleep.
The elected officials on all sides of the schools merger lost one item on their plates last week as the school year ended for Memphis City Schools and Shelby County Schools students and parents.
The negotiations to reopen one of Beale Street’s busiest and most profitable nightspots were about not missing one of the busiest Downtown weekends of the year and how to handle the allegation that some employees of Club 152 either sold drugs or were complicit in drug sales in the club.
The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce has announced the United States Department of Labor awarded the state $697,963 for exceeding all performance goals that were set for the state’s workforce development and education activities.

Southern Airways Express goes from dream to reality with first flight
North Mississippi attorney Stan Little’s private plane had become so popular with friends they joked that he should start his own regional airline.
One of the most vocal critics of the countywide school board’s $1.18 billion budget proposal says the schools merger is imposing a failed education formula on legacy Shelby County Schools.
A Senate panel on Wednesday, May 22, approved a bill that would tighten oversight of specialized compounding pharmacies and bring them under Food and Drug Administration control.
From the moment a video camera captured Duncan-Williams Inc.’s president stepping off the elevator last year belting out “Saturday in the Park,” it was clear the investment firm’s promotional videos for the Live at the Garden concert series would be out of the box.
Maybe the fans standing and cheering moments before the Grizzlies were swept out of the Western Conference Finals were simply saying thank you for a great season, a franchise-best 56-win season and the team’s deepest playoff run in history.
Every time Tony Parker made another impossible shot, he was easy to hate. Every time Tim Duncan turned back the clock by sprinting down the court, he was easy to hate. Every time coach Gregg Popovich made an adjustment and put the Grizzlies’ offense deeper into the mud, he was easy to hate.
MEMPHIS STANDOUT
Born and raised in Fayetteville, N.C., Douglas Scarboro has chosen to make Memphis his home. As the executive director of the Office of Talent and Human Capital for the City of Memphis, his job is to help others realize the opportunities and recognize the same assets that he has found here.
MEMPHIS LAW TALK
Robert Tom, commercial and business litigation attorney for Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz PC, has been elected shareholder of the law firm.
MEMPHIS NEWSMAKERS
Gwyn Fisher has been named the greater Memphis regional director of economic and community development by the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. In her new role, Fisher will work with companies, municipalities and stakeholders in Shelby, Fayette, Tipton and Lauderdale counties to create jobs, attract new businesses and expand existing businesses.
4569 Summer Ave. Memphis, TN 38122
LOCAL COLUMNISTS
WHAT THESE GUYS DO ISN’T PROFESSIONAL. IT’S IMPOSSIBLE. I told this story last year and, like describing an exceptional shot much less a whole round of golf, it’s worth telling again. After all, this was a round of a whole lifetime, and lifetimes last a whole lot longer because of it.
Part two of three-part series on transformational giving Why does one nonprofit receive $1,000 from a donor when another receives $1 million? What is the difference between fundraising and the process of securing transformational gifts? To get some answers we talked with Barbara Pierce, founder of Transformative Giving.
In an otherwise exceptionally dull trading week, markets worldwide reacted violently last Wednesday to Ben Bernanke’s mixed congressional testimony and the Fed meeting minutes released later in the day. Why so skittish?
(Continuing my apologies to Schmick, Wheelan, Rowling, Lamott, Wallace, Sedaris, and others, I offer Part 2 of the graduation speech I’ve never given. Part 1 ended On Election Day, 1996. Executing a plan to visit 25 polling places, I got caught in traffic, went down a road I’d no intention of traveling, and wound up at a polling place I’d not intended of visiting. It was 5:30 p.m., and the volunteers at this place expected only a dozen or so voters in the next two hours.)
People buy from those they like and trust, often regardless of the strength of the sales pitch or quality of the products and services. That’s reality. The challenge for sales professionals is to master the art of instant rapport with someone you may be meeting for the very first time versus leaving it to chance.
While many tools and technologies of marketing change at the speed of innovation, some fundamental elements retain their value. A few essential elements increase in value as more clutter finds new ways to compete for our increasingly valuable attention. Nothing has as much perennial value as an effective tagline.
I’m going to get all literary on you today and make the statement that business meetings remind me of the classic opening sentence of Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities.” “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
Ray’s Take While you’re allowed to withdraw funds from your tax-qualified plans as early as age 59 1/2, many people delay making withdrawals until they have to, at age 70 1/2. There certainly can be advantages to deferring that tax liability those extra years if there are other assets available for retirement. However, if you fail to make required minimum withdrawals (RMDs) then, the penalties are substantial – a whopping 50 percent tax above the regular income tax.