You may outlive your wife; most men don’t, but 20% do. This makes them widowers. No one writes about them because (80%) of married women outlive their husbands (do unmarried women outlive unmarried men or widowers?). Since 80% is greater than 20%, the women get the attention because they live about 14 years longer than their husbands (or all men generally, according to the U.S. Census Bureau). If you married a younger woman, you might hope she marries a richer man after you die. If she does not remarry, you better plan for her future.

We all have rules for living. We get them from our parents and the neighborhood where we live. If Dad was good to Mom, most likely you will do the same. Your Mom (and mine) did not know much about financial planning and investments. Today, couples are more open, but not more prepared. Husbands have an inherent responsibility to care for their wives today and evey tomorrow.

The ethic of taking care of your wife comes from your worldview and personal rules of behavior. Rules of behavior or motivation come from your beliefs; what you consider important. God, family, and work often set the priorites. No matter how you arrange the list, family first is more than a motto.

The Bible outlines the impact of family love and affection:
• Widows without family “are really in need”, and deserve support from their church community
• Widows with family (children and grandchildren) should receive care from their family
• Children (and grandchildren) caring for their Mom “put their religion into practice”
• Children (and grandchildren) ignoring their Mom’s needs have “…denied the faith” and they are “…worse than an unbeliever.” (See I Timothy 5:8)

What makes this information relevant? Not every husband nor every household can accumulate and sustain the wealth needed to provide for a mother. A wife with children is a mother (what a friend of mine calls “a keen observation of the obvious”). Many husbands and Dads work to support their household; sometimes their real estate, retirement plans, and personal savings cannot endure the depreciating affects of inflation and time. Sometimes circumstances thwart every dream and commitment. “xxit happens”

Although I don’t have a statistic, my guess is that many women sit alone in cold flats with empty thoughts, dry oil tanks, and little food. Houses of faith should search their community to provide help when needed. Houses of faith should provide help for widows without children or assets.

A recent study by Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research suggests husbands and families overlook the needs of widowhood. According to the research, almost three-in-10 single women live in poverty or on the edge of poverty. Living “without a husband” (or her husband) worsens a women’s living conditions.

About 800,000 women become widows yearly. The research report informs us that there are 11.3 million widows in the United States (2.6 million widowers). Nearly 2.5 million live impoverished lives.

Children could blame their Dad for poor planning. Dad could live his last years embarassed by a seeming lifetime of financial failure. The reasons for anyone’s poverty are irrelevant. No one’s home must be shared with rodents, nor filled with chilly air. No one should sup alone, nor should they scour barren cabinets for a meal.

No woman, with or without children, should live in poverty. If she does not have children, then her neighbors should “love her as they do themselves.”

Some school endowments willingly take risks others avoid, and the results prove that sticking your neck out “pays-off”, according to the Business section of the (click here to read the article) Boston Globe (November 2, 2007) Globe staff write Robert Weisman lists “buyout, venture capital, and hedge funds” as the dominant alternative asset classes. School endowments allocating to these broader asset classes out-performed other school endowments and corporate pension plans consistently.

Better endowment performance comes from the larger and better ivy league schools (such as Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Princeton). Better schools have larger endowments. Elite schools hire smarter managers, smarter staffs, and wiser directors. Smarter endowment fund managers recognize and balance risk/reward strategies that include alternative asset classes.

Identifying opportunity early gave leading endowment funds a front-row seat in the alternative asset class arena. Others wanting similar results mimic, but smaller players lack the confluence of resources that gain the recognition accrued by the elite colleges, or they lack the courage, or they’re sitting too far from the front row in the arena of alternative asset classes.

Then there’s the other maddening unpredictability of any asset classes results going forward. “…it’s not clear the investment philosophy these guys had will be as well-suited,” Lerner said, “to the period going forward.”

Identifying a wide range of asset classes as an individual takes work. Typical asset allocation models exclude alternative asset classes such as water, alternative energy, and lumber. For large endowments, risk is not a bad word.

Just the same, don’t rush to find your seat in the investment alternative arena. Dr Lerner said, “To conclude that more investments in alternatives will lead to higher returns is simplistic…There are a considerable number of omitted variables that we are not measuring here, which may be impacting the results.”

Alexander Pope wrote, “Fools rush in where angels dare to tread.” (No; Jonny Mercer did not come up with that phrase; Pope did when writing (“An Essay on Criticism”).

Asset allocation prevents foolish acts.