Elizabeth’s note: The numbers in this story are terrifying for a mother with two kids to put through school. It’s a good thing their favorite mac ‘n’ cheese meal is inexpensive.

Brooke’s note: I’ve been hearing for years from advisors that they suspected that some 529 plans were a boondoggle. This article contains good information to begin evaluating that concern. It’s interesting to see the drastic action that Fidelity, T. Rowe Price and Vanguard are taking to make 529 plans more economical.

In a sign of the economy’s tight squeeze on parents trying to ...

Brooke’s Note: A bond trader friend of mine is fond of saying: Buy bonds, wear diamonds. This may be true but it presumes that you buy them intelligently [so you’ll still be wearing a shirt]. Surprisingly little is written on bond investments relative to the position that this asset class holds in people’s portfolios. The author’s of this article, Stephen Huxley and Brent Burns, offer insight on the topic and will also elaborate on the topic in an upcoming webinar. To register, you can click here.

In these interesting times in the markets, low interest rates ...

RIABiz is happy to welcome its first-ever college intern, Matt Robinson, for the fall semester. His first story for RIABiz appears on this page today.

Matt is a student at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He grew up in Rhode Island and graduated with a bachelors in philosophy and English from Sacred Heart University in 2006. Before graduate school, he lived abroad in Prague, where he taught English at banks. He learned about Czech laws, from caps on credit card interest rates to guaranteed vacations. That experience sparked his interest in business and economics.

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Elizabeth’s note: I’d heard of Rockville-based XML even before giving the partners there a call to set up an interview. Its success has served as an example to several firms in this area. When I was writing the piece, I decided to lead with a war story about the firm’s breakaway in the bygone, pre-protocol era. Attorney Brian Hamburger says that the breakaways at that time typically got hit with papers anytime from the evening of the departure to early the next week. “It was a crazy time that led to a lot of sleepless nights for ...

Brooke’s EXTRA: When I first wrote this article, I couldn’t reach the venture capitalist behind ByAllAccounts’s latest round of financing because he was at meetings in NYC. But this afternoon [Sept. 9], we were able to connect as he drove from the Amtrak station in Boston to his home outside the city. What he had to say was insightful enough to make it worth revisiting the story and adding some quotes. Here is the reworked version of the article with changes in bold.

On a hyper-growth track for the third year in a row, ByAllAccounts has attracted ...

Brooke’s Note: As I saw Envestnet gaining IPO momentum over the spring and into summer, I tried to write about the factors that might have caught the imagination of Wall Street in 10 reasons why the Envestnet IPO filing is for real But I had a feeling that the really sizzling reasons – the kind that help investors connect the dots and buy on an IPO’s opening — hadn’t been captured in what I had to say. Now I understand better what those reasons are. The Morgan Stanley report covered in this RIABiz story does the job of rolling ...

One of the smallest RIA custodians has made its third big-league move in a little over a year by signing a deal with Envestnet Inc.

Shareholders Service Group will now be able to offer Envestnet’s platform to its 700 RIAs, La Jolla, Calif.-based SSG announced yesterday. The platform, which offers investment management and client management outsourcing, may help SSG attract more advisors or help those already with the custodian to grow their AUM faster.

Envestnet, meanwhile, grows its potential market of RIAs by 700. It also taps into SSG’s fast growth — the small custodian, which declines to ...