Plain-language articles on investing, taxes, retirement income, market context, and planning updates from our CFP® team.
If you are going to invest in the stock market for any meaningful amount of time, you will at some point be faced with an angry “bear” market. A “bear market” is a sustained period of time when security prices are falling. Traditionally, a 20% fall in market prices is considered a bear market, but […]
If you’ve browsed the web recently and have a habit of reading up on finance, there’s a good chance you’ve seen an ad for an intriguing new investment: solar bonds. These ads, from energy provider SolarCity, certainly succeed in making their product sound attractive. While it may seem like just another pop-up ad, the delivery […]
In the latest edition of The Plan, Jamie mentioned the 4% rule of thumb for withdrawal rates. To delve a bit deeper, the 4% rule hails from the 1994 Trinity Study which looked at past returns for a “moderate” investment portfolio. This study determined that an initial withdrawal rate of 4%, annually adjusted for inflation, […]
Most insurance agents are happy to reassure you they’re selling you a great policy, but there’s no getting around the conflict of interest. Confessions Of A Former Agent At the beginning of my career as a financial planner, I made my living selling various investment and insurance products, which gave me personal experience regarding the […]
No financial planner can know what the future will bring, and none should pretend to. Markets, stock prices and ultimately return are all beyond anyone’s calculation or control. Any plan that reacts to market events is a plan that is doomed to fail, so a successful investor must appreciate that markets are unpredictable and accept […]
Dimensional Fund Advisors’ Weston Wellington offers useful perspective regarding the financial crisis in Greece. Click the link below to view the video. DFA on the crisis in Greece
Many years ago when I was just beginning my budding career, an older and wiser financial advisor told me that “the only rule of thumb is that there is no rule of thumb”. My experience has taught me to believe it. Take savings rates for instance. Many have heard the rule of thumb: “Save 10% of […]
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Interesting article from Bloomberg “The Hugely Profitable, Wholly Legal Way to Game the Stock Market” Our clients know this as the Reconstitution Effect and that we have been using patient strategies to avoid/prosper from this effect for over a decade!
These days, socially responsible investing, or SRI for short, is a popular practice among investors who consider themselves socially conscious, and who want to believe their money can do more than just increase the value of their own portfolio. And in theory, this seems like quite the win-win: after all, who wouldn’t want to see […]
