The Cautious Investor

A fiduciary is obligated to give you advice that is in your best interest. Yeah….I know…..who wants advice that is not in their best interest? Sometimes in our lives we don’t want what’s in our best interest, but when you walk into the office of a Certified Financial Planner® you should not expect anything less…

The book that sits in the glovebox of your car has the obligatory ‘Ongoing Maintenance’ section, highlighting how often you should be changing your oil, flushing your transmission fluid and a slew of other tune-up services.  However, no one probably gave you an ongoing maintenance guide to your financial life once your account balances started…

It may be possible to do more damage to your financial future as a tinkering and impatient investor than by staying the course. The temptation to make tweaks to investments and move money around, especially when markets are particularly volatile, may be hard to resist. In our experience, periods of volatility are exactly when being…

We all bring our own biases from our life experiences to any decision, whether it’s our health, jobs, politics or our money. If your money biases are in the driver’s seat, they may have adverse effects on our wealth in the long run. Here are some examples of common biases: In our experience, individual stock…

Many studies have been published recently about the evolving structure of today’s American family.  Among the most interesting developments, we continue to see an increasing proportion of dual-income and single parent families*.  Though some studies attempt to address the psychological aspects of these family structures, a stark reality facing families today are the financial implications. …

English Economist John Maynard Keynes famously compared financial markets to a strange sort of beauty pageant run by London newspapers in his time. The papers published an array of photos, and readers could enter a contest in which the winner was the reader who guessed which faces would be chosen by the most other participants.…

Many retirees rely on their investments to generate part of the income that funds their lifestyle. Like Social Security, this portfolio income must be sustainable throughout their retirement and gradually increase over time to offset inflation. This is true even though most retirees usually have some flexibility in their yearly wants and needs and retirement…

Increasing education costs have led to young adults and their parents accumulating significant amounts of debt. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, it costs about $100,000 to attend a four-year public university, and nearly $200,000 for a private four-year school.* Even for new parents with the benefits of a longer time horizon, the…

One frequently overlooked tax benefit is the “spousal IRA.” Generally, IRA contributions are only allowed for taxpayers who have compensation (the term “compensation” includes: wages, tips, bonuses, professional fees, commissions, alimony received, and net income from self-employment). Spousal IRAs are the exception to that rule and allow a non-working or low-earning spouse to contribute to…