In the past, Beacon has had fun hosting a movie night at The Rialto Theater, conveniently located across the street from the Beacon house. Recently we have watched Back to the Future and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. After a brief hiatus due to theater renovations,...
You may remember that back in June we sent out the Beacon Summer Reading list. It's something we've done the past few years and this summer my selection was "The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power and Deception on the Eve of World War...
The legendary New York fashion photographer Bill Cunningham once said "Money is the cheapest thing. Liberty is the most expensive." A man of tremendous simplicity and fierce independence, this was not just a mantra for him, but something of a lifelong philosophy borne out by...
Even if you didn’t attend an Ivy League school, you can still learn from their investment mistakes. Jason Zweig’s recent Intelligent Investor column highlights how several elite universities were caught with too many illiquid assets when they needed cash and relearned a lesson they should...
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how much good decisions matter—in every part of life, but especially when it comes to personal finance. Why does it matter so much? For one, good decisions compound. Each one creates a stronger foundation for the next, shaping the opportunities we encounter...
One of the most important pieces of a long-term financial plan, and often the hardest to predict, is what someone's spending will look like in retirement. It seems relatively simple - just take what you are spending now and inflate it over time. Collective experience...
The S&P 500 has covered a lot of ground this year. After rising more than 4.5% through the first seven weeks, it stalled out as investors braced themselves for President Trump's early-April tariff announcement. As we all remember, the tariffs were significantly higher than expected,...
Just over ten years ago, Seth Godin wrote the following: It's tempting to invest time, money and emotion into gaining control over the future. Security guards, written policies, reinforced concrete—there are countless ways we can enforce our control over nature, random events and fellow humans. The problem is...
We recently had an internal team vote about whether Seinfeld or Schitt’s Creek did a better job humorously highlighting a common misunderstanding around how tax write-offs work (Seinfeld won). In both shows, characters very wrongly assume that a tax write off just means you spend...
One of the lessons I’ve learned—and keep learning—as a financial advisor is the importance of asking good questions. But in my early days, I asked a lot of mediocre ones. High on the list was this classic: “When do you want to retire?” I asked it...
