Blog

18 Mar 2021 NFTs, SPACs, WSB, and the Problem of Boredom

Posted at 19:20h in The Friday Brief by Jared Korver, CPA, CFP®

There's a lot going on in the world of finance right now: Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are dominating the conversation in the most nonsensical way, Bitcoin is ravenous, SPACs are cashing the blank checks that investors have handed them, awful stocks have seen huge volume and...

11 Mar 2021 A Fool and His Money Are Soon Parted…

Posted at 17:00h in The Friday Brief by Geoff Hall, CFP®, RICP®

...the rest of us wait until income tax time. Ba dum chhh. Seriously though, the IRS says that the average taxpayer spends about 13 hours preparing their tax return each year. It's also been estimated that Americans spend around $27.7 billion every year on tax...

04 Mar 2021 “Watch out for inflation!” I said in 2009. (The futility of predictions.)

Posted at 21:50h in The Friday Brief by Ryan Smith, CFP®, RICP®, CTS™, MSFP

The Great Recession began in October of 2007. Financial institutions failed, families lost their homes, the unemployment rate doubled, and the stock market dropped over 60%. In November of 2008 the Federal Reserve launched "QE 1" and began buying up “toxic” assets, i.e., mortgages at...

26 Feb 2021 Money, Beliefs, and What’s Behind the Korver Curtain?

Posted at 01:27h in The Friday Brief by Jared Korver, CPA, CFP®

In the last two briefs of January, Ryan and Geoff wrote about their personal finances, the way they invest, and how they got to Beacon, and I was going to follow suit until GameStop happened and we felt compelled to pause the regularly scheduled content to address that...

18 Feb 2021 Should You Pay Off Your Mortgage Early?

Posted at 10:58h in The Friday Brief by Geoff Hall, CFP®, RICP®

Let's pretend you had $200,000 to invest for the next 7 years. Would you rather take a guaranteed total return of $14,274 or would you trade that amount for the possibility of earning $101,799? Your answer probably depends on how you feel about risk, the...

11 Feb 2021 The Four Taxes Most Retirees Will Face and What They Mean For Young Professionals

Posted at 19:57h in The Friday Brief by Ryan Smith, CFP®, RICP®, CTS™, MSFP

When it comes to income planning in retirement, it is crucial to understand the four primary taxes you will have to navigate. If you navigate them well, you can keep more of your money and send less to the IRS. The first tax you will face...

04 Feb 2021 GameStop. Ever Heard of It?

Posted at 21:51h in The Friday Brief by Jared Korver, CPA, CFP®

At this point, I don't know how much there is to be gained by wading into the vastly oversaturated territory of GameStop-related (and AMC, Blackberry, et al) material. In doing so I run the risk of dragging into the fray those of you who've made...

28 Jan 2021 Meet Ned Ryerson

Posted at 19:49h in The Friday Brief by Geoff Hall, CFP®, RICP®

There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who instantly knew who Ned Ryerson was the second they saw this email land in their inbox and those who didn't. For those of you in the latter group, Ned Ryerson, aka Needlenose Ned, aka...

21 Jan 2021 How Emily and I Invest Our Money (and How We Got to Beacon)

Posted at 22:26h in The Friday Brief by Ryan Smith, CFP®, RICP®, CTS™, MSFP

Over the past year there's been a spate of "How I invest my money" articles where a prominent financial advisor discusses what he or she actually does with his or her own money. It's a discussion that's long overdue and was started by Josh Brown,...

14 Jan 2021 The Passing of the Torch

Posted at 14:58h in The Friday Brief by Jared Korver, CPA, CFP®

I don't watch It's a Wonderful Life every year, but I did this Christmas, and I noticed something I hadn't before. In a pivotal scene with George in his dad's old office at the Building and Loan, I saw this wall hanging in the background. It reads: "All...