When I got to the office on Monday, the market had just had an awful seven-day period that looked something like this: The Vanguard Total Market Index was down nearly 13% in about the same amount of time it takes my four year old to find...
There are a lot of scary headlines in the news right now. I’ll forgo the commonly accepted blogging practice of listing a few examples here to avoid unnecessarily exposing you to more of them than you are already reading. Along with the scary news headlines...
Last week, Ryan did a great job in his Brief titled Your Home is Not an Investment (You Probably Won't Downsize), explaining how a home is a lifestyle or 'use' investment, behaving differently than stocks, bonds or other impersonal investments that produce income or can...
Home prices, both nationwide and in the Triangle, have surged over the past few years. The escalation in prices across the country brings back memories of the boom period prior to the financial/housing crisis of 2007-2009. There isn't evidence to suggest that is what's taking...
"One cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening become a lie." Carl Jung said that....
Tax season is officially here. The IRS began accepting paper and electronic tax returns on Monday, January the 27th and the due date for 2019 federal income tax returns is April 15, 2020, for most individual taxpayers. By now you’re probably somewhere between assembling a...
Stock market returns last year as measured by the S&P 500 were a remarkable 31.5%. Gains this large are tempting. But return percentages can be misleading for several important reasons: Returns don't necessarily correlate with improving wealth, returns come at a cost, and whole portfolio...
I feel comfortable saying most people are aware that death or disability will affect their finances or the finances of the loved ones they leave behind. They may underestimate the impact or fail to take the necessary steps to mitigate these threats, but, at the...
Look, first off, I don't know. And secondly, if you've been around us very long at Beacon you know that we are not stock pickers and will never be stock pickers, for reasons that we have laid out many, many times. The title of this...
Each year I’m given the privilege of speaking with several groups of recent college grads about personal finance. It’s no secret that even after 4 years of high school and several years of college (and perhaps beyond) most people enter the complex world of personal...
