Beacon Wealthcare

17 Apr 2020 Reawakening the Sleeping Giant

Posted at 11:25h in The Friday Brief by Sam Bass Jr.

“I fear all we have done is awaken a sleeping giant.” Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto when their attack on Pearl Harbor was completed In February, when the US coronavirus outbreak started, our workforce reached a high of 164.6 million workers. Since then, close to 30 million, or...

10 Apr 2020 Should You Refinance Your Mortgage? Here’s Why Emily and I Did.

Posted at 08:02h in The Friday Brief by Ryan Smith, CFP®, RICP®, CTS™, MSFP

In today's brief we're taking a break from discussing the current state of the economy and the stock market, two things out of our control, to turn our attention to something we can control: the interest rate on our mortgage. This isn't to diminish COVID-19...

03 Apr 2020 What the CARES Act Means For You

Posted at 08:00h in The Friday Brief by Jared Korver, CPA, CFP®

Yesterday morning at 8:30am the Labor Department released the absolutely bewildering number of last week's initial jobless claims: 6.6 million. The week before that it was 3.3 million. These numbers are so high (and likely to go much higher) that it's hard to put them...

27 Mar 2020 Where We Are

Posted at 09:25h in The Friday Brief by Geoff Hall, CFP®, RICP®

The stock market has enjoyed three straight days of gains after the Senate passed a massive economic stimulus bill in an effort to cushion the U.S. economy from the impact of the coronavirus outbreak. The stimulus bill will now head to the House, which will...

20 Mar 2020 Physical Distancing, Not Social Distancing

Posted at 12:22h in The Friday Brief by Sam Bass Jr.

The US economy is in peril and this time it's Main Street in trouble, more than Wall Street. The largest economy in the world is shutting down with increasing speed as federal and state officials issue new guidelines and requirements on individuals and businesses to...

13 Mar 2020 We Are in a Bear Market

Posted at 14:00h in The Friday Brief by Ryan Smith, CFP®, RICP®, CTS™, MSFP

Yesterday, we officially entered a bear market when the stock market closed more than 20% from its recent February highs. On average, we experience bear markets every three years, but this one stands out in the speed with which we entered it. In fact, it’s...

10 Mar 2020 Beacon Flash: Are We OK?

Posted at 10:50h in The Friday Brief by Sam Bass Jr.

Times are scary. Virus numbers are growing, countries are closing their entire borders and ordering their citizens to stay in their homes, and uncertainty over how long it will last and how bad it will be for economies prevails. Yesterday's shock to stocks was caused...

06 Mar 2020 Is Now The Right Time to Invest That Cash?

Posted at 07:00h in The Friday Brief by Jared Korver, CPA, CFP®

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...

28 Feb 2020 What Should You Do When the Market Drops?

Posted at 07:00h in The Friday Brief by Geoff Hall, CFP®, RICP®

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...

21 Feb 2020 Maybe You Will Downsize

Posted at 12:07h in The Friday Brief by Sam Bass Jr.

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...

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