Blog

14 Oct 2016

Posted at 15:03h in The Friday Brief by

Ever notice after a hurricane how some trees remain standing while others have fallen? More often than not it’s the rigid, unyielding trees that have fallen, while the more flexible survive. This fact of nature provides an important lesson for anyone who wants to plan for...

30 Sep 2016

Posted at 09:09h in The Friday Brief by
Among my fondest memories are those late Sunday night drives back to Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, listening to Casey Kasem’s Top 40 Countdown. The music was great, but it was Casey’s back stories of the songs and singers that made the experiences so much richer. It felt like Casey, with his melodic baritone voice, was riding beside me in the car as he told his colorful stories of those early 70's artists and their music. He had a way of penetrating the mystique of those mighty rock stars of the day, making them seem real and approachable. The music took on new meanings when Casey described how it was inspired, how it fit into the history of the genre, and how it impacted millions of fans as he shared their letters.

23 Sep 2016

Posted at 11:33h in The Friday Brief by
[caption id="attachment_8098" align="alignleft" width="550"]earnings-life-cycle Source: “What Do Data on Millions of U.S. Workers Reveal about Life-Cycle Earnings Risk?” by Guvenen, Karahan, Ozkan & Song[/caption] If you've been reading our Brief for any length of time you may have seen the term "lifestyle creep" come up once or twice. It's a fascinating concept with an equally emotive name, and it has all sorts of implications in the practice of long-term financial planning. Lifestyle creep is, more or less, the natural but potentially dangerous rising standard of living that occurs over the course of a lifetime as salaries increase with age (to a point). It's potentially dangerous, because if it creeps too much, then retirement becomes prohibitively expensive to fund at the level of your creeped up lifestyle, since your rate of consuming dollars will by definition have outstripped your rate of saving dollars.

16 Sep 2016

Posted at 11:43h in The Friday Brief by
It’s a straightforward question that usually evokes an immediate, reflexive, and emphatic YES! And when pressed to define what rich means, we likely respond in monetary terms. After all, money is how we describe and measure many of the things we value in our daily lives. But, unless we are careful, the logical progression is to be driven to become richer, or borrow, in order to buy more of the things we value and enjoy.

09 Sep 2016

Posted at 09:28h in The Friday Brief by
One of the most important things to know about your financial relationship is whether you are a customer or a client. The differences may be subtle or obvious, but understanding them and feeling confident in the role you have accepted is vital in determining the quality of your financial future. As a customer, you are pitched to, or persuaded to buy. As a client you are advised. 'K'nowledge and 'R'esponsibility align differently in the two dynamics as illustrated below:

02 Sep 2016

Posted at 11:42h in The Friday Brief by
Did you know that you can buy a stroller (for a baby) made by Aston Martin? Did you know that it would cost you $4,000? I present this, for now, without comment. We'll come back to it momentarily.
Sometimes, when I tell people about the sort of work we do at Beacon, I get the sense that some view our primary mission and value as simply the building of wealth. And of course, that's part of what we do, and an important one at that. No one exactly hires us to make a nice La-Z-Boy shape out of their pile of money and just sit on it for 30 years. After all, the bank will pay them a couple pennies a year to do that. But the concept and reality of inflation would make that course of action pretty detrimental to most folks, so we build wealth for clients the best we know how, harnessing the power of the capital markets as efficiently as possible, and as effectively as human behavior allows.

26 Aug 2016

Posted at 10:30h in The Friday Brief by
The BrickMy wife is a genius, and I will tell you why. Whenever we go out to eat, no matter where we go, she is strictly "no phones." I don't care if we're having a conversation about movies and one of us might be tempted to IMDB an actress, or if out of habit I pull out my phone to tweet something dumb--doesn't matter. NO PHONES AT DINNER.

19 Aug 2016

Posted at 12:19h in The Friday Brief by
The beauty of the Olympics, their deep appeal, is what they reveal about the human spirit, whether in the 'thrill of victory' or 'the agony of defeat.' Under every colorful uniform there's a talented human being with a life-long story of struggles, challenges, hopes, dreams, and fierce commitment to be the best they can be. The medals of gold, silver, and bronze for which they compete are reward indeed, but they fall infinitely short of describing their accomplishments.

12 Aug 2016

Posted at 11:40h in The Friday Brief by
In our continuing effort to provide our clients with the best services and technology available, there's always the challenge of providing the information you want and need without overwhelming you with unnecessary complexity. We believe we've struck the perfect balance with our latest enhancements to our secure online client portal. All the information is still there, we just made it faster and easier to see what you want to see.

05 Aug 2016

Posted at 11:01h in The Friday Brief by
Today's Brief focuses on some powerful financial and budget planning options available to IRA owners. It was inspired, in part, by a recent blog on Health Savings Accounts  by our friend Ryan Smith of Stonegate Financial. IRAs are a powerful tax-deferred saving vehicle owned by many as the result of rollovers from other retirement plans such as 401(k)s, 403(b)s and other pension plans, or they were started outright to begin retirement savings in earnest. While IRAs have been around for decades, their features and options change often with new budgets and IRS rulings.