Blog

17 Jun 2016

Posted at 13:37h in The Friday Brief by
Are your options wide enough? Have you ever noticed when filming activities like children playing, school plays, or sporting events, how difficult it is to capture the whole story? There's so much going on outside the tight focus of the camera's lens we can't possibly capture it all. Regrettably, the phenomenon also explains a significant part of our lives and how we make decisions and plans. Chip and Dan Heath, in their book Decisive, use teenagers to illustrate how narrow our frames of reference can be for most of our decisions, even the most important ones. They are called single-option decisions. For example, 'should I break up with my boyfriend or not?' is a single option decision.

10 Jun 2016

Posted at 12:04h in The Friday Brief by
A frequent question from both young and old clients is “Will I get my benefits?” You might be surprised to learn that the Social Security Program is not as bad off as you might think. That said, the program will be changing in the next 20 years, so it behooves the thoughtful planner of every age to consider and be ready for possible worst cases, while there's time to replace possible gaps in retirement income.

03 Jun 2016

Posted at 13:03h in The Friday Brief by
The question ‘what-if?’ can be a source of nagging worry, or it can be a proactive tool for improving preparedness and confidence. How we choose to address the question has huge impact on our lifestyle. If we allow ourselves to worry about something, it is said we spend our energy twice; first by worrying today and later when, or if, the thing we worry about actually happens. Corrie ten Boom describes the futility this way; “worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength." Our beloved Mark Twain recognizes how often we do it, “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.”  And Dan Zadra describes its creative waste, “Worry is a misuse of the imagination.”

27 May 2016

Posted at 10:44h in The Friday Brief by
Kids are expensive. They are amazing, and expensive. Expensive enough that all the [somewhat flawed] posts about how, if you start saving 15% of your income when you're 25 you'll have somewhere in the neighborhood of several millions of dollars when you retire--well, all that can kind of fly out the window if you're 30- or 40-something and finding it hard to save because of summer camps, and clothes, and food for a middle-school boy, and sports teams, and college tuition. So then you read all those other posts about how there's such a large retirement savings gap in the US, and then feel deflated and resigned to the fact that you'll be sitting at work for at least fifty more years.

20 May 2016

Posted at 14:06h in The Friday Brief by
Exchange Traded Funds, or ETFs, are the most efficient vehicle yet devised to harness the returns of stock and bond indexes. They capture nearly all of the underlying assets' returns with little or no leaks of taxes, expenses, or under-performance.

06 May 2016

Posted at 14:13h in The Friday Brief by
ProcessAlmost universally, people describe their financial program in terms of affinity and trust for their advisor. It’s only natural that relational ties would play such a central role in one of our most intimate relationships. But are trust and affinity enough? Are these feelings sufficient foundation for the confidence we place in these individuals and their companies for one of the most important roles of our lives?

22 Apr 2016

Posted at 11:42h in The Friday Brief by

What is it about a glitzy gambling city on the Mediterranean, known as Monte Carlo, that could possibly diminish or eliminate the gamble we often associate with our lifetime-investing and planning? A second question sheds light on the first. Where do you think all that...

15 Apr 2016

Posted at 12:31h in The Friday Brief by
How often we've heard, and used, the phrase 'time flies' without giving it much thought. The phrase paints a picture of time flying away from us almost whimsically, like a butterfly, naturally and unburdened. The term actually derives from the Latin, tempis fugit, and originally appeared in Virgil's Georgics - as fugit inreparabile tempus or "it escapes, irretrievable time." Fugit forms the root of our word fugitive, painting a different picture of the flight of time than our butterfly, irretrievably escaping like a thief.