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This week's Brief comes to us from our good friend and like-minded colleague Russ Thornton, an Atlanta-based financial advisor. Russ is a thought leader in the area of financial planning, and puts out rock-solid content each week over at his website (and via an email which all of us subscribe to). His post this week on moving past rules of thumb and avoiding overly expensive products while still creating retirement income was spot on, so we decided to share it with you all! Take it away, Russ:

Jesus Christ was crucified, died, and was buried on the Friday preceding his resurrection, the original Easter. Why is a day that marks Jesus’ horrible suffering and death on a cross called "good"?

If your family is like ours, you have thousands of digital pictures, videos, and songs on smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, iCloud, DVDs, CD’s, thumb drives, camera cards, backup disks, and maybe even some old floppy disks. Together they have become our modern-day equivalent of those dusty old photo albums on dark closet shelves - with a few significant exceptions.

Have you seen how much movie tickets cost these days? Expensive enough that when I went to the movies last week, I felt very acutely what behavioral economists call the "pain of paying." Ouch. As I handed my credit card to the cashier inside the plastic bubble, I wondered, "How much will these things cost in 24 years?"

At some point, the Federal Reserve will begin the measured process of raising interest rates. No one denies it. The unprecedented condition of near zero rates must be manipulated back to levels deemed 'normal' and soon as the economy continues to improve. Another undeniable fact is that as interest rates rise, bond prices will fall. So doesn't...

If you knew there were things you could do today to improve your lifestyle both now and in the future, why would you wait? In fact, if you could see into the future to learn how much more wealth you might generate with just a few tweaks and adjustments to your current course to get you on an optimal course, would you act? After all, every day you wait has a compounding effect on your wealth improvement in the long run.

Last week during her Congressional testimony before the House, Fed Chair Janet Yellen did a good job of expressing the Central Bank's view that interest rates needed to rise eventually and she did so without jarring the markets. Since the financial crisis of 2008 and 09 the Federal Reserve has pulled out all the stops to keep the US economy moving ahead. The last and most controversial phases of their policy were labeled QE1, 2, and 3, short for Quantitative Easing.

Two years ago, when Michael Jordan turned 50, Wright Thompson wrote a captivating piece on the man from Wilmington. Thompson documents the struggles Jordan has faced as he grows older,Jordan becomes further and further removed from his younger genius. To read it is to be confronted with a man who is flailing wildly for a sense of identity, struggling to understand what purpose he could possibly have now that he can no longer do what he feels he was made to do.

Two and a half years ago we published a Brief titled with the same question. Remarkably, it still attracts readers to this day. The question is both a simple one, often evoking just as simple and quick an answer "NO," while at the same tugging at our logic, values, beliefs, and view of the world.

Whether planning for it years ahead or slamming into the possibility through an unexpected layoff, retirement can be a scary concept for most of us. There are the obvious questions of wealth: specifically, will we have enough to maintain a comfortable lifestyle for our remaining years,...