Blog

26 Jun 2015 Is It Better to Rent or Buy Your Home?

Posted at 11:01h in The Friday Brief by Jared Korver, CPA, CFP®

Chances are, if you live in the Triangle area, you or someone you know has recently bought or sold or is shopping for a home and experienced how fast the market is moving here. People are moving to the area in droves, interest rates are...

19 Jun 2015 Grace for Greece Slipping Away

Posted at 14:32h in The Friday Brief by Sam Bass Jr.

Practically speaking, the odds of Greece meeting its bailout obligations to the European Union and its credit demands of the IMF and other creditors by June 30th are close to nil. Odds are just as small that enough patience exists on the part of EU...

12 Jun 2015 Control or Resilience

Posted at 10:21h in The Friday Brief by Sam Bass Jr.

We are big fans of Seth Godin at Beacon. As a marketing genius, his focus is centered in that industry, but many of his writings are much more broadly applicable. Not long ago a friend and client asked us to review an indexed life insurance product that his buddy, we'll call him Bob, was near zealous over. Bob was so enamored with the promises of the insurance policy that he was even considering changing careers to sell it. A change of some kind was forced on him because he had just been laid off at 50 from a high-level executive position with a major pharmaceutical firm.

05 Jun 2015 Don’t Let Temporary Crosswinds Blow You Off Course

Posted at 15:04h in The Friday Brief by Sam Bass Jr.

It’s been a choppy week for Treasurys and stocks with Greece once again roiling European Union stability and mixed signals about the strength of the US economy. The question every investor is asking is when the Federal Reserve will begin raising interest rates? And advice is becoming louder and more widespread.

29 May 2015 Beware of the “Guarantee”

Posted at 08:29h in The Friday Brief by Sam Bass Jr.

Since the Financial Crisis of 2008 and 2009, insurance agents, stock brokers, and bank representatives have been in high gear selling life insurance products to investors clamoring for anything that ensures them against the drubbing they received in the markets. They hear of enticing promises like "Guaranteed Income," "Guaranteed Principal," and "All the market's upside with none of its downside" and they find them hard if not impossible to resist. Are annuities and indexed life products as good as their promoters claim they are?

22 May 2015 Financial Inertia

Posted at 16:33h in The Friday Brief by Sam Bass Jr.

One of the most powerful forces in the universe is that of inertia. It is defined as a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by an...

15 May 2015 What Dangers Lie Ahead?

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

Stephen Covey begins his famous book 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People' with this line: 'Interdependence is a higher value than independence.'

08 May 2015 Risk: The Most Important and Most Misunderstood Element of Investing

Posted at 11:59h in The Friday Brief by Sam Bass Jr.

The most important concept in investing and yet, the most misunderstood, is that of risk. The mere mention of the word causes a visceral reaction in our bodies that most find unpleasant while a few find it strangely stimulating. A proper understanding of investment risk and the levels we...

01 May 2015 Are You Investing to Survive or to Thrive?

Posted at 13:39h in The Friday Brief by Sam Bass Jr.

Who doesn't like the word guarantee? It gives us a comforting feeling when we exchange our money for a product or service to know that we will get our money back if our expectations are not met. But when it comes to most guaranteed financial products, like CD’s, bond funds, and annuities, owners unfortunately don't realize their expectations have not been met until it’s too late because there's another guarantee these products fail to address - inflation. If inflation continues at just 2% for the next ten years, $100 worth of groceries today will cost $122 ten years from now.

24 Apr 2015 Take Me Out To The Ballgame

Posted at 12:40h in The Friday Brief by Jared Korver, CPA, CFP®

[caption id="attachment_7006" align="alignnone" width="1024"]

Turner Field. Atlanta, GA. -- https://www.flickr.com/photos/davidberkowitz/[/caption] I talked to my friend Brian on the phone the other day, and among other things we discussed his desire to go see the Atlanta Braves play at Turner Field this summer. Brian is a diehard Braves fan, but has never been able to get down to Atlanta to see them play, and would love to do so before they tear that stadium down and build one way out in Cobb County (suburb of Atlanta).