03 May 2023 The 1,000th Friday Brief
This week I had the privilege of writing the 1,000th edition of the Beacon Wealthcare Friday Brief. 1,000 is a pretty big number. That’s a lot of time spent writing and reading about investing, financial planning, taxes, personal finances, and life, for that matter. Jared, Ellen, Ryan, and I personally write each Friday Brief. It takes a lot of effort, and sometimes it’s a little scary hitting the “publish” button, but we all feel fortunate for the opportunity to offer you our thoughts, expertise and, hopefully, wisdom each week. Some of you are brand new to our list but many of you have been reading the Friday Brief for years. Either way, we’re thankful for each of you. To celebrate our 1,000th edition, I thought it might be fun to share a few quick facts about Beacon and the Friday Brief.
Sam Bass founded Beacon Investment Management on March 3rd, 1998. Back then, Beacon’s sole focus was on managing portfolios of individual stocks for clients. Sam wrote the first Friday Brief on June 29th, 2001, a time when the stock market was experiencing a period of significant volatility and uncertainty. The dot-com bubble had just burst, and the economy was in a state of flux. The Federal Reserve had already lowered interest rates several times in an attempt to stimulate the economy, but concerns about a recession were still high. At the same time, investors were grappling with news of corporate accounting scandals, such as Enron and WorldCom, which were eroding investor confidence. Against this backdrop, the stock market was experiencing wild swings, with the Nasdaq falling to a five-year low at one point during the month. Sam started the Brief as a way to stay in close contact with his clients and communicate with them during a period of time that felt unsettling for everyone. In time, the economy improved, and the stock market recovered, but the Friday Brief continued.
Today, at Beacon Wealthcare, our scope of financial advice still includes but also extends far beyond portfolio guidance. And, 22 years later, the Beacon Wealthcare Friday Brief is still going strong. Every Friday morning at 7am it lands in the email inboxes of over 1,000 Beacon clients, friends, and family. Today’s Brief is written by new authors and has a slightly different feel, but its purpose and mission are the same. Our hope is that it is just one of the ways we stay in close contact with you, in good times and in challenging times. We hope it’s one of the ways we fulfill our mission: to provide you with real planning, sensible investing, and meaningful advice so that money can be a blessing.
On behalf of the Beacon team, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you, our clients, friends, and families, for your trust and confidence. And thank you for reading our work each week. We hope that seeing our Friday Brief in your inbox each Friday morning is a reminder that your team of advisors at Beacon is here for the long haul and always just a phone call, email, or office visit away.
Thanks for reading.
Patty, Ellen, Daniel, Jared, Ryan and Geoff
