Good habits can make our everyday experiences more positive and our progress towards long-term goals more tangible. But the most effective habits don't just add to our to-do lists. They create a cascading effect that helps us accomplish things more effectively and...
Market volatility can make anyone nervous, especially in our always-on, 24/7 news cycle. When some of our more experienced team members were first starting out in finance, average investors typically checked in on their accounts once or twice a quarter when their...
Kyle and Jenn purchased a historic home in the northeast. Owning a historic home can be a bit like the opening line of “A Tale of Two Cities”. If you don’t get the reference, you can hit Google after we are done. But Kyle and Jenn realized after living there a couple...
Several weeks ago, the US stock market experienced some turbulence. In fact, in the span of just a few days, the Dow Jones Industrial Average saw a decline of 2,000 points give or take, or about 5%. I was at a party somewhere about that time, and someone who knows...
I was at a dinner party on Saturday night and during a conversation, another guest became aware that I work as a financial advisor. Upon hearing this information he asked, “What company do you work for?” This is a reasonable question since all manner of financial...
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication," proclaimed an Apple Computer marketing brochure back in 1977. In the ensuing decades, Steve Jobs' commitment to this ideal resulted in technology products that were as beautiful as they were easy use, and in Apple becoming...
We have a client whose mother passed away at the beginning of the year. She was a beneficiary of her mother’s IRA, and we helped her move the inherited funds into a beneficiary IRA in her name. Because of her mother’s age, we asked if her mother took her full IRA...
In a 2009 essay that was very influential in business circles, Paul Graham of Y Combinator tried to figure out why workers at different levels of the same organization struggled to stay on the same meeting schedule. His conclusion was that you could break jobs down...
We have a client, Sandra, whose employer was in the process of being purchased by another company. As a function of her position, she was offered the opportunity to buy shares in the new company. She wanted to know if it was a good idea. Some personal finance experts...
Last month we completed a Second Opinion consultation for Gloria. Gloria had accumulated extra money in her checking account and had extra money available each month to put toward additional savings. She asked if she should pay down her mortgage with those funds or...