Easter shopping tip: When buying your daughter that frilly new Easter dress, try to visualize how it’ll look with chocolate and grass stains all over it. ~ Melanie White Easter is the only time of the year when it’s perfectly safe to put all your eggs in one basket. ~ Unknown My mom used to…
In a recent article by ABC7Chicago.com, Spring, Texas retiree Terry Robison details his plans to spend his retirement living at the local Holiday Inn. He cites regular cleaning, someone to check up on him (in the form of the regular cleaners), free maintenance, and amenities included in the daily room rate as reasons for his decision.…
I recently watched a training video from Lucila Williams, principal of The Intentional Advisor, a coaching service for financial advisers. In it, she shows a system for identifying your ideal client. To me, this seems at least as important as describing yourself in the old elevator speech. The Elevator Speech If you are a…
Here’s a shocking bit of news: College is way more expensive now than it was when I was an eager new CSU Ram in 1990. There aren’t many families that will get out of college without some sort of loans to pay back. But how much is reasonable? Private student loans are unlike any…
I’ve had occasion to think lately about how heartless my investment advice must sound. I glibly assure you that stock market dips are temporary, and things will be just fine in the long run, just suck it up and tough it out, already. Sorry about that. What I haven’t done is acknowledge that volatile…
I know, you’d much rather read about a favorite recipe than see boring investment charts. Tracking my Facebook shares and newsletter clicks bear this theory out. But, every once in a while, to get to the dessert, you must eat your vegetables. Consider today’s blog a vegetable. I don’t remember where I got…
People often wonder where the best place is to keep their emergency fund. It’s frustrating to sock 3 months’ worth of expenses into a low-interest savings account. However, a stock or bond investment can lose money at any time. When your emergency happens, your fund could be lower than last week or last month. …
In previous blogs, I’ve lamented the fact that financial advisers loooove to use expressions with more syllables than strictly necessary. Look, I just did it in the previous sentence. Six words with more than 3 syllables. This is because we want to appear smarter than we are. Market Correlation One of those too-long expressions…
There is so much talk about the Fed raising interest rates. Expectations are that the Federal Reserve will raise the cost of borrowing between banks 2 times in 2019. Other than incoherent tweets originating from our nation’s capital, what are you supposed to make of this news? Let me break it down in simple language…
I’ll put it out there in the universe – I’d like to be a Brand-with-a-capital-B someday. Books, TV shows, t-shirts, memes, all featuring some witty quip of mine and making me money while I sleep. Like Suze Orman, only less irritating. That’s not even how you spell Suzie. Marie Kondo has it down. She…
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