Advisors absolutely do not have a crystal ball, so this post isn’t going to tell you what hot stock to buy or whether Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce will stay together. But there are a handful of themes that will play out over the course of the year, and those are important to understand. In […]
If your house is like mine, you have been swept up in the swirl of added activities surrounding the holidays. Yet there are a few other things I would encourage you to add to your year-end list, even if that list is already as long as your arm. Some are directly financial, and others indirect. […]
Before we welcome the New Year, let’s take a quick look back at 2021. In my view it has been a terrible year. In addition to the ongoing and awful pandemic with all its associated economic difficulty, here in Washington state we had a disastrous roll-out of a badly-designed state long-term care plan (the WA […]
Stock market watchers often talk about whether “this time it’s different”: Does this bull market reflect the same conditions as the last one? Is this downturn different from the one just before the last recession? This time, is it different? Almost always, circumstances might be different, but business cycles are more or less the same. […]
March seems like a long time ago, even though it’s only been six months. Life in Corona Times. Back in March we had just started shutdown here in the United States, the economy ground to a halt with exception of a few essentials, the stock market plummeted. We found comfort in Netflix and a stockpile […]
Like other advisors during the current market turmoil, I am working with clients on portfolio rebalancing, tax loss harvesting, Roth conversions while account balances may be diminished, and shoring up emergency funds. All of these are good things to consider. But are those the ONLY things you might be thinking about with regard to your […]
For about a week now, most of us have been hunkered down in our little COVID caves under a “social isolation” directive. Some of the rest of you are under strict shelter-in-place orders. Here’s the bottom line: We will get through this. And not in a dystopian, I Am Legend kind of way, though if […]
They say March goes in like a lion and out like a lamb. The last week of February was not meek nor fierce, but ugly, and I don’t know what to call it. February begins with hearts and flowers, and ends with a new virus, entire cities under quarantine, and all the stock traders heading […]
Research shows that one of the reasons we have a hard time planning and saving for the future is that we lack a connection to our future selves. We can’t – or won’t – picture ourselves as older. Our youth-obsessed culture draws the picture of an elder you as wrinkled, frail and infirm, rather than […]
Whatever you might think about politics and politicians, decisions made in your state house, the White House and houses of Congress have an impact on you and your personal finances. I’m writing this mini-series to break down the issues that come up during the Presidential debates in the months leading up to the 2020 elections. […]