If you’re going to invest in the stock market (whether on your own or with a Financial Advisor), it’s essential to know what your investing philosophy is. What is going to guide your decisions on how to invest? The good news is this doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t need to get an MBA or degree in finance to understand (or create) an investment philosophy. What you need to do is make sure that you understand, and agree with,…
Blog
Categories:
7 Questions To Ensure You Are Fully Diversified
We have all heard that we want to make sure our portfolio is diversified, and I’ve definitely said that on this podcast many times before. But what does that mean exactly? Well, that’s the topic of today’s episode. We will go through 7 questions that you can ask to make sure your investment portfolio has all the characteristics of a diversified portfolio. 1. Do you have any market cap deficiencies? Large cap refers to companies worth 10 billion or…
ETF vs Mutual Fund: Which is Better?
Investment decisions are filled with many ongoing, never ending debates: stocks vs bonds; IRA vs Roth IRA; active vs passive, 4% vs 3.3% rule? While it is pretty easy to determine a winner in some of these face-offs, one of the hardest to decipher is exchange-traded fund (ETF) vs mutual fund. Their similarities make them nearly identical to the average investor, while their minute differences might appear as light and day to a seasoned financial planner. Deciding on which one…
5 Tips For Navigating Down Markets
If you’re going to be invested in the stock market for the next 30 years (which you’ll need to do if you want to create a retirement paycheck that will last for life), then you’re going to experience down markets, like what we’re going through so far in 2022.
Tune in to today’s episode as I go through 5 tips/reminders I have on how to navigate down markets.
Active vs. Passive Investing: Which Strategy is Better?
There are a lot of debates in the investment world, but few are as important (in my mind) as the choice to invest actively or passively. Tune in to learn the difference between the two, the pros and cons, as well as which strategy has done better over the long term.
Avoiding A Deadly Investment Sin
Oftentimes we are our own worst enemies. This is especially true in investing. In today’s episode, we are going to detail how one investor cost himself thousands of dollars by engaging in actions that he knew he shouldn’t do.
Tune in to learn what mistakes he made, and how you can avoid costing yourself in the future.
Huge Tax Bills Caused By Poor Asset Location
Last week we talked about the Essentials of Asset Location; basically, what investments we should put in different account types. In today’s episode, we go through a real life example of how very poor asset location ended up costing investors thousands (and in one case hundreds of thousands) on their tax bill.
Tune in to learn from their mistake and not end up with a nasty tax surprise.
The Essentials of Asset Location
Benjamin Franklin was right on the money (pun intended) when he said the only guarantees in life are death and taxes. As frustrating as taxes are, especially after you retire, there is a way to make them lighter using asset location. If you don’t know much about asset location, it is probably because it is so esoteric many financial advisors don’t even bother with it. Instead, they focus on asset allocation. While that is important, a large part of your…
What I Told The Wall Street Journal
I recently completed a “bucket list” item of mine by getting quoted in the print edition of the Wall Street Journal (my favorite paper). Here’s how it happened: A reporter emailed asking “What would you tell people they should avoid doing (financially) in the new year?”
What Risk and Volatility Mean For Your Retirement Income
As a financial planner for over 6 years, one of the things that really frustrates me is poor explanations, as well as implications, of certain financial terms. The confusion it stirs up causes well-meaning investors to make poor decisions that cost them in retirement, and in some cases, cause them to end their retirement and go back to work. One of the most dangerous misunderstandings is that risk is the same thing as volatility. As well as not fully understanding…