Last week, I wrote an article discussing Why Vanguard Sucks While I believe the post was one of the more insightful pieces I have written (despite the fact I was vilified by several other advisors and investors, who as the article discusses have been brainwashed and are beyond saving), it left a large, unanswered question with regard to investment selection:
Last week, the Government released employment data for March. According to the report, we added 120,000 jobs in the month of March, and the unemployment rate edged down from 8.3% to 8.2%, the lowest rate in three years. That’s great, right? Maybe. While no one would argue that adding jobs is bad, the measure of the actual employment rate is
I received a question from a client today that caught me a little off guard: “Why do high interest make bond prices go down?” While this is certainly an important topic and I was happy to explain it, I assumed that they would have known the answer. Rather than continue to assume this is common knowledge, I wanted to write
So you have taken the advice of your parents and others, completed college, obtained a bachelor’s degree, and if you took out a loan to pay for this expenses, now have over $25,000 in debt. Great. Oh, and to make matters worse, the unemployment rate for anyone under the age of 24 currently sits at close to 50%, and it
I was out golfing earlier today for the first time in about four months. If you ask most golfers how their day went after being away from the course for that long, you will more than likely hear a slew of four letter expletives that I will not repeat here. However, I had one of the best rounds of my
As a follow up to my recent post discussing four estate planning must-haves, I wanted to follow up with a special post discussing the unique challenges same-sex couples face in estate planning. The primary reason that same-sex couples face these challenges is because the federal government still does not recognize same-sex marriage from a legal and tax standpoint. This has
According to a 2011 study that was jointly conducted by Cerulli Associates and Phoenix Marketing International, over 60% of all individuals either did not know how they paid for the financial advice they received, or thought the advice they received was free! Now, I can understand being confused as to how financial advisor’s are compensated. Aside from this not being
I’ve always wondered by the bright folks on wall street decided to create ten different names for the same item, and why Fox and CNN decided to create five more. Trying to decode wall street terminology can be a daunting task. Unfortunately, too many financial advisors assume that most people are familiar with financial terms, but never take the time
If you are one of the millions of American’s who has put off creating an estate plan because they didn’t think they needed one, didn’t know where to start, were too busy, or simply procrastinated, don’t panic! This post will outline four very easy steps you can take to put your plans back in order… Estate planning is very often
Most people are under the impression that their financial advisor (or stock broker, or financial consultant, or my personal favorite, First Vice President, which means nothing more than that individual has generated a certain amount of revenue for his/her company), always has their best interest at heart. As a previous employee of large financial conglomerate, I can assure you that
