If you have children that plan to attend college, you have opportunities to make it easier to pay for college. And, if you happen to be a small business owner, one of the most favorable treatments for business owners is your ability to increase the amount of financial aid for which your child may qualify by lowering your “expected family contribution” (EFC). The EFC is the baseline for calculating federal…
April was Financial Literacy Month, which led to a flurry of articles about the retirement crisis in the U.S. One piece noted that the “average” retirement savings amount, paltry though it is, is often an overstated figure because it is the average (i.e. mean) rather than the mid-point (i.e. median) and therefore overstates the “average” savings level. It indicated that although the “average American” has about $200,000 in retirement savings, the median…
When the stock markets have long periods of positive returns, as they have had for most of the past decade, it can be easy to forget how a bear market feels to an investor. The last quarter of 2018 provided a vivid reminder. Large market swings and precipitous drops can unnerve even the most experienced investors, despite knowing that these swings are to be expected and are part of the…
Is recent market volatility making you nervous? Perspective could help you stay calm and on track. Your financial journey is a lot like a car trip. On your route from point A to point B, while driving wisely, it is normal to experience stoplights, curvy roads, bad weather, or other elements that slow you down. A few times in your life, you might hit a pothole or nail that causes…
After years of unusually low market volatility that hypnotized a large swath of investors into believing yet again that markets only rise, the market drops of the last 2 days are a healthy reminder that stock market fluctuations should be viewed as a normal part of investing. Don’t forget, as is the case with food, good nutrition isn’t always tasty, but is beneficial in the long run. Eat your Brussels sprouts! As disciplined institutional investor Warren Buffet wisely said a while back, “The stock market is a device to transfer wealth from the impatient to the patient.” So, the real question is… do you want to be in the panic (impatient) group? Or the profit (patient) group?
News articles to help you make better financial decisions. Topics include investor behavior, smart financial choices, investor pitfalls to avoid, and other topics.
Good news… you may be able to spend more in the early years of retirement than you thought. Smart in-retirement spending approaches were always critical to not running out of money have always been important, but new studies on longevity and spending patterns of those in retirement shed new light on the subject. You spend most of your life saving for retirement, so making sure the money is spent wisely…
If you are reading this (or even if you are not!), it is likely that you were one of the 145 million Americans whose information was exposed in the Equifax data breach earlier this fall (announced by Equifax in September of 2017), given that 145 million represents a high percentage of all adults in the U.S.. Now that the dust has settled, if you have not already done so, consider…
