It seems that there’s lots of focus on your ‘Retirement Number’ but recently my family has been thinking hard about estate planning, what happens in the unlikely event that both of us parents should die while our Son is in the age of minority?The big questions for this surround guardianship. However, this topic can be […]
Dealing with Financial Services complaints (Part 2)
This is a guest post by the secret lover of Elizabeth Warren, and the second installment of ‘Dealing with Financial Services complaints’. Start with Part 1 here if you missed it. How to Complain / get your rights Even before you start your complain process, 2 critical things that you should think about: how were you […]
Dealing with Financial Services Complaints (Part 1)
This is a guest post by Elizabeth Warren’ s secret lover. Enjoy! What do the following scenarios have in common? When applying for a mortgage, you are asked to close a specific credit card with the mortgage company rep on the line Your Paypal accounts got shutdown or frozen with hundreds of dollars that you are […]
Building Model Portfolios -US Equities
I’m currently building model portfolios for my new firm. When looking at US Equities as part of a portfolio the question is how far to stratify them in an attempt to create management opportunities, it is my belief that the more we can granularize a product, the more opportunities will emerge, however this comes with […]
What happened to $twtr yesterday?
Shares of Twitter dropped from $51.21 at 3pm Eastern to $41.80 by 3:45pm. A drop of 18.38% The reason for the drop was based upon the earnings report released. Unfortunately for many people, the earnings were due to be released after the close of the market, and an error meant that they hit the Twitter […]
Understanding averages and investment returns
An average is given to a series of numbers for us to attempt to make order from chaos. There are several ways to calculate an average, though the term is most commonly associated now with the arithmetic mean. This mean is calculated as the sum of numbers divided by the number of numbers in a […]
Income-Based Repayment and Loan Forgiveness: Implications on Student Loan Debt
This article originally appeared in The Journal of Financial Planning, April 2015by Jarrod Johnston, Ph.D., CFP®; and Ivan Roten, Ph.D., CFP®When it comes to paying for college, student loans are indeed the norm, rather than the exception. The majority of undergraduate students in the United States have received some type of student loan, and the […]
Understanding your retirement number
Your retirement number is the amount that you need to have saved in order to retire. I want to dive into this today and explore some really important things that come along with this. I’m going to define it ‘my way’ and bring in concepts such as the Investment Policy Statement, asset allocation, risk taking, […]
The Relativity of Money
According to Planck, and later Einstein, there is a theory that things may appear relative to the observer. A common example used in this theory is that of time dilation. This concept states that time can appear to move at a different rate depending on either the relative movement between the two observers, or if they […]
Who wants to be a Millionaire?
I came across this story today, promoted on twitter by a Financial Planner, using it as an example of what appears to be a great strategy to follow…. Janitor dies at 92 with $8M saved. You can read it here. My synopsis: someone worked all their life, drove a crappy car, dressed in clothes held […]