The focus on debt in low level financial planning creates a fallacy. Debt, label it good or bad if you will, is really only important if it is costing you more to hold than you can gain from its use. Being debt free, but ignoring your obligations is purposeless.With sophistication, we should consider a debt […]
What’s up with #thechart ?
There’s one of those charts out there again.. you know the ones – they are written up and then they go viral and people forget to actually care about how accurate they are, or what they are say, they just go WOW IT IS A CHART (hereafter referred to as #thechart). This one was in […]
How to get out of a bad Roth IRA
Reader Eric commented on my ‘Experience opening up a Roth IRA‘ post to ask if he had been sold a poor investment for his Roth… sadly this is an example of where something that has great publicity (the Roth) and is now a necessity, has been taken to the extremes of money making by the […]
Stockpiling gift cards?
My esteemed colleague Trevor wrote a post recently about the stockpiling of discount giftcards, and I wanted to share some thoughts on the topic. I really hate stockpiling, but there are times when I find myself also doing it, the calculation that I make is as follows: Is the discounted price today greater than […]
Average Manhattan Rents up to $4,081?
In today’s NY Post slugged ‘its basically impossible to find a rental in Manhattan’ we are alerted to an average rent of $4,081. This comes on the heels of the SFChronicle announcing $3,458 being the average for the Bay Area. These headlines may (I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt) be factually correct, but I […]
What is your Estate Number?
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 […]