Has Returns Risk Returned?
Retirement can be an amazing time in a person’s life (or so I’m told). Waking up each day with the opportunity to live out your agenda rather than someone else’s is a wonderful type of freedom that everyone should someday have the chance to experience. But like anything in life, there are risks that have the potential to disrupt the …
Proof and Belief: Money and Markets
Beware: I’m going to get existential for a moment. I’ll be quick about it. Beginning in 2007 and through 2009, I found myself having a particular conversation about money with a lot of people. What started as a discussion of the happenings in the markets and economy became a journey into the historical role of gold and The Fed. In …
Financial Symmetry and Weight Loss
When I decided to pursue a business career after college, I did so not really knowing what it meant to actually ‘pursue business’. Like most people, I had a vague sense that marketing was involved somehow and that some math must be a part of the deal, but I really didn’t know much more than that. So when I was …
Inching Closer Toward Recession
It’s coming, can you feel it? The next recession is getting closer and closer, there’s no doubt. How do I know this? Simply put, recessions happen and we haven’t had one in quite some time, so it’s a safe prediction to make that the passing of each day moves us closer to the next. Are you ready? Before we get …
If You Could Time Your Last Dollar with Your Last Breath
I often suggest that good financial planning means we die with money left over. Conversely, that must mean that bad financial planning means we run out of money before we die. Of course, omitted from this binary look at the topic is the possibility that you’ll spend your last dollar as your last breath exists your body. Wouldn’t that be …
Shortened Workweek
If you worked one less day per week at your paid job, what would you do with your time? This can be a fun exercise, but it can also feel like asking you what you’d do if you won the lottery. You imagine all of the wonderful things you’d buy and become caught up in that fantasy only to snap …
Financial Finish Lines and Mile-Markers
The Boston Marathon is an event where otherwise normal people travel great distances, at great expense, to punish themselves physically, mentally, and emotionally for 26.2 uninterrupted miles, sometimes in the rain. The very nature of a marathon race really does beg the question, “Why?” In fact, I asked a marathon runner this question years ago, “Why would you choose to …
Does Cash Buy Happiness?
There have been a number of recent studies completed to determine what makes us happy. In several studies, it was concluded that quality relationships are most important in determining levels of happiness. Other studies looked at the effect of money on happiness. In fact, research by the Nobel laureate psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman showed that money increases happiness until about …
2022 Winter Newsletter: Kansas City
I think we don’t spend enough time and energy discussing compounding. Sure, we feel its effects when we look at our account statements from the last couple of years (especially when compared to statements from a decade ago!), but what about other areas of our lives? Is there a compounding effect that’s possible in our careers, relationships, and families that …
Briefcase Study: How Low Can You Go?
Reduced Stress Through Rehearsed Austerity A recent client review meeting reminded me that money can be stressful. This is a statement so obvious that it seems silly to write it out, but there it is. It can stress me out, and I’ll bet you feel it from time-to-time as well. While I won’t suggest that money’s emotional and intellectual burdens …
