The Steak Dinner Decision
A confluence of forces is about to occur that may result in a decision to be made by aspiring and current retirees, like you. I could be wrong, but I think the confluence includes a nervous, teetering stock market, a ramping-up of marketing efforts by some ambitious financial advisors due to COVID fears subsiding, and your love of a free …
Briefcase Study: Breakthrough in a Box
When an Amazon box arrives at the front door, it’s an exciting moment. Is it…for me? Boy, I sure hope so (having forgotten what I may have ordered in the first place). Generally, the thing in that box is the result of a decision process that was either minutes long or one that took months of research. Either way, taking …
Back to the Basics: 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 Battle For Status
Have you ever stopped to consider the role that status plays in your life? Of course, status is evident in our work relationships; supervisor, manager, and president are titles that make it easier to know our place in the hierarchy. But I wonder if you’ve considered how status impacts your financial planning. Is it possible that subconscious pursuits of status …
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 …
