What is the role of cash in your portfolio? How much cash is too much and how much is too little? How good is Chat GPT at answering this question?

We often make decisions based on expectations about the future, but the future is never as expected. It can be better or worse, but almost never as we expect it. A sound financial plan addresses [...]

We make gift lists for friends and loved ones, so why not a list of gifts for our future selves? At its heart, financial planning is a list of things you can do today to improve your future.

Tax considerations affect virtually all areas of a financial plan, including retirement, education, investment planning, insurance planning, and estate planning. Learn some tax planning tools to [...]

Goals-based investing uses the information contained in each individual goal, including their value, priority, and time horizon, to build a dedicated investment portfolio for each goal. This [...]

We can understand inflation dynamics with simple supply and demand concepts. While we hear a lot about supply chain issues causing inflation, most policies implemented are demand driven. Under [...]

Let’s face it, for most people, the first half of 2022 has not been the best from a financial perspective. Inflation has been around 8% for some time, with little signs of slowing down so far, [...]

The cost of living has been increasing at an unusually high rate. What does this mean for your future investment returns? Read our guide to dealing with inflation.

While the Fed and inflation can make headlines, financial adviser Massi De Santis says it’s not obvious that you should be changing your long-term financial plan and your investments as a result [...]

Inflation is one of the major known risks for retirees or those approaching retirement. Unexpected inflation can lower the real return and can exacerbate what is known as sequence risk.

A common investment thesis is that stocks are part of “real assets” and should protect long term investors from inflation. But does the theory hold in practice?

When it comes to your finances, you want to make sure that you are making the best decisions for your future. This is why it is important to work with a professional wealth manager, in Austin [...]

How much you contribute towards your goals (your saving rate) is a key determinant of financial success, more so than your investment returns. However, disciplined saving is hard to implement, [...]

The cost of living has been increasing at an unusually high rate. What does this mean for your future investment returns?

How can you save money while still taking care of your basic needs and everyday expenses? You can take steps to put your spending and saving goals into the right perspective, and start moving in [...]

Higher inflation and market volatility have suddenly changed investors' perceptions of risk and uncertainty. Many may be thinking now is the time to get out of the market. However, historical [...]

Understanding the breakdown of your pay stub will help you better understand your tax withholding and optimize your savings. So here is a breakdown of the major items in your paystub, from your [...]

Setting meaningful goals is a key step in any financial plan. Goals help us identify what is really important and help us channel our energy towards them. As Mark Twain once said, “The secret of [...]

Create your own one-page financial plan to start taking control of your financial life and reap immediate benefits through simple, actionable items, starting today!

Achieving a comfortable retirement is a big task. How do you prepare for 25 years –a typical retirement horizon–  of life without earnings from employment? How much savings do you need [...]

Have you noticed how we often make rational choices in our minds when we look ahead, only to ignore that wisdom when we have to make the same choice in the present? Economists call this behavior [...]

As we approach the year-end and get ready for the holidays, let’s consider doing some tax planning for 2020 and beyond. This year, we break our discussion of year-end tax planning into two parts. [...]

The college goal is one of the top financial priorities of families, right up there with a good retirement. However, many parents don’t have dedicated accounts, like a 529, to save for this [...]

A common piece of advice is to start saving for retirement early and do it through your employer plan, like a 401(k) plan or similar. Employer-sponsored plans are tax-advantaged and the employer [...]

Open enrollment affects several areas of your overall financial plan, including health care costs and benefits, life and disability insurance, retirement planning, tax planning, and more. So why [...]

One of the hardest questions for anyone planning for retirement is to translate what their savings plans mean for their ability to replace income in retirement. You have money in your 401(k), [...]

One of the hardest questions for people approaching retirement is to figure out how much annual income their retirement savings can generate. That’s the $64,000 question for retirees because they [...]

High investment costs are the most reliable predictor of poor investment performance, and investment taxes are often the largest component of such costs. Left unchecked, the performance drag due [...]

Many people think their health care in retirement will be free or close to it because of Medicare. Here is some bad news for you: Medicare is subsidized, but not free.  According to estimates by [...]

End of summer is a great time to review your paycheck against the taxes you may owe the IRS for the year. One very useful tool on the IRS site is their Withholding Estimator. If you are a W-2 [...]

Most investors are so focused on their stock portfolios that bonds are often just an afterthought. For many of them, a bond portfolio means stable value or money market funds. However, the role [...]

In most cases, we can rely on prices to evaluate the cost of our decisions. Prices make it easy to evaluate tradeoffs. When it’s about investing, however, the costs of our decisions are less [...]

As you probably know, virtually any monetary earnings or gains in your life are taxable, and investment earnings are no exception. First, if you are getting taxed on your investments, it [...]

Your asset allocation represents how you divide your wealth across different investments and can be the single most important element of investment success. Arriving at the right asset allocation [...]

I met with a new client recently who told me that she was happily invested in AT&T stock because of its dividend yield above 7%. But, is investing in high dividend stocks to generate retirement [...]

You may have heard that now is not a good time to invest in bonds. With low interest rates, you don’t get much of a return. Plus, low rates today mean interest rates can only go up in the future, [...]

Are all the traditional investments like bonds, stocks, and real estate posed for a fall in value or at least very low returns? And what should investors do with their portfolios?

You have seen it in the footnotes of any marketing materials: “Please read the prospectus carefully before investing.” Going through one is not very enjoyable given the legalese in which they [...]

GameStop (GME) was trading at about $19 per share until January 12 or so. Then something changed. Trading volume increased dramatically and the price started going up. So much so that it more [...]

Deciding how much you can afford to spend on your dream home can be a challenge. For most of us, buying a home is the largest investment we make, and typically we borrow to pay for it, by taking [...]

We are faced with various money choices and questions every day. How do we make good decisions? It all starts with being aware of your goals, priorities, and the potential of your hard-earned [...]

Recently, "bullet journaling" came under my radar. After too many missed deadlines and forgotten grocery items, I decided to give bullet journaling a try. The first step is to sit down with pen [...]

Looking for inspiration to kickstart 2021? Check out the top 10 list of what our readers liked the most in 2020. Our most-read posts dealt with tax-efficient strategies, Coronavirus uncertainty, [...]

We want to conclude the year with an important message: Be Happy Now. Don’t wait!  I got the idea for this message from our pastor, who told us this week that this can be our best Christmas [...]

We make gift lists for our loved ones and resolutions for our health and fitness, so why not a list for a better financial life? Before this year ends, let’s reflect on our goals and priorities, [...]

A big concern for people seriously thinking about retirement is whether they are on track for the retirement they want. The question is particularly relevant today as finance gurus talk about a [...]

It would be great if we could just pick companies like Amazon, Apple, 3M, or [your favorite growth story here] and invest in those very early on, but we can’t. There is plenty of evidence that [...]

Stocks and bonds are very effective tools to grow and manage wealth. You can combine stocks and bonds to help you save for virtually any goal, from growing a nest egg for retirement to saving for [...]

The main lesson from the evidence on sustainable withdrawals is that a retirement spending strategy has to be adaptable, based on plans that allow adjustments over time to reflect changes in [...]

Last week we discussed the basic rationale for developing a safe withdrawal rate. Historically, balanced portfolios have been able to sustain withdrawals of at least 4% of initial value, adjusted [...]

Figuring out how much you can spend in retirement is not an easy task. How can we use past data to derive safe spending rules? Is the 4% rule a valid strategy? How can we improve it?

Children and family members have traditionally cared for the elderly. However, that may not be possible for many families today. Given the costs and importance of long term care, it is important [...]

More and more people are trying to redefine retirement. Many are young professionals with good income trajectories and excellent savings habits. Their goal is to get Financially Independent and [...]

The purpose of financial planning is not to remove uncertainty or to predict your future financial situation with accuracy. The purpose of a plan is to help you maximize the value of your [...]

Most retirees rely on multiple sources of personal retirement savings to generate retirement income. Besides Social Security, they typically rely on a combination of savings from tax-deferred [...]

The interaction between the taxation of Social Security and other sources of retirement income can make your marginal tax rate jump in unexpected ways, even above the 37% rate, and at relatively [...]

Equity compensation is becoming more and more popular. However, many employees have a hard time understanding the value of equity comp and how it should fit in their financial plans.

More and more plans offer the ability to make Roth and after-tax contributions. But what are these options and when does it make sense to use them?

This post shows you how important having the right withdrawal strategy can be, and uses an example to illustrate how to find opportunities for efficient withdrawals.

A key goal when you retire is to generate a steady level of spending and not run out of money too soon. For many, the retirement spending strategy involves a combination of social security, [...]

I attended a webinar on college admission trends with Dr. Jen Price and the local FPA community today. Dr. Price is an experienced college admission counselor and her presentation was [...]

Protecting your ability to generate income with disability insurance is a key aspect of a sound financial plan for most people. However, it is one often neglected, with the belief that we are [...]

When should you rebalance your investments? As with many questions, the best place to start is with why. Why should we rebalance in the first place? Your asset allocation, how you allocate your [...]

With the market gyrations and economic uncertainty we are experiencing, investors are feeling the pain of market losses and many may lose faith in their investment plans. The potentially bigger [...]

When I finally got out of school and started getting a decent paycheck, my first thoughts were mainly about all the things I could spend the extra money on. That nicer car, a new bike, better [...]

You don’t have a sound plan for your desired goals in life until you plan for emergencies and setbacks. In financial planning, this means planning for and building the right ‘safety net’, an [...]

We encourage business owners to check out the SBA COVID-19 relief page. In response to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, small business owners in all U.S. states, Washington D.C., and [...]

The CARES Act is an economic relief plan for individuals and businesses of unprecedented size, totaling about $2 trillion. As a comparison, the 2019 US GDP was about 21 Trillion. The Act is very [...]

We are often so focused on growing our assets that we may overlook the fact that the key to a well-designed asset allocation is having the right risk management strategy. And this begins with [...]

With everyone talking about the coronavirus, you may wonder what to do, if anything, with your portfolio. There has definitely been a lot of action in financial markets this past week, with no [...]

Goal visualization is a powerful tool. Formula one drivers visualize every turn of a track before a practice or a race. They even visualize wheel-to-wheel racing with their fiercest opponents. [...]

How should we choose among the 8,000+ funds available to us as investors? It’s not an easy choice given that most of us don’t have the time, knowledge, and expertise to consider all these funds. [...]

Mutual funds are a great investment tool for people saving for retirement, education and many other goals. According to the Investment Company Institute, over 60% of households invest in mutual [...]

A retirement account can be a great gift and a good estate planning tool. But trying to figure out what to do with it can easily turn into a daunting task. The details of how you can receive the [...]

You may have heard that a good plan starts with meaningful goals. But how can we use goals to design our plan, monitor our progress, and manage key risks to our retirement? Read it in our [...]

January is the time of the year where there is no shortage of expert predictions about financial markets and the economy. And this year the start of a new decade makes us wonder what the new ’20s [...]

Forget new year or new decade resolutions. In 2020 make yourself the gift of a financial plan. If you think financial planning is boring and by the numbers, we are here to change that. A [...]

While most of us were enjoying the Holidays, our government was hard at work and on December 20, 2019, the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act, was signed into law [...]

This is the last post of 2019 and we want to take the opportunity to thank all our followers: clients, friends, family, readers, and everyone else I may be missing, even deleters and [...]

Financial planning helps you achieve your most meaningful goals in life. This post helps you set your own goals and discusses how to use your goals to drive the design of your financial plan and [...]

Investment management used to be for people with a lot of money that needed help to manage it. Not any more. With greater responsibility for our future needs, evolving markets that increase [...]

Budgeting is the heart of financial planning. Achieving your goals starts by being aware of how you use your money, so you can make changes that align your money choices with your goals. Learn [...]

Tax considerations affect virtually all areas of a comprehensive financial plan. Optimal choices in retirement planning, education planning, investment planning, risk management, insurance [...]

Having a strategy to optimize our current resources is crucial to successful retirement outcomes. When it comes to choosing savings accounts, there are many options available, including 401(k), [...]

The uncertainty inherent in all investments awakens emotions that play a role in our investment behavior. Greed, overconfidence, and the need to control outcomes can lead us to suboptimal [...]

If I told you there was a tool that can help you reduce unnecessary spending, solve your money problems, and achieve your financial goals, would that get your attention? Probably. If I told you [...]

Beating market averages appeals to our innate desires to be above average and to control outcomes in situations of uncertainty. But in the case of stock returns, the best course of action may be [...]

We are continuously inundated by market predictions and investment prescriptions that tell us what to do with our hard earned money.  But successful investing is not about following [...]

Last week one of my friends achieved a dream of a few years in the making. He finished Ironman Taiwan in less than 10 hours. Knowing how important the goal was to him and the whole family, his [...]

Among the most common tips you read in personal finance are rules of thumb. The 4% spending rule, the 80% retirement income rule, the snowball debt repayment rule, the 10% saving rule, the [...]

Mailchimp says the best time to build a marketing mailing list is when you first get your business idea. But if you didn’t do it then, the second best time is now!  When you think about it, [...]

With open enrollment approaching, it’s a good time to think about retirement planning, and a great chance to practice taking the long view.  Consider some simple numbers about the importance [...]

It’s back to school time! School supplies, meet the teacher, curriculum night, school dismissal, PTO,…  Every year we work so hard to make sure our kids have an excellent [...]

Why? You may ask. I already have trouble keeping my room or office tidy.  I get it. But trust me, it pays off. You will thank me later. Getting your financial house in order has a number of [...]

It’s simple, what you focus on determines where you go. Consider the following tips about focus.  Are you a downhill skier? Never look at the tips of your skis. Always look ahead and [...]

Welcome to our blog! In this first post we discuss the key principle of our financial planning and investment philosophy, the ability to take the long view. We choose this ability because it is [...]