getting what you dont pay

October 2017 Costs matter. Whether you’re buying a car or selecting an investment strategy, the costs you expect to pay are likely to be an important factor in making any major financial decision. People rely on a lot of different information about costs to help inform these decisions. When you

lessons for the next crisis

October 2017 It will soon be the 10-year anniversary of when, in early October 2007, the S&P 500 Index hit what was its highest point before losing more than half its value over the next year and a half during the global financial crisis. Over the coming weeks and months,

Refinance Blog photo

  Should You Refinance Your House Now?   Here is my financial tip of the month! Make sure you check mortgage rates to see if you should be REFINANCING now! Rates fell precipitously last year and then popped up. Now they are giving you another chance to lock in these

cellphone spam calls

Following up on my earlier comments about blocking spam calls to mobile phones, one reader says: “I use Google Fi as my cellphone and they (having way too much info on everything) are able to change the color of spam calls to red. This is great since I don’t have

143 million americans affected by equifax hack

Last week, Equifax, 1 of the 3 largest credit card monitoring companies, announced that hackers stole half of the US population’s Social Security numbers in what will likely end up being one of the worst data breaches in history.   Below we have listed simple steps we think our clients

vanguard funds vs dimensional funds in ifa portfolios

The following video by one of our peers at IFA does an outstanding job of explaining how Dimensional Fund Advisors’ methodology captures more of the 3 factors that drive higher expected returns. (Click HERE to see what the 3 Factor Model is) When compared to Vanguard and other index fund

disability increase

Question: My Disability policy has an automatic increase rider built into the policy. Each year we receive a premium increase of $100 for benefit increase of $320. Should we accept this increase or decline the increase?   Answer: That’s a good question and as with most answers in financial planning

saving for college

A great article on facts about financial aid eligibility. Check it out HERE Enjoy!

right questions about investing

In the article below, Peter hits the nail on the head with his point about cost. Many articles fiercely debate which is better: active management or passive management. Attempting to out-guess other portfolio managers (active management), these articles often promote index funds (a form of passive management) as superior to

Investment Tips for Regular People

Our previous post discussed some tips for financial planning, for a regular person. While those tips spoke about finances in general, here we are going to get into the nitty gritty, and deal specifically with tips for investing. Let’s jump right in, and get started! Thinking of paying off debt