Americans—especially the affluent—are some of the most charitable people in the world. Chances are, you use some of your wealth to support favorite causes or organizations that are important to you.
MDFR Retirement Recon: Deferred Compensation
Northstar Financial Planners’ President Earns Special Needs Designation
Your Year-End Financial Checklist
Something to Sink Your FAANGs Into
There’s a misconception in the markets: Value stocks have lost their vigor. Value stocks have underperformed growth stocks over the past decade. In the U.S., the annualized compound return has been 12.9% for value stocks, or those trading at a low price relative to their book value. That contrasts with 16.3% annualized compound return for growth stocks, or those with a high relative price.
Beating the Spread
It’s easy to pick sports winners. Without even looking at next weekend’s NFL schedule, I’m going to pick New England, the 49ers, Green Bay, and the Saints. Will all four of those picks be winners? Maybe not, but if I follow a strategy of picking big favorites every week, I’m highly confident I will pick a lot more winners than losers.
Value Judgments: Viewing the Premium’s Performance Through History’s Lens
There’s a misconception in the markets: Value stocks have lost their vigor. Value stocks have underperformed growth stocks over the past decade. In the U.S., the annualized compound return has been 12.9% for value stocks, or those trading at a low price relative to their book value. That contrasts with 16.3% annualized compound return for growth stocks, or those with a high relative price.
Mental Illness—Concerns and Challenges
The Conflicted Caddie
In the world of financial advice, most people hire advisors with conflicts of interest. And the cost to you isn’t a few bucks for new golf balls. There’s a lot of money that can be made off your money. That’s why probably the most important question you can ask a financial advisor is “How are you paid?”
Miami-Dade Firefighters: Health Insurance Subsidies
What to Expect When Things Don’t Go as Expected
At its most basic, retirement planning is a mathematical exercise. Inputs include annual savings during your working years, expected return on investments, expected retirement date, expected household expenses during retirement, and life expectancy. Did ya notice that one word popped up an awful lot there? A fairly large amount of the financial planning process is based on expectations..
Backdoor Roth IRA Contributions
I received two calls this past month asking basically the same thing. “Hey, Allen, I was talking to this guy, and he said I should do a backdoor IRA. It sounded great! What do you think?” My first thought was “Is someone out there doing seminars on this?” It reminded me of a word that I learned many years ago: Tinstaafl. There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Or put another way, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Special Needs for Mental Illness Financial Planning
When my son had his first mental health crisis, my wife and I had no idea what was happening to him, what kind of pain he was in, or what we should be doing. But for the next five or six years, we were focused and absorbed on nothing other than seeking out the best treatment possible for him and learning all we could about his mental illness.
Power Ranking Investing
Indexing’s Biggest Myths
Fun Money Facts That I Hope Are All True
What to Know About Special Needs Financial Planning for Mental Illness
The Topsy Turvy World of Bond Yields
The market is going to go down! You heard it here first. Well, actually if you pay even slight attention to the financial news, you heard it here one millionth. We are in our eleventh year of a strong bull market and prognostication on the coming bear market has been rampant for approximately all eleven of those years.