As year-end approaches, I have been fielding many questions from my clients about what options they could take advantage of to shelter some of their income from taxes in 2016. While time is running out with only 6 weeks left in the year, there are several straightforward approaches that could help save you money come tax time in April. Max … Read More
It is not the Critic Who Counts
Typically, I wouldn’t post a book review or summary of a book focused squarely on investing especially when it comes to technical analysis. Most of you simply would not care and if you are likely utilizing someone to manage your assets for you, that should be your manager’s job to understand if they are using technical analysis in their investment … Read More
The Go-Giver vs. the Go-Taker
60 Minutes this past weekend aired yet another example of professional athletes being taken advantage of by slick-talking financial advisors. This is very similar to a piece that I wrote about back in July when three high-profile athletes Mark Sanchez, Jake Peavy, and Roy Oswalt were ripped off for ~$30M. The key piece in both examples but maybe more so … Read More
Taking a Leap of Faith
Even the best-laid plans in life can require a certain leap of faith. You can pull all of your numbers together, put forth your best forecast based upon your current facts and assumptions, and arrive at a sound analysis. Everything indicates that this is the right move but then nothing. Nothing but fear. Fear can be a crippling factor within … Read More
How Decluttering my iPhone Helped to Eliminate my Facebook App
This weekend my wife and I were able to go on a college road trip with some very good friends of ours. This was one of the rare trips where I wasn’t going to have to drive and the drive was likely going to be close to 5 hours each way. I was prepared to get some work done with … Read More
The Most Important Thing
Howard Marks is the Co-Chairman of Oaktree Capital Management, a global investment management firm. Mr. Marks is regarded as a leader in the investment management industry. His breadth of knowledge is often highlighted within his memos that are published regularly and his book, The Most Important Thing. Mr. Marks and I share many of the same investment and wealth planning … Read More
Optimize Your Spending
What if you could increase your level of happiness by what you buy? You may think that is an easy question to answer by saying, “yes, if I could buy anything I wanted I would be happier.” However, what if research showed that once you obtained a certain income level, say $75,000 your level of happiness would not change that … Read More
The Ability to be Adaptable and Flexible
One of the traits that helped me during my corporate finance career was learning how to be adaptable and flexible. Over the course of my Corporate career I faced some fairly challenging experiences: Took part in the closing of 2 MFG facilities; Involved in the movement of product which eventually resulted in the closure of 4 MFG facilities; Went through … Read More
Economics is Largely the Study of Making Choices
Economics is largely the study of making choices. I wish that I would have stressed this point more to my economic students last semester. There aren’t absolute laws in economics like there are in other hard and physical sciences such as chemistry and physics. However, there are some established tendencies and limits to economics such as the law of supply … Read More
Two Charts that Speak to a Consistent & Disciplined Investment Approach
An American President usually gets too much blame and too much credit for economic and stock market performance over the course of their presidency. There is the element of timing and uncontrollable events that can have a large impact on the figures below. Consider the Bush II era which began during the Tech bust but also included the 911 terrorist … Read More
