February 5, 2021 – Featuring David Ressner Knowledge is power. That fact applies to so many parts of life, especially college planning. Until recently, college admissions and financial aid were black boxes. But lately, light has been shone into that box. You can take advantage of that knowledge, rather than being taken advantage of, when…
February 5, 2021 – Featuring Tim Mauer, CFP® I’ve got some good news. You’re not crazy. That’s the message of one of my favorite books of 2020, “The Psychology of Money,” written by Morgan Housel and inspired by a popular blog post he wrote in 2018. It’s a compelling read and the book offers many great lessons,…
Tim Maurer, Director of Advisor Development, 6/3/2020 Few things in our lives have been so dramatically altered throughout the COVID-19 crisis as school and education. From online coursework to cancelled proms to a March devoid of Madness but full of uncertainty about whether or not college campuses would even reopen for the fall semester, there…
Tim Maurer, Director of Advisor Development, 5/4/2020 The coronavirus is dominating our attention so pervasively in the present moment that the notion of retirement seems even more distant for savers. That’s understandable—natural, even. But it’s precisely our fixation on the present that causes us to struggle to follow through on our intentions to secure our…
Tim Maurer offers a simple retirement stress test and asks what is perhaps the better question: What number works for you? “Wow, those guys must be millionaires!” I can recall uttering those words as a child, driving by the nicest house in our neighborhood—you know, the one with four garages filled with cars from Europe. The…
Tim Maurer in Forbes on parent student loans. Parents have sacrificed their financial futures on the altar of their children’s education. Fueled by easy federal money and self-interested colleges, the result is a student loan crisis that appears already to be eclipsing the catastrophic proportions of mortgage indebtedness leading up to the financial collapse of 2008….
How will you spend your tolerance for risk? Tim Maurer, Director of Personal Finance, The BAM Alliance “I just really wish I’d taken more risk in my investment portfolio,” said no one–ever–on their deathbed. That may seem like an odd observation, unless you consider the fact that I had the privilege of spending a couple…
Bill Kaiser explores some financial tasks to consider before sending your child off to college. Bill Kaiser, Wealth Advisor, Bland Garvey Wealth Advisors As the high school graduation parties wind down and your child begins counting up their gift money, now is the time to get a few things in order before they head off…
Tim Maurer on why millennials should consider funding a Roth IRA. Much—too much—has been said and written about the relative superiority of Roth IRAs versus Traditional IRAs. The debate over which is better too often involves the technical numerical merits. In truth, the Roth wins in almost every situation because of its massive behavioral advantage: a…
We’ll know soon enough who America chooses as its next president, but the market has already voted. Who does the stock market “want” to win? Hillary Clinton. This isn’t a partisan statement, but simply a statement of fact. There may be several indicators to which we could point, but the glaring one is this: When…
You’re no fool. But let’s imagine for a second that a major public figure said something—something false—over and over (and over) again. Regardless of its questionable veracity, is there a chance you’d be more likely to believe the proclamation simply because you’ve heard it often and recently? Like it or not, the answer is an…
Since her early 20s, Danica Patrick has driven a racecar for a living, speeding 200 miles per hour around a crowded track bordered by concrete walls. It’s dangerous. Really dangerous. And she recognizes that. “There are things that happen in the car that you can’t plan for and that are out of your control, like…
What vocational lessons could we possibly learn from the 12-year-old viral sensation who just won America’s Got Talent? I don’t watch reality television contests, because as a rule, the best participants rarely participate and when they do, they almost never win. But quite randomly, a 12-year-old ukulele player named Grace VanderWaal, inspired me to break…
Competition for your dollars creates an inertia that always seems to lead Wall Street down the path of unhelpfully increasing the risk in your portfolio. The recent Wall Street Journal headline, “Bond Funds Turn Up Risk,” illustrates an especially alarming trend. Specifically, of increasing the risk in the part of your portfolio that should be…
Imagine that your entire life revolves around a single performance lasting less than 14 seconds. You’ve sacrificed your youth, close friendships and any semblance of a career in pursuit of validating your Herculean effort on the world’s largest stage. The hopes of your country on your shoulders. Tens of millions of gawkers eager to praise…
