How To Find the Right Financial Advisor Hiring a financial advisor can be one of the most important hiring decisions of your financial life.  Where do you start your search? How do you know that you found the right advisor? Should I trust my friend or colleague’s recommendation? Advantages: Your friend or colleague may be…

Is the Alphabet Soup Necessary? When selecting a financial advisor, you can easily go cross-eyed by the alphabet soup of acronyms such as CFA, CLU, ChFC, CFP—and the list goes on. I did a quick search and found a mind-numbing 222 designations! To complicate matters, numerous terms exist for a financial professional such as financial…

Series I Savings Bonds: An Investment Against Inflation In a high-inflation environment and with the market going down with no end in sight, not many investment options provide the return necessary to keep up with inflation, except for I bonds. Yes, we recommend them, because they are safe, provide a good return when inflation is…

The First 48 Hours After A Loved One Passes You may have just received the dreaded call that your loved one passed. Or maybe you were the first to walk into the room to find them unconscious—or perhaps you held their hand in the hospital room as they passed. Regardless, the hours that follow seem…

Economic Effects of Abortion Following the historic overturning of Roe V. Wade, and the leaked documents from the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. There has been an avalanche of responses both for and against abortion. What some haven’t stepped back to consider are the economic effects of abortion since Roe v. Wade was passed…

Teaching Them to Fish: Saving for the Next Generation One of the deepest desires parents and grandparents have is to see their children and grandchildren thrive independently. If we’re not careful, we run the risk of raising the next generation to financially know where to go for fish, but never learn how to fish for…

Refinancing within Retirement Isn’t it ironic that ever since the day you bought your first house, you looked forward to having it paid for? Having your home paid off can be part of most families’ American Dream. I have met with countless retirees who believed paying off their mortgage was essential to their retirement—and for…

5 Actions to Take When the Market Drops As the market takes another unnerving downturn, you call your broker looking for advice and reassurance. After you share your concerns, you hear the empty, infamous words, “Don’t worry—the market will come back.” Very few things raise my blood pressure as much as these 7 words. You…

Three Retirements in One It’s normal to be on the cusp of retirement and not know what to expect. I have seen this look countless times; it’s a healthy mix of anxiousness and excitement. The reason is because retirement is a broad term, which makes it hard to grasp what it will be like. What…

When Safe Becomes Risky You’re counting the days to retirement. Or maybe you’re already retired, but everything seems to be getting more expensive: housing, bills, and let’s not even go into weekly visits to the gas pump and the grocery store. The one thing that doesn’t seem to budge is interest rates. Inflation doesn’t appear…

Is the Million Dollar Nest Egg Broken? We all hear these amounts that we should have saved by the time we retire. We hear we need $1 million dollars, and immediately think – well, I’m already sunk. Others may say you’ll need only $500,000 or $300,000. It can be hard to figure out what we…

This Little Piggy Went to the (Stock) Market A piggy bank changed my life. I remember it distinctly: It was Christmas morning, I was 7 years old, and I ripped off the red giftwrap to find a piggy bank, except this wasn’t the traditional round, pink ceramic pig with a slot in the top. What…