During a recent quarterly market review call, we received the following question from a young man at the University of Texas: How much net worth separates the wealthy from the merely well off? It was a great question, albeit one that’s highly subjective. I think of somebody wealthy as having enough assets put away and… Continue reading →

A lot has been written about the “sandwich generation,” working adults under pressure to raise kids and care for aging parents — and probably forgoing their own financial needs to pull it off. To which women of just about any generation might say: Welcome to my world! Kara Stiles at Forbes wrote an excellent piece… Continue reading →

One of my clients, who is an older man, recently told me about a conversation he had with his daughter, who had just gotten married. A wedding is a special time and certainly a threshold toward a new and different life. Parents often try to impart one last bit of wisdom before their children fully… Continue reading →

Ever looked at the price labels on grocery store shelves? I mean really looked? Sure you have. Any good shopper knows that the big number is the price of the thing you want to buy, while the tiny number is the price per ounce, per pound, or some other unit. That way you can easily… Continue reading →

Americans love “set and forget it” products. Like rotisserie roasters and slow cookers that prepare delicious dinners while we’re miles from the kitchen, any approach that takes out complexity is beloved in our harried, overworked society. That’s why index funds are growing so rapidly. Why pay an advisor good money to pick stocks when the… Continue reading →

It was Dr. Martin Luther King who said “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Weighty words indeed, but they feel apropos of the back-and-forth we see in Washington over a rule meant to protect investors from unscrupulous financial advisors. To catch you up, the Obama administration was on… Continue reading →

You probably think of your own home as your largest expense in life. Perhaps your kids, if you think of them as expenses. A recent study, in fact, estimated that buying a house and raising a child cost about the same — $245,300 for the house and $278,300 to raise a child from birth to… Continue reading →

Quick question: What title does your financial advisor use? What’s actually on his or her business card? If the words are “financial advisor,” the feds could come calling with pointed questions. The problem is one of legal responsibility. In the final weeks of the Obama administration the government was set to raise the bar on… Continue reading →

Being a good financial advisor is a lot like being a good personal physician. You have to listen to what the patient means, whether they are saying it out loud or not. Every primary practice doctor has this experience. The patient comes in, gets weighed, blood pressure taken, and the doctor does his or her… Continue reading →