Blog

Allocations

Are you investing as if you were just starting out in life? Many people are. For most of us, our first stock-market experience comes when we become eligible to participate in our employer’s 401(k) or 403(b) plans. These deferred...

Bear Streams

I first heard about the run on Northern Rock bank in September 2007, while playing ping-pong on a terrasse high on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. A British physician said to me “you’re the financial guy, should I...

Donor-Advised Funds

Donor-advised funds (DAF) are public charities into which we can make a charitable gift today and disperse the funds to the causes we support in the future. Many people value the flexibility of a DAF when incorporating charitable...

Gifts

Donating to charity is not a tax dodge. Yes, giving to charity can reduce our taxes, which may provide leverage for our gifting plans, but the money we lose in making a gift is usually more than the taxes we might save by giving our...

Mission Statements

January is a great time for all of us to review our written goals. If you do not have them, now is the time to begin. Writing down what we want forces us to distinguish between momentary desires and those things that are truly...

Our Charitable Missions

Do you ever feel guilty about not giving to a friend’s charitable cause? I do. This is especially true in December when we tend to think about those in need and feel grateful for what we have. After all, Scrooges and Grinches are...

Washington Follies

Once again, Congress has rewritten the retirement-plan rules between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. I am sure that this is only done with the well-being of the American people in mind, that no favors were exchanged, and that...

Wishing You & Yours Happy Holidays

May all the joys of the holiday season gladden your heart. Enjoy every single moment of it with the family and friends you hold close to in life. Happy holiday, and a wonderful New Year!

The Seen and The Unseen

I think way too much about dead economists. I probably think too much about live ones as well, but that is another subject. Lately, I have been pondering Frédéric Bastiat, the French economist who in 1850 wrote his famous...

The Producers

It happens every year at about this time. Clients receive calls from a stockbroker or insurance agent telling them about time-critical actions that need to be taken. Often, there is a mutual fund or annuity that they just have to have...

Thanksgiving - A Proclamation

Contentious midterm elections are over and Thanksgiving is upon us.  Now seems an appropriate moment to reproduce Abraham Lincoln’s original 1863 proclamation creating a national day of gratitude. By the President of...

Magic Carpet Ride

How do you explain the impossibility of a thing? This question brings to mind an inconsequential conversation I had with a childhood friend many years ago. Upon his return from a trip to Iran shortly before the abdication of Mohammad...

The Great War for Civilization

I nearly brought my grandfather’s Victory Medal with me when I went to France last summer. I thought about using it to ward off the war-monger accusations that invariably come from Europeans when I take classes in France. I have...

A Word to the Wise is Enough

How good are personal finance books? Yale economist James Choi * thought he would find out and read several best-sellers only to discover “how at odds some of the advice was with what we as economists thought was the right thing...

Live Long and Prosper

Education and intellect do not protect us from our psychological blind spots. There is no Mr. Spock who is a flesh-and-blood-computer devoid of emotions. Even if we were, it wouldn’t help us. Those who regularly read our...

When What You Know Isn't So

I have never actually written down and numbered what has come to be known in the office as Guyisms. One of these is that “nearly everything that you think you know for certain is probably wrong.” I thought about this when I...

500/hour Pilots

The subject of why I believed a few months ago that it was too early to ramp up risk and go bottom fishing came up in a conversation with my brother recently. The answer is simple enough. I have been through this before, which reminds...

Things Can Turn on a Dime

This week provided the perfect example of why we should not allow ourselves to come under the sway of either the “house money effect” or the “snakebit effect.” Monday and Tuesday’s rallies were among the...

To Do or Not to Do

We know from studies of investors in the United States, Europe, and Asia that we are all prone to psychological traits that cause us to make the same investing mistakes. The first is the “house-money effect.” When markets...

The Lost Boys - Part II

I am paying close attention to the recent market volatility. We shall be rebalancing accounts accordingly and have already begun locking in some of the rates that this turmoil has provided us. We are not completely there yet, since the...

The Lost Boys

Wisdom doesn’t feel as good as I thought it would. In my youth, I unquestioningly believed that the fall of the Iron Curtain meant a new age of peace, understanding, and cooperation. Free trade would make old-fashioned military...

A Quick Note on the Markets

I shall follow up with my posts on the labor market soon, but right now I want to comment on recurring volatility by quoting Warren Buffet. In 1973, he told the Sunday Journal and Star o*f Lincoln, Nebraska that “in the short run...

Labor in America

It is appropriate that America honors workers in September and not in May. The discovery of the New World turned the relationship between owners and workers on its head, a condition that continues to the present day. Europe always had...

The Oncoming Train

Bumper-sticker slogans prevent us from achieving our goals. You know the ones that I mean, the ones that come in 140 characters or less. Behaviorists refer to these as availability heuristics and they are often non-sequiturs. They...

Salman Rushdie

I learned of the attack on Salman Rushdie while reading On Liberty by J. S. Mill. There is nothing surprising about the coincidence. I have a strong interest in the subject of liberty of expression and few have ever made a better...

Lottery

They are always so happy when they make the terrible mistake. I am talking about people who win the lottery or suddenly come into money. The quotes are something like “we gave all of it to the kids” or “we bought...

The Triumph of Hope

They always let me down. Every time I see a headline about a big breakthrough in renewable-energy production or energy storage, it turns out to be nothing more than a press release or evangelism. This is not to say that we are not...

A Rose by Any Other Name

We spend an awful lot of time talking about the need for new sources of energy. The words we use are imprecise and often contradictory. We say renewable and clean energy as if they are the same thing. Wood and ethanol are renewable,...

In the Course of Human Events

We are today in the midst of human events that challenge the assumption that anything is self-evident. I write these words on a continent where, only 1,200 miles away, a brutal land war is raging. The small village where I am staying,...

Letters from France - Politics in France

Imagine that the Republican and Democratic parties suddenly disappeared. That has nearly happened here in France. Unlike our system, French elections take place on Sundays and occur in two rounds. In the recent presidential elections,...

Reevaluating the Fed

I thought that it was a pretty good time to start a business the last time that the Federal Reserve raised rates 0.75%. Bill Clinton was president and Newt Gingrich led the first Republican congress in four decades. Fed chairman Alan...

Patience

Here we go again. When people realized that we were in a real pandemic two years ago, I decided to send a letter every Monday advising people not to panic. I cautioned people about changing their objectives or going to cash. Markets...

Letters From France - Global Inflation

The most obvious sign of inflation in France is the price of gasoline. My Ukrainian cabdriver explained to me how difficult life has become as the result of unrestrained inflation. Electric chargers dot the streets, but so far, I have...

Letters from France

The great statesman Georges Clemenceau famously fled France to avoid being sent to the Devil’s Island penal system in French Guiana. His crime was defying his governments censorship policies. From the secure city of New York, he...

Martyrs of the Race Course

Abraham Lincoln was not wrong about a lot of things, but he was wrong about one thing. In his dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg, Lincoln assured his listeners that “the world will little note, nor long remember what we say...

The Value of Nothing

Riding the Jet-Star

Quantitative Tightening

On the Other Hand

Where Goes Europe?

Irrational Exuberance

The Wisdom of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Complicated

Myths

The Barrier of Negativity

Manpokei

Motivation

Everybody Knows

Canada Protests

Still Not Time to Panic

Interest Rates

Catching A Falling Knife

Volatility

The Season of Scammers

When to Sell

If They Win The Election

The Investment Premise

Au Revoir Mes Amis

"Gonna Find Out Who's Naughty or Nice"

Celebrating The Universal Rights of Man

Planning & Procrastination

The easiest problem to solve is the one that never happens. Yet, we spend a lot of time and money fixing things that could have been avoided. Sometimes, unnecessary difficulties are the result of procrastination. Other times, they are...

Our End-of-the-Year Plea

Every year at this time we receive last-minute requests that are time-sensitive. Year-end finances are always a challenge, but the ongoing disruptions caused by the pandemic magnify them. Many back-office personnel are still working...

Reality Check

For many months we have recommended that investors lower their long-term return assumptions. Very simply, when asset prices are high, we can expect future returns to be lower than average. Conversely, when asset prices are low, we can...

Thank You Veterans

There are many aspects of what we do that are very satisfying. We are in one of the helping professions, which provides us with the sense of purpose necessary for ongoing enthusiasm and commitment. We are grateful for that, but it does...

Howard Beale

I saw the film Network in 1976 with my future wife at the Arnold Theater in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. Beyond being blown away by Faye Dunaway’s portrayal of someone akin to Mary Tyler Moore’s evil twin, I realized...

The Problem of the Driven Man

I do not want to benefit from the misfortune of others. Unfortunately, some of our best clients are the widows of driven men, although lately we are seeing the misfortune of the driven woman. This is not progress. Typically, a person...

Aging

People spend an amazing amount of time worrying about things that they cannot control. For example, we worry about what the stock market is going to do today, or this week, or this year. Yet, we have no control over what the markets...

To Boldly Go

Did you know that 2021 began with 50% of US senators and 32% of US representatives being 65 years old or more? Chuck Grassley and Diane Feinstein had reached 87, while 21 senators were between 70 and 80 years old. Recently, William...

Zenki Koreisha

More and more of our clients are living into their hundreds. Many of our clients today are still active in their nineties. This can be a wonderful thing, as long and healthy lives can also be joyful and meaningful. We have the...

The Three Pillars

Few disciplines require advanced goal-setting skills more than competitive sports. Natural ability is fine, but athletes are competing exclusively against others who possess natural ability. Success requires the identification of the...

The Perfect End

The ancient Greeks understood that the purpose of life is to achieve happiness. From the Greek perspective, all things have a perfect end. The perfect end of an acorn is an oak tree. Anything that interferes with the perfect end is bad...

Now What?

A couple of weeks ago we discussed the ways we spend money and the opportunity costs we accept when making those choices. You can read the post here. We now know the basic principles for spending money with the goal of sustainable...

Sacrifice

I loved going to all of the musical events when my children were young and always felt that we made a good decision in choosing a school that did not neglect the arts. The board should have made a plea for funds immediately after any...

Happy Labor Day

Have you ever been to the Park City Museum in Utah? I make it a point to go there every time we take our annual family ski vacation. The museum is housed in the old City Hall, which also housed the Police Department, the Fire...

The Long Commute

We frequently encounter people who decide to buy a house that is far from where they work. Typically, a larger and more beautiful home, probably with a pool, can be purchased where land costs are a small part of the price. Often, a...

The Road Not Taken

The simple fact is that we cannot do everything. When we choose to do one thing, we are also choosing not to do something else. In economics, this is called opportunity cost. Because neither time nor resources are limitless, we need to...

The Timeline of Happiness

The best way to gauge the happiness bang for the buck is to reflect on our own lives. What memories do you have that make you feel happier just by recalling them? When you think about it, you will certainly find that the memories that...

Spending For Happiness

Many, or possibly most, people do not know how to spend money for maximum and sustainable happiness. Worse, too many people spend money in a way that is destructive to their ability to achieve their goals. Lack of familiarity with the...

Guess Watts

Answers: Answers Citation: Gates, Bill. Essay. In How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need, 58. Alfred A. Knopf, 2021.

Cinderella

We all know the story of Cinderella, whose mother died and whose father got remarried. When Cinderella’s dad passed away, Cinderella became a servant in her own home. Do you think this is a fairytale? Unfortunately, stories very...

To Trust or Not to Trust

After careful consideration, you may decide that you wish to establish a plan that provides for the management of your affairs while you are living, avoids probate, and ensures that your assets are distributed according to your wishes...

Who is an Executor?

In an earlier post, I explained that assets that are solely in our names, or held as tenants in common and community property, will pass to our beneficiaries through the probate process. Some trusts will also pass via probate, but that...

How Assets Transfer

The sad fact is that too often our estates do not go to our intended beneficiaries. This is not to say that we have not done all of the right things. We went to the attorney, often several times. We participated in a formal signing...

What is Estate Planning

Among the first questions we ask people during our first meeting is “have you done any estate planning?” The response is usually “I/we have a will.” Sometimes we hear “we don’t need that” or...

Planning & Future Posts

Among the most important services that we provide is the ongoing coaching that clients need in order for their plans to succeed. We never want to see the time, effort, and money invested in planning go to waste. We believe that...

Memorial Day

My first recollection of “Decoration Day” is watching a parade from the window of our apartment in Queens, New York. Soldiers carrying rifles and uniformed veterans of the First and Second World Wars marched to a small...

Step-Up

How to tax capital gains is a topic of much discussion today. Yet, we find that many people do not understand how we tax gains on assets. Generally, we tax long-term gains (assets held more than a year) at preferred rates. Assets sold...

Protecting Our Disabled Children

We all have an obligation to make life as healthy, fulfilling, and safe as possible for those who may have physical or mental conditions that make life especially challenging. Fortunately, we have tools available to us to improve...

Congratulations Anthony!

The primary reason that we involve ourselves in tax preparation is that an in-depth understanding of taxes is crucial to providing quality financial-planning advice. This is why we are so proud that Anthony has successfully completed...

Living in a Republic is Tricky

The fact that we share a common language and have constitutionally-protected rights to interstate trade and travel can sometimes make us forget that each state has its own laws, courts, and legislatures. In our very mobile society,...

The 'Unsecure' Act

Congress and the Federal Reserve acted with necessary haste last year to implement rules and policies designed to prevent economic collapse. Among those changes is the suspension of Required Minimum Distributions from retirement plans....

Happy New Year!

The whirlwind that the pandemic unleashed on the world can dampen our appreciation of the amazing technological strides that we made last year. I need to remind myself how miraculous it is that via my iPhone I can listen to live radio...

Bear Traps

Years ago, when we went camping at Anastasia State Park, one of our children had the brilliant idea of making a bear trap to protect us as we slept. This ingenious contraption consisted of strings tied to sticks hammered into the...

Happy Holidays

If we have learned anything from the events of 2020, it is to remind ourselves of what is truly important in our lives. This year has reinforced for us how much a sense of purpose is essential to living a fulfilled life. The simple...

Fooled Again

It hardly seems like 49 years since the song Won’t Get Fooled Again by The Who became a big hit. Every election the song comes to mind as I ponder how we do allow ourselves to be repeatedly fooled. We read newspaper articles and...

Driving A Nail With A Wrench

We can drive a nail with a wrench and we can unscrew a nut with a pair of pliers. When we lack the proper tools that is better than nothing. Still, we should always use the right tool for the right job. This is also true with our...

The Movie Jaws As A Metaphor

Anybody who grew up in a northern tourist town can relate to the movie Jaws. For the fictional community of Amity Island, the season bookended by Memorial Day and Labor Day represents life or death for the tiny village. The killer...

Rockets

A small group of strangers gathered on Memorial Island at 4:00 AM on February 8, 2010 to watch the last space shuttle pierce the night sky over Florida. Following the launch, we quietly shared our mutual sense of having lost something....

The Tough Challenges of Caring for Our Families

By far, the most rewarding aspect of this job is helping clients deal with the challenges in their lives. Helping people work through emotional decisions or a family crisis is especially important in making our jobs meaningful. Asset...

Economy and Innovation

As a teenager, I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the New Tamiami Air Race, which took place here in Florida. My luck came about because, during high school, I hung around a local airfield owned by the renowned polar explorer,...

Human Innovation

So much of what we read purports to tell us what the future will bring. Among the most common admonitions is that we should not expect things to ever be the same. Things are never the same, nor should they be. Extreme challenges drive...

Now The Hard Part

Now for the hard part. The disruptions in the financial markets have been largely soothed by the extraordinary efforts of the Federal Reserve. Forward-looking market participants are following the adage “don’t fight the Fed...

Planning Charitable Gifts - DAFs

This shall be the last of my discussions of developing human capital and charitable planning, for a while at least. Once families have developed their charitable mission plans, they will need to determine the best way to make their...

A Marriage Made In Washington

What happens when the interests of insurance-company lobbyists and politicians converge? The answer is called the Setting Every Community Up For Retirement Enhancement Act (SECURE). For many years, insurance companies have fretted over...

New From Congress - S.E.C.U.R.E.

For the first time in many years, Congress has made consequential revisions to the rules governing Qualified Retirement Plans. The Setting Every Community Up For Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019 (SECURE) effects many of our clients...

Investing In Human Capital

We spend a lot of time focused on certain metrics or benchmarks because they are easily measured. Whether we are counting the number of steps we take in a day or our investment performance relative to an arbitrary benchmark, we use...

Planning For College

Did you know that how much student debt a person is likely to have varies greatly depending upon which state you live in? According to the Institute for College Access and Success, the highest level is in Connecticut, where the...

The Problem With China

Perhaps it is wisdom that has allowed me to recognize the fallacy of so many of my youthful beliefs. I truly thought that the economic liberation of the People’s Republic of China, under Deng Xiaoping, foretold a future of...

Somebody Should Do Something About That! PART 2

I want to thank all of our clients who responded so well to our water-bottle initiative. Discovering how many of our clients are concerned about the natural beauty of their communities is gratifying. One client alerted us to the...

Somebody Should Do Something About That!

My wife and I love to go sailing in the ocean off of Fort Pierce Inlet during the months of May, June, and July. The water turns that magnificent turquoise color that we see on the Chamber-of-Commerce calendar. The seas tend to be low,...

Tip Of The Month - Lowering Our Cable Bills

If you have ever considered ditching your cable bill, you are not alone. In the first quarter of this year, Comcast lost 121,000 pay-TV subscribers while AT&T lost 544,000 pay-TV customers. That means nearly 700,000 “cut the...

Economic Well-Being In The United States

Anyone who attends our public presentations knows how much we value all of the quality information that is free to us as Americans. We are much better off than the citizens of Canada, who struggle with terrible gaps in necessary...

April 15th, Carpe Diem!

Some people view tax day as a cause for regret. We think that tax day is the perfect day to rethink our goals and to prepare for the future. This is the first year under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) and some of the...

What Are You Retiring To?

Most retirement planning focuses on the search for the most efficient means to save enough money for something called “retirement.” In other words, retirement planning is planning to quit our jobs. We plan to retire from...

Reactive VS Proactive Tax-Planning

During the tax preparation process, clients often ask us what they can do to lower their tax bill. Unfortunately, as many of you have heard, “April is too late for tax planning.” While we work diligently with clients to...

Having The Talk

Having The Talk Recently, we presented to a group of clients our new template for crafting letters of instruction to their heirs. We are gratified by the kind and positive feedback from everybody who attended. While still a work in...

When is it appropriate to adjust your investment objective?

When is it appropriate to adjust your investment objective? One thing is for sure; it is never when we are emotionally swept up by market exuberance, or conversely, when we are in the grips of widespread panic. Instead, our objectives...