• Finance Basics,  Retirement

    Why Market Downturns Are Our Friend!

    A young colleague of mine was shocked when she looked at her most recent 401K investment returns. You see, her relatively short experience with investing has been contained entirely during the longest bull market in modern history. For someone who’s entire experience…

  • Finance Basics

    Necessary Financial Math

    Math. Love it or hate it, if you want to understand your finances you’ll need to learn a little math. For example, in a previous post I told you that if you saved $503 a month, you could have 1 million dollars…

  • Finance Basics,  Retirement

    What are Inflation Protected Securities?

    Earlier I introduced the concept of the inflation protected securities when I wrote about Bogleheads’ investment strategies. Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) can be purchased at www.treasurydirect.gov, in $100 increments (minimum $100 purchase) and are available in 5, 10 and 30-year…

  • Finance Basics

    Diversification – The #1 Rule of Investing

    When I was working on my MBA I became interested in a technology company that was changing the way the computer industry stored data. This was 1990 – long before the dot-com craze and this company actually manufactured something –…

  • Finance Basics

    The Rule of 72

    There is an often misquoted “rule of 72” and it goes like this….. If you want to know the number of years needed to double money at a given rate of return, you just divide 72 by the rate. For…