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…
Robo-Investing
A Modern Twist On Paying Yourself 1st! We all do it. I can remember as a child being warned by my mother about the dangers of it, so it’s nothing new. Advertisers and marketers are counting on it. Amazon built…
There’s a F.I.R.E. – I Just Don’t Feel The Warmth…..
There’s a “movement” afoot and its called Financial Independence and Retire Early or F.I.R.E. To oversimplify, the followers of F.I.R.E. live relatively frugal lives using the money they save to pay down debt and invest. The goal? To have enough passive income that…
Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) – A Primer
Real estate is considered by many to be an essential part of any balanced investment portfolio. Why? Well, although far from perfect, there is somewhat of an inverse correlation between stocks and real estate. So when stock process slide, real estate…
Calculating Net Worth – Your Financial Report Card!
The underlying premise behind “net worth” is the question: What would I be worth if I were to sell everything I own and paid off all of my debts. Its not very realistic – no one is actually going to…
Big News For Investors – No Fee Funds!
With all of the political and financial noise of this week you would totally get a pass if you missed the most important small investor news for quite some time. What’s so important? In the blog entry titled “Tale of…
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…
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…
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 –…
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…