What Can A Surgeon Teach Us About Making Decisions?
It’s a big year for my family as we’re preparing for each of our three kids to move on to new schools this Fall. It has been interesting to watch as each of them has had a decision to make regarding their school of choice. It wasn’t simple—for them or us.
For example, my fourteen-year-old son had the following two options in front of him: to follow in his sisters’ footsteps and attend our local high school or to step out of his comfort zone and explore another school that was further away. The way that we helped him decide, I believe can also be a solid framework for financial planning decisions that we make. > SEE MORE
Posted by:
Pete Dixon, CFP®
Partner and Advisor
What’s THE Most Important Thing You Can Do To Prepare For Retirement?
I was thinking about this question while reading an article a client sent to me. You can find the write-up here, and it’s a helpful “countdown to retirement” with many tips to consider as you approach retirement. As I looked through the list and thought about covering these issues with our own clients over the years, the question came to mind: what is the most important financial planning step you can take to feel great about your retirement plan?
It’s really a tough question since there are a lot of important issues to consider when “taking the leap” away from a career that you’ve had for so many years. Topics such as health insurance, do you have enough saved, are you invested properly, Social Security timing and others are obviously important to explore. There’s also the softer part of the equation: how will you spend and enjoy your time? Should you still work? How will you miss the social aspect of working and contributing?
But if I were forced to answer, what would I say is the most important question? That’s when I realized it’s the one that I have been recommending most lately when helping someone plan for retirement. It’s this simple question: how much do you need to live on (and how sure are you of that?)? > SEE MORE
Posted by:
Pete Dixon, CFP®
Partner and Advisor
Can Budgeting Actually Be Rewarding?
Many people view budgeting as a never-ending exercise in self-denial, characterized primarily by the word “no”. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Instead, think about budgeting as the connective tissue between where your money is going this week, this month or even this year and the life in retirement you’re working toward. When seen in that light, budgeting can be remade into an affirmative tool, an integral part of a fruitful and constructive financial rhythm aligned with your values and goals. And regardless of where you are financially, consider this: Staying within the reasonable guidelines you’ve set with your budget is like saying “yes” to a fulfilling retirement.
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Waypoint Wealth Management
How Should We Rank The World?
Maybe you wonder as you peruse the global news headlines with your morning coffee: “What really IS inside my international investments, anyway?” Or “Did Turkey’s stock market really go up by 252% in 1999?” Okay, maybe that’s a stretch and you’re not wondering about that. While we certainly hope that’s not on your mind, we do think it’s interesting to peek into the world of our investments and point out the messy truths of international diversification–especially with this area of portfolios doing very well as we head to the end of the first half of the year.
Let’s expand on last month’s post (here), where we reviewed the size (market cap) of markets worldwide. What if we could see the last 20 years’ annual performance, in order, for 41 various countries across the globe? More importantly, what can we learn from it? The picture below ranks the annual stock market performance for developed global markets (from highest to lowest) over the last 20 years:
Click here to view an enlarged image
What can we take away from an image like this, to help us to be better investors? > SEE MORE
Posted by:
Pete Dixon, CFP®
Partner and Advisor
Post Election Reflections
Whether you’re feeling elated, deflated or mostly just jaded about what just happened in the U.S. elections, we wanted to reach out to you with a few thoughts related to the recent election. It’s possible that even President-elect Trump himself didn’t see this one coming, and so we wanted to provide some perspective from this important event.
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