Does Money = Happiness?
Any new year is often a time to reflect on what’s important to you. Financial and investment planning is obviously money-focused. But I’ve been thinking about my client conversations over the years and how the focus of those conversations really are about the things that bring you happiness. Is it the money that does it? Or is it what that money affords us? And at what points do we have enough?
Eighteenth-century Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau said, “The money you have gives you freedom; the money you pursue enslaves you.” He clearly believed that money alone can’t guarantee our happiness, and many other philosophers, business moguls, and philanthropists both before and after his time would agree.
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Waypoint Wealth Management
Does Cryptocurrency Have a Place In Your Portfolio?
Has all the attention to “Bitcoin” and “cryptocurrency” got you wondering what all the fuss is about? The news around this is hard to ignore, so we thought we’d take a closer look. Although this will be a bit more technical, I hope it’s helpful as you continue to hear about this topic.
Our quick take? Cryptocurrency is an interesting development with a number of promising possibilities. Human ingenuity is always a marvel to behold. But like any relatively new, highly volatile pursuit, it entails considerable risk. If by chance you’ve thought of trading in it for fun or profit, we advise against putting in any more than you could afford to lose entirely. In our estimation, cryptocurrency remains more of a speculative venture than a disciplined investment.
With that, let’s take a look. > SEE MORE
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Waypoint Wealth Management
From Gold Watch, To Smartphone
The infamous “gold watch”.
We’ve been working with investors and especially retirees for many years now, and we sometimes joke about how if you retired many years ago you may have received a pension and a “gold watch“. Have you heard of this?
Have any of you actually received a gold watch for retiring? As a confession, we’re not sure that after all these years we’ve ever seen or heard of a client having one of those watches. Maybe once, a while back? If you have, please let us know because we’re beginning to wonder if they actually existed.
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Waypoint Wealth Management
3 Principles That Round Out Our Strategy
In recent years, U.S. stocks have outperformed international stocks and growth stocks have outperformed value stocks, and this has led many to question the benefits of diversification. We should begin with a look at the appropriate lens through which to view investment strategy performance. Then we will address several issues that work to fog our lens and challenge our ability to stay the course. Taken together, we believe an understanding of these topics fosters the mindset necessary to remain disciplined in the face of adversity.
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Waypoint Wealth Management
How Can “Sequence of Return” Help or Harm You?
Clearly, there is a lot to think about when planning for retirement. While we have a degree of control over many of the choices involved, there’s one big wild card called sequence risk.
Sequence risk is the risk that you’ll encounter negative investment returns in early retirement. This is an important consideration, because the random sequence – or order – in which you earn your returns early in retirement can have a significant impact on your lasting wealth. Simply put, a retirement portfolio that happens to experience positive returns early in retirement has a better chance to outlast an identical portfolio that must endure negative returns early in retirement (if withdrawal amounts are not adjusted) … even if their long-term rates of return end up the same.
Since nobody can predict which return sequence they’ll experience early in their retirement, every family should prepare for a range of possibilities with their retirement planning. > SEE MORE
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