Archives

Five retirement planning priorities if you plan to retire in the next 5 years

by Dave Conley on January 27, 2023.

Retirement is a time when many investors shift their focus from accumulating wealth to preserving and generating income from their existing assets. As an investor nearing retirement, there are several key considerations to keep in mind to ensure a successful transition into retirement. Here are the five most important things an investor within five years...

Financing or Paying Cash for Cars

by Randy Chalmers on January 27, 2023.

Like Dave Ramsey says, a lot of people state they will always have a car payment, which is something I personally have said most of my adult life. This is because we’ve learned to budget our lives around paying our necessities like the mortgage, groceries, water, electricity, and…car payments? According to 2022 data from Experian,...

I am just trying to get ahead… (of who)?

by Dave Conley on January 13, 2023.

Just for a minute, imagine what it might feel like to be satisfied with simply having “Enough.” How might that change your priorities? Your daily schedule? It’s important you actually sit down and think about it because only you can define “Enough.” What might happen if you were to make this shift? Would you work less? Would you spend less? Would you sleep more? Would you quit your job and start something new? Would you give more to charity? Maybe nothing new would happen. But what I can tell you is this: If you can’t find a way to be satisfied with enough, you may never be satisfied with anything.

Some Financial Highlights from the Secure Act 2.0

by Randy Chalmers on January 6, 2023.

529 Changes Previously, if you saved for your child’s college and they did not need the funds you could either transfer them to another student or withdraw the funds incurring a penalty. Under the Secure Act 2.0 (SA 2.0) you can now roll these unused funds into Roth IRAs without income tax or any tax...

Economic forecasts for 2023.

by Dave Conley on January 6, 2023.

Predicting the direction of the market is like predicting when you will hit the bulls-eye in a dart game. The majority of the time throughout market history, the markets have been rising. History shows that the chance of your money growing in a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds is much like the odds of your next dart hitting any number on the dartboard... except the bulls-eye. If you are going to try and time the market by moving your money in and out, you have to ask yourself how confident are you that you can hit the bullseye when you do.

What is an Annual Review?

by Randy Chalmers on December 26, 2022.

Whether you are brand new to investing and have never had an annual review, or you’ve had many annual reviews, you might be interested to find out a little bit more of what is done during the review process. The first step is obviously to see how your portfolio has performed in the past 12...

2023 Outlook for economy & investors

by Dave Conley on December 23, 2022.

Recessions are painful, no doubt about it. But they are necessary to clean out the excesses of prior growth periods... “You can’t have such a sustained period of growth without an occasional downturn to balance things out.”

Credit Cards

by Randy Chalmers on December 12, 2022.

Like most topics, who you speak to about credit cards drastically impacts the narrative of why you should or shouldn’t use them. So instead of trying to change your mind one way or the other, let’s just look at some facts about credit cards. How does the interest rate work on my credit card? The...

Are you an investor… or a gambler?

by Dave Conley on December 9, 2022.

In simple terms, speculators are trying to out-smart the markets while investors simply participate in the markets. The investment time horizon is also a very important factor as speculation tends to be over the short-term while investing is over the long-term.

Stress or Distress ? The difference is your perception.

by Dave Conley on December 2, 2022.

The S&P 500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average are not reality. Reality is not price-to-earnings ratios and technical market studies. Symbols on the computer screen are not the real world. In the real world, companies create wealth. Stock certificates don’t. Stock certificates are simply proxies for reality.