How many people do you think have seen your social security number? Ten? One Hundred? One Thousand? More? It’s hard to know the answer, because your social security number shows up so frequently on applications and other documents, and who knows how many people have seen or handled that information while it’s being processed. At one point it wasn’t a …
PubGPS Happy Hour: Online Savings Accounts and Why 1.50% Liquid is Pretty Darn Good
Savings accounts at most Brick and Mortar banks are currently paying abysmal interest rates, even as the prime rate has been making a steady rise. For the most part, the interest earned on your savings at a typical bank is likely to be low enough that you would be well advised to simply round it down to 0%. However, there …
How to Become a Billionaire
How much do you have to save in order to build a portfolio worth one billion dollars? For the average investor the answer is simple: A lot of money. First let’s take a look at some of the assumptions. For returns, we are going to assume an average compound interest rate of 8%, and a time frame of fifty years …
Know What Tools You Own & How to Use Them
Traditional investing can get a little boring. We think of traditional investing as owning stock or bonds directly or through a mutual fund or ETF, but sometimes it can be hard to ignore the gains that other alternative investments are making at a given time. It is also easy to convince ourselves that these new investment options are the wave …
The Market Just Dropped. What Does it Mean to Me?
If you haven’t been hiding under a rock, you’ve probably heard about the recent turmoil in the market as the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered its largest one day point drop in history, following some less severe drops in the preceding days. If you were unable to resist the temptation to take a look at your account balances, you likely …
The Rush of the Purchase
We all know the feeling. Whether it’s something small like a new piece of technology, or something that represents a major lifestyle change like a new car, boat, home, etc. The excitement we feel when preparing for and committing to these purchases is very powerful, and can blind us to the reality of the decision. Some purchases are exciting for …
Why Hire a Financial Planner in the First Place?
Let’s say you are settled into a career, you have a home and a family, and two cars in the garage. Maybe there is some debt to clean up, and you know you have to save more for retirement, college costs, and other life events, but you are planning on getting around to it soon, after the next raise or …
Does the Cup of Coffee Everyday Make a Difference?
Pinch the pennies and the dollars will follow. That’s the common theory at least, but how realistic is it? Sometimes called “the Latte Effect”, the theory follows that financial problems start with the small purchases. Buying a $4 coffee every morning ends up costing you $1,040 every year. Paying $10 each day for lunch instead of brown-bagging it can add …
Accept What You Don’t Know
Managing finances is a largely predictive art, but sometimes we have to admit that our crystal ball doesn’t always function properly. It can be incredibly challenging to picture what our lives will look like in the space of a few years, let alone timeframes measured in decades. If you are asked to estimate what your income and expenses will be …
The Race to Zero
Today the awareness of investment-related fees is higher than ever. While Benjamin Graham and other professional investors wrote about the erosive effects of high mutual fund management fees, trading costs, and advisory fees many decades ago, Vanguard Funds can be credited with really starting the competition to lower fees by using their low fee structure as a comparison point and …