Estate Plans and Your Children
After spending a lifetime managing your money to ensure that you actually have something to leave to your heirs, there are some questions that might naturally spring to mind. How much should you leave them? Should you make arrangements to give it to them while you’re still alive? More importantly, will giving them a large […]
What makes a good financial strategy?
When you’re going on a journey, there are three essential questions to ensure you have a great trip. How will I get there? How much will it cost? How will I deal with the unexpected? Answering these questions thoughtfully will allow for a more pleasant trip. A written financial strategy serves the same purpose in […]
Your Retirement Plan: Staying The Course
During the past several months, a few clients have expressed concerns about world events and the potential impact on their investments. Concerns cited have included the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, rising interest rates, inflation, recession, and weak economic news and so on. If you have questions about current economic news this is a good opportunity to […]
Pros and Cons of Annuities
With the turbulent times we have been experiencing in the markets, more people are considering annuities to ensure a certain income in their retirement years. It might not suit everybody to put some of their funds into annuities, and there is always the question of how much do you invest in them. There is no […]
Reading the Economic Tea Leaves
An important retirement planning skill is having the ability to “sniff out” the future direction of various factors, such as inflation and interest rates for their potential impact on future household spending and savings efforts. “Reading the tea leaves” is a folk lore expression related to the practice of attempting to divine the future from […]
Financial Self-Care
Self-care is a popular buzzword, and it’s an important one. It refers to the deliberate choice of thoughts and actions that are good for your mental and physical wellbeing. Financial self-care means practicing this with money matters to reduce your stress and increase your optimism. It’s about making concrete plans, setting goals, and consistently practicing […]
Advice to a Future Widow
Most wives outlive their husbands. Women live longer than men the same age and tend to marry men who are older than they are. So, if you’re a wife, it is more likely you will become a widow than your husband becoming a widower. Knowing this, how can you prepare for it? First of all, […]
Cycle of Market Emotions
Getting emotional about investments can easily lead to poor decisions as investors fall prey to negative thoughts and fears. The chart below helps to illustrate the emotional aspects of investing. The human brain constantly searches for trends or patterns in things, trying to make sense out of even random events and data. This essential life […]
How’s Your Group Life Insurance?
Owen is married and has two children. He has been working at the same company for over five years and relies heavily on his employee group plan for his life insurance needs. A new single co-worker got the same benefits after only 90-days and Owen wonders if his group insurance can let him down. Owen […]
The Fed ‘Put’ Revisited
When investment markets officially hit “bear market” territory in June 2022 – while Central Banks in North America and elsewhere were continuing to raise interest rates – questions began swirling about whether the US Federal Reserve (Fed) would once again rescue the markets by exercising the famous Greenspan “put”! This is the move whereby the […]