The United States Treasury Bill is enjoying its fifteen minutes of fame as interest rates soar. The T-Bill currently pays more than 5.5%, so should you T-Bill and chill?
Growing up, I often went to First Interstate Bank with my mom to cash checks, make deposits, or withdraw money. Our visits were...
I'm celebrating my twentieth anniversary as a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ Practitioner, and in honor of this milestone, I'm posting twenty observations.
- Successful investors have financial plans. A plan is your financial GPS that helps you achieve your stated goals.
- A family will or trust is...
I received my CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ practitioner designation twenty years ago, on October 6, 2003, and what a long, strange trip it's been.
During the Tech Wreck from 2000 to 2002, I attended a Morgan Stanley Branch Manager's conference where a speaker shared how his dad told him to...
Financial planning is important, but life planning is better. A financial plan is a finite service, a one-time event. Life planning takes financial planning to a higher level. It's enduring, vibrant, and active. It's proactive. It's forever, and forever is a long time!
I've run several marathons...
Timing is everything.
Arcangelo won the 155th running of the Belmont Stakes with a winning time of two minutes and 29 seconds. If he raced Secretariat in the 1973 Belmont, he would've lost by 5 seconds, a wide margin.
Carl Lewis set the world record for the 100-meter dash in 1991 with a time...
Zero sugar. Zero emissions. Zero fees. The number zero is popular these days as people pursue more with less, and investment giants like Vanguard, Fidelity, and Schwab continually shave basis points from their expense ratios to remain uber-competitive.
The Wall Street Journal recently published...
Is it time to buy bonds? The Federal Reserve interest rate hikes decimated bonds, wiping out years of gains, and if you own bonds, you feel the pain. Long-term government bonds lost money for five years, while stocks produced stellar profits. Over the past decade, the S&P 500 is up 221%, and bonds...
I don't like chaos. My anxiety, stress, and blood pressure all rise as it increases. Yet, I work in an industry that thrives on it as thousands of experts analyze millions of data points to try and answer a single question, like, will stocks rise today? Finding one answer is impossible because any...
Smokey the Bear is a firefighting hero. The US Forest Service and Ad Council created the campaign in 1944, and 96% of adults recognize Smokey Bear and his catchphrase, "Only YOU can prevent wildfires!"[1] According to the National Park Service, humans cause nearly 85% of wildfires in the United...
I like bonds, but I'm struggling with their long-term performance. Bonds are inversely related to the direction of interest rates; when rates rise, prices fall like a see-saw in a park, and since the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates in 2022, the one-month US Treasury Bill rate has...
Bill Buckner committed one of the worst errors in baseball history. During game six of the 1986 World Series, the Boston Red Sox led the New York Mets three games to two. In extra innings, a ground ball went through his legs, allowing the winning run to score. The Mets would go on to win the game...
College tuition keeps rising, with inflation rates averaging about 6% to 8% yearly. The average annual cost for a public university is $27,940, and for a private school, it is $57,750. It's not cheap!
What are your options for paying tuition or reducing your college costs? Let's review a few...