2019 | Page 20 of 22

Life Insurance: Protect Your Most Important Asset

Jan 18 2019

You may think that your most important asset is your home, your nest egg, your priceless collection of Etruscan snoods. Your most important asset is you – your human capital. Your human capital is your current and future economic contributions to your family. Perhaps you’ve gone to college and majored in a profession to pursue a career. You may have earned advanced degrees and designations to increase your knowledge, professionalism, and income. All of this increases your human capital – your ability to earn, substantially, over your lifetime. Now that you have a family, a spouse and kids to support,… Read More

Cost of Credit Card Debt Calculator

Jan 17 2019

Credit card debt is terrible. To a financial planner, credit card debt is like having a cluster of thousands of baby spiders crawling on your body and under your clothes: You cannot act fast enough and there is no amount of modesty worth leaving the situation unresolved. Recently, I spoke with someone who did not pay off their credit card debt every month even though they easily could have. Their negligence was due solely to the effort it took to pay each month. What they did not realize was that when you fail to pay off your credit card each… Read More

Xennials and Retirement Planning

Jan 15 2019

You’ve heard of Millennials but have you heard of Xennials? And if you are a Xennial, does this label make a difference in your retirement planning? It might. You could scoff at these terms a marketing ploys or just conversation starters but it does help to know something about the specific obstacles people in your generation may face. We all need to save and prepare for retirement and recognizing the economic factors that affect our earnings can alleviate guilt about not saving enough and motivate us to do more. Business Insider defines Xennials as a ““microgeneration” born between 1977 … Read More

The Equity-Indexed Annuity

Jan 14 2019

If you’re anywhere near retirement age, or if you’re in retirement, chances are you’ve had an Equity-Indexed Annuity (EIA) pitched to you.

Now, if for some reason you’ve missed out on these pitches (Maybe you’ve been out the country? Don’t have a phone? Don’t read your mail?) here’s the gist: Insurance salesman tells you about this wonderful product that allows you to participate in the stock market’s upside, while not experiencing any of the market downside. In today’s stock market climate, sounds pretty good, huh?

A couple of things come into play that the salesguy doesn’t highlight for you:

First, …

Do You Have Investing FOMO?

Jan 13 2019

You get it: you need to invest wisely in order to grow your wealth.

You understand the importance of getting your money into the market, and you’ve been diligently contributing to retirement accounts and maybe even a brokerage account for years now.

But you can’t help but wonder… are you investing in the best possible way? Are you potentially missing out on a better investment someone else is using that you don’t know about?

It’s reasonable to feel this fear of missing out on something great — or having a little investing FOMO. It’s when you act on this fear that …

Archive - 2019