Before “work from home” became a popular hashtag, my daily commute was a very mundane process. When I was finally able to start going back into my office, my drive suddenly felt new again and I noticed things that my mind would have otherwise glossed over in the normal routine of my drive. One such […]
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CARES Act – RMD Update
June 24, 2020
Required Minimum Distributions, or RMD for short, have received a considerable amount of attention from Congress over the last six months. As touched on earlier this year by Thomas Talbott, the SECURE Act raised the RMD age to age 72 for certain individuals. For more details on that change, please take a moment to read […]
Three Little Bears
May 1, 2020
A favorite book in our household is “Goodnight Moon,” written by Margaret Wise Brown. My oldest son, who is now six, has “outgrown” the book, but my youngest son just recently picked it up and asked me to read it again for the first time in a long time. One of the pages reads, “there […]
COVID-19 and Market Volatility
March 24, 2020
None of us planned for this crisis. It probably seems like a long time ago, but our first blog post of the year, titled Return on Life vs Return on Investment, gave us the foundation for dealing with the current challenge of the COVID-19 and market volatility. The key is not letting heightened emotions and […]
Prepare vs Repair
March 13, 2020
Every year, as a firm, we do something that is very important for you, but you probably never noticed…and that’s a good thing. What is it? We run a test of our Business Continuity Plan, or BCP. As part of this testing procedure, every single person in our office works remotely for the day to […]
Return on Life or Return on Investment?
January 9, 2020
As we reflect back on 2019, it is clear that the stock market had a great year. It feels good reviewing your end of year household balance statement and see your net worth growth due to the stock market, but what happens if the stock market is not so kind in 2020? After all, 2018 […]
5 Monkeys and A Ladder
November 25, 2019
Perhaps you have heard about a fabled behavioral study regarding five monkeys and a ladder. It goes something like this: scientists put five monkeys in a room. In the middle of the room was a ladder with bananas on top. Every time a monkey went up the ladder to retrieve a banana, the scientists soaked […]
More Stock Market Volatility to Come?
August 12, 2019
This past weekend my family and I had a chance to visit friends who recently moved to a place steeped in history, Williamsburg, Virginia. The quiet, car-free street of Colonial Williamsburg provides a stark contrast to the modern-day engineering marvels just down the street, Water Country USA and Busch Gardens. It got me thinking that the last […]
What is Wealth?
June 7, 2019
I know the stock market has been “up and down” the last few weeks, so I wanted you to think about something we have more control over, how we think about wealth. I think it is fair to say that most people think of wealth strictly in terms of money, the more the merrier. However, this one-dimensional […]
Time vs. Money
January 13, 2019
For many people the start of a new year is a chance to re-focus on things that are important to them, whether it is health, relationships or finances, a turning of the calendar means a fresh start. So as we prepare for a New Year, I wanted to share a personal story that challenges the […]