Retirement Field Guide

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“At what cost?”

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Everything we do in life comes with a cost - whether it is actual money, opportunity cost, relationship cost or otherwise. Make no mistake about it, there is a cost. In the article I wrote a couple of weeks back about designing your days in retirement, I mentioned that I could easily be fooled into thinking that I need to have a huge business in order to view myself as… Read More

Designing Your Days In Retirement

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A couple of weeks ago, I attended an industry conference in Arizona that was filled with the creme de la creme of advisors. Being around a group of high-flyers like that, it wasn’t surprising to learn that most of these advisors have big goals. Many want to build large organizations with lots of advisors and “own their market.” They manage billions of dollars and are actively onboarding as many clients… Read More

My (Ir)Rational Fear

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Over the past few months, I’ve started to worry about dying. This sounds morose but stay with me because this is really a post about life. Irrational as though it may seem for a 36-year-old to worry about dying, I seriously do. Oddly though, I don’t worry about dying in a car accident or anything like that - I worry about having a heart attack. Much of this angst can… Read More

Writing a Letter to Your Loved Ones

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This site is all about living a better retirement and having a bigger impact. An idea I have heard from a few people recently is to write a letter to your loved ones - particularly those you hope to have some sort of impact on. In my case, I have two young sons. Regardless of their age, I am making a commitment to write a letter to them each year… Read More

Talking About Childhood and Retirement

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Last week, I was interviewed by my good friend and fellow advisor, Justin Castelli on his All About Your Benjamins podcast. I’m thankful for that opportunity, not because we discussed retirement (which we did), but because he wanted to chat about my childhood. Justin and I had previously shared an offline call where we happened to chat about how I grew up and he encouraged me to share my story… Read More

Finding Fulfillment in Retirement

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A couple of months back, I had a conversation with Fritz Gilbert, the writer and owner of the retirement blog, The Retirement Manifesto. I’ve been a reader of his for quite some time as his posts are always insightful and entertaining. His writing offers particularly useful perspectives for me thanks to his willingness to share all that he’s going through as he is going through it. I reached out to… Read More

A Letter to Do-It-Yourselfers

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Have you ever had a moment in your life where you felt overwhelming fear? Overwhelming in the sense that you were practically paralyzed from taking any action whatsoever? I’ll come back to this… If you’re a Do-It-Yourselfer (DIYer), before you get upset with me, let me be clear - this is not a call to hire an advisor in the traditional sense. I’m not an advisor who believes there is… Read More

Why Are We Still Listening?

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A great graphic made it’s way around the internet via the Wall Street Journal. The graphic shows the predictions from 50 economists on the direction of interest rates. How did they do? NOT A SINGLE ECONOMIST WAS EVEN IN THE BALLPARK! Every single day, pundits go on TV saying what they believe will happen with complete confidence that their prediction is going to be correct. Apparently, accuracy is hard to… Read More

The Personal Part of Personal Finance

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This week on Twitter, there has been a lot of talk about whether it’s smart to pay off your home or to invest those funds. It evolved into a discussion about whether to use a total return or income-based strategy for retirement planning. The answer is neither and both are right and wrong. You read that correctly. When it comes to retirement planning and financial planning in general, we all… Read More

Free is Never Free & Thoughts on Discounts

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I’m writing this as I sit in a car dealership awaiting my wife’s vehicle. When we purchased the car, one of the advertised benefits of purchasing the car here was the free “car services” that were thrown in with the purchase of the vehicle. Essentially, free inspections and free oil changes. But, they’re definitely not free services. Because what seems to happen each time you bring the car in is… Read More