Make joy-based budgeting a New Year’s resolution
Do your New Year’s resolutions for 2016 include crafting a workable budget that you’ll actually want to stick to? Are you stumped about how to make it happen? One answer is an approach that financial advisor Manisha Thakor, director of...
Your Most Valuable Asset Is Yourself
Years ago, my colleagues and I conducted a fairly large-scale research project. We interviewed a bunch of high-income professionals who provided professional services. This group included doctors, dentists and lawyers, and like most of us, they earned money only when...
What Investors Should Have Learned From Recent Market Volatility
How did you spend August 2015? Take a moment to really think about this question, as it can have serious implications for your portfolio in 2016 and beyond. As you may recall, this was the month we were all reminded...
A Perfect Storm For Low Returns
Today’s investors may have drawn the proverbial “short straw.” From an investment perspective, they are confronting what might be considered a “perfect storm” creating strong head winds against higher expected returns. We’ll begin by discussing the three main factors conspiring...
Surprising Lessons About Investing From Donald Trump
I write about investing, not politics. By invoking Donald Trump as an example, please understand that I’m taking no political position. That said, there are some surprising lessons you can learn from Trump about investing. Here are two of them:...
How to prevent clients from making a classic behavioral investing mistake
At some point, we’ve all had a client walk into the office and start a sentence with something like “I heard” or “I read.” This happened pretty regularly after David Swensen wrote a book about his experience managing Yale’s endowment...
Look Abroad For Higher Returns
Previously, we examined three main factors conspiring against investors seeking higher expected returns. These factors can combine to generate a “perfect storm,” at least from an investment perspective, facing today’s investors. We then turned to the four most effective ways...
Why Index Investing Wins
J.B. Heaton, Nick Polson and J.H. Witte recently authored a nice short paper—it’s all of four pages—entitled “Why Indexing Works.” In it, the authors developed a simple stock selection model to explain why active equity fund managers tend to underperform...
Using Factors To Lower Risk
Many investors today are confronting what could be considered a “perfect storm” that is creating strong head winds against the pursuit of higher expected returns. So far, we have discussed the main factors currently working against investors, as well as...
The Financial Benefits of Buying What You Love
Eleven years ago, I needed a new bike. At the time, I rode a lot. I was in a big group of relatively competitive riders, and we’d often put hundreds of miles on our bikes each week. I agonized over...
