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Competitive Investing: Creating a Meaningful Portfolio Value
“It’s not a competition,” I said, hoping that word might jolt my audience into discovering the futility of two people trying to contend for investing superiority. “Try telling that to him!” my...
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5 End-of-Year Money Moves
As we start winding down 2023, there are a few financial tasks that might need your attention before you pour that eggnog. Don't worry; this isn't about crunching numbers or deciphering complex financial jargon. It’s just a few...
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Life Insurance as an Investment: Get Out Your Crystal Ball
In our last piece, we defined what insurance is and whether or not you might need an actual policy. Now we’re going to discuss why second guessing an insurance policy would require knowing the future and why it’s important...
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Do you Need Life Insurance or Can You Be Self-Insured?
“I don’t understand insurance. I just need you to tell me what to do.” While I appreciate the trust implied in these comments offered by an orphaned life insurance policyholder, they are not all that unfamiliar...
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Elections & Economics: Understanding the Relationship Between Government and the Economy
Election season is right around the corner! Can’t you just feel the excitement?! All kidding aside (for now), it’s most likely not lost on anyone that our politics are currently and particularly...
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The Lighthouse Effect: Understanding the Value of Financial Planning
The very first lighthouse that is known to have existed is the Lighthouse of Alexandria built on the island of Pharos in the harbor of Alexandria, Egypt. Sources vary a little as to when, exactly, it was built, but they generally agree...
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When it Comes to Social Security are You a Sloth, Early Bird, or Worker Bee?
In our last piece, we looked at how we can determine the best strategy for withdrawing your Social Security benefits. If you're someone who is thinking about electing to take your benefits early...you might fall into one of these...
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Analyzing Social Security Benefits to Find the Best Strategy
“I questioned you, everyone I talked to questioned you, but you were right.”Those are the words of a client with whom I met just the other day. He was referring to advice that I gave him when he retired to delay the...
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When it Comes to Robo-Advisors...Who's REALLY Pulling the Strings?
In our last piece, I hope you started questioning why you allow others to influence major outcomes in your own life. Is it because you trust them? Is it because they’re the most knowledgeable in a certain field? You...
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Robo-Advisors: What Service Are They REALLY Providing?
If you needed a ride and two friends each offered to give you a ride, how would you choose which offer you would accept? The best response would be that your decision would rest upon the dependability of your friends as drivers.How...
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Handling a Lay Off: What You Should Do if Your Company Downsizes
No matter where you are in the timeline of your career, you’ve likely worked hard to get where you are. If you’ve just entered the workforce and have landed the job you want, you’ve probably worked on building...
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How Can I Avoid Being Scammed?
With tax season in high gear, there’s another industry that’s hard at work: identity thieves and scammers.Unfortunately, scams are getting all too common and, let’s be honest, sometimes these people are pretty good at...
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Good News: You Don’t HAVE to Pay the Current Inflated Prices
Plenty of you have probably noticed what has happened to the price of eggs as of late. For those who haven’t noticed, the price of eggs has increased pretty dramatically. Now, in simply making that statement, I am essentially...
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We Need Something to Blame for High Prices: Is it Inflation or Dynamic Pricing?
Why is everything so expensive? Blame dynamic pricing. Oh, sure, you can blame other factors, like inflation and supply chain issues, but if high prices were a murder victim, dynamic pricing would be rounded up as one of the top...
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There Are No Shortcuts
If you’ve read some of my other posts or watched some of our videos, then you might be familiar with my commentary around shortcuts. To summarize, I always argue that there is no such thing as a shortcut, or that shortcuts...
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Getting Financial Advice from a Friend? Read this Before You Act on It
Just the other day, I was having lunch with a client and friend (we’ll call him ‘Bob’) who relayed a story about a friend of his that was rather interesting. Both Bob and his friend are small business owners and face...
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Financially Preparing for College Without Sacrificing Your Retirement Fund
When it comes to planning for college, there are a lot of decisions to make.How are you going to pay for your child’s tuition?Are you ready to take out loans?And perhaps most importantly, how is this going to affect your...
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Here's the Good News: The markets cannot move in a negative direction in perpetuity
A message that I’ve been sharing with a lot of folks lately is that the normal pattern for stock performance, as represented by the S&P 500, is literally a matter of one step back and two steps forward. I arrive at this...
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Value Your Resources Part 3: A Look at Social Security
Hopefully, what I have managed to do in Parts I and II of this discussion is define pretty clearly the importance of having the right perspective on the facts, figures, and concepts surrounding the performance of financial resources....
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Value Your Resources Part 2: Why We Use Percentages to Talk About Money
If someone were to offer you $100 today or $100 a year from now, which option would you choose? This should be an easy question to answer: you should choose the $100 now. But why? Well, initially, we might say that there is no...
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Value Your Resources Part 1: Percentages vs. Dollar Amounts
I’ll never forget a phone call that I received from a client who had been with us for about three years. If I had to describe the relationship that I had with this gentleman and his wife, I’d say it was more transactional...
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Lack Financial Discipline? Take a closer look at your problems and standards
When you think of a habitual shopper, like someone who really enjoys shopping, what phrases, or ways of describing that person, come to mind? Shopaholic? Shopping is his/her hobby or pastime? Money burns a hole in his/her pocket? How...
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Save YOUR Way: 4 Alternatives to a 401(k)
If you haven’t already noticed, the days of pensions are over. We’re in a new age of retirement planning.According to Due.com, pension plans have their pros and cons:PROSBurden of investing falls on the employer, not the...
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You'll Never Get Where You Want to Go if You Don't Know Your Destination
For those who don't know, 20 years ago I was a sheriff's deputy in a little county in South Carolina called Pickens. Pickens County just so happens to be where Clemson is located, not to mention the sprawling metropolises of Pickens,...
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Can Wealth Solve Your Problem? Maybe Not
The meme depicted above was recently, and oh so generously, shared with me by a friend. The friend, knowing the philosophical nature of my brain functions, figured that it would be right up my alley. In some ways the friend was right,...
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Couples & Finance: Who Handles the Money in Your Home?
As a financial executive who has been in the industry since 1986, I’ve seen a lot of changes in how families handle their money.Growing up, my father managed the finances and my mother had very little interest. This is true for...
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Don’t boil your frog
Full disclosure: I don’t know whether it is true that the only way to boil a live frog is to put it into room-temperature water and slowly turn the heat up. Tricking amphibians into contributing to their own demise has never been...
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What Financial Planning has to do with Fried Chicken
Many moons ago, I worked for a company out of Augusta, GA that owned the franchising rights to Bojangles. At the time, the group ran six Bojangles restaurants in and around Augusta. My position was that of an area director, which meant...
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Life Expectancy and the Decisions We Make
In our last blog, we discussed getting to a place where you’re experiencing your life the way you want to. The financial planning is working. Your money is helping you create the life you want.Some of you might have heard me say...
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The Deathbed Perspective: Using Your Financial Plan to Live Freely
The one thing that many people overlook most frequently in grasping the idea of financial planning, and understanding its importance, is just how critical its role is in determining the kind of life they can, and will,...
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Post-Retirement Spending: Don’t Panic. Make a Plan.
When most people think about retirement, they think about saving for it. But there’s a second phase that many people often don’t consider: actually being in retirement.Most people only focus on accumulating wealth and the...
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Asset Allocation & Risk Tolerance: What’s the Best Allocation for YOU?
We just discussed how a negative market can destroy our confidence in the investments we’ve made and how we’ll do just about anything to avoid losing. Now, let’s talk about how risk plays a part in our financial...
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The Market’s Hit a Rough Patch. What Should You Do?
Whenever we hit a rough patch in the markets, there is one question that likely enters the minds of clients: What should I do? Sometimes, a variant of that question is asked:Should I make any changes?Should anything different...
Read MoreFinancial Planning Video Series--Part 3: Putting It All Together
If you were to plan a trip for vacation, the presumption would be that you would plan the best route possible. In all likelihood, however, there would be some things for which you wouldn’t plan, and that’s directly related...
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Financial Planning Video Series--Part 2: Evaluating Decisions
A plan is nothing more than a pre-defined set of decisions. In other words, it’s akin to saying, “If ‘x’ happens, then I will do ‘y’.” With that being the case, it’s important that we do...
Read MoreFinancial Planning Video Series--Part 1: Why Do We Plan?
Financial planning seems to be a difficult concept for a significant amount of folks to wrap their minds around, not to mention how mundane it can feel. As such, we wanted to create a video series to help make the concept more...
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Don’t Make the Mistake of Being a Single-Issue Investor
While inflation seems to be what everyone is talking about lately, the truth is that this type of activity isn’t new. Further, while I haven’t personally experienced this in my lifetime, and certainly not since I joined the...
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Nutrition: The Dreaded Weight Loss Plateau
In our last post, we've gotten a good start on a weight loss journey. But what happens if the "losing streak"...stops?If you’ve ever tried a fad diet, or even if you’ve taken the lifestyle approach to your health, you might...
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Nutrition: A Place to Start
In the previous blog, I shared with you the moment I realized a change needed to be made. Now, we’ll talk about how I got started on the right path.To recap a little, it’s probably fair to say that I was embarrassed about...
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Nutrition: Maybe the Most Overlooked and Misunderstood Aspect of Health
I am not shy about sharing my weight loss story. Why? Well, I suppose this is one way to look at my perspective: if I knew something that would benefit others, but I kept it to myself, what would that say about me?More than that,...
Read MoreVideo: Financial Planning Problems Aren't Always Financial
Financial problems manifest themselves in two ways: quantitatively and qualitatively. Quantitative problems can be defined objectively with numbers—e.g., paying more in taxes than necessary or investment performance falling short...
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Invest Like a Farmer—Use What You Control to Respond to What You Cannot
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Changing Unhealthy Behaviors
Lifestyle Read Time: 3 min Changing Unhealthy Behaviors Most Americans know the fundamentals of good health: exercise, proper diet, sufficient sleep, regular check-ups and no smoking or excessive alcohol. Yet, despite this knowledge,...
Read MoreVideo: The 6 Principles of Financial Planning Explained
We each have two lives: the one we are currently living and the one we want. The life you want might be familiar to you, or at least have some familiar components, but chances are that it is unfamiliar, because you’ve never lived...
Read MoreQuarterly State of the Investing Environment Newsletter
It is time for our quarterly perspective on the investing environment. As always, we focus on four factors to develop our perspective of investments: stock valuations, the economy, inflation, and interest rates. We will never be so...
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Do Your Motivations Lead to Financial Discipline?
For those of you who don't know, I volunteer with a local program, here in Greensboro, North Carolina, for recovering drug addicts. As you might imagine, life has not always been easy for the folks who come through the program, and for...
Read More2021-Q3 Asset Management Perspective
Well, if you can believe it, 2021 is a little more than halfway over. To commemorate that fact, we are here with another edition of our Quarterly Asset Management Newsletter. We hope that life is treating everyone well, and as always,...
Read More2021-Q1 Mid-Quarter Asset Management Update
Dear Friends, We hope you are doing well. Before I dig in to the meat of this post, I wanted to first start off by saying that if you, or anyone else, is experiencing a rough time right now, for whatever reason, reach out, or have...
Read MoreRobinhood—did he steal from the rich or poor?
Dear Friends, I’m sure many of you have caught word of what occurred in the markets concerning Robinhood, GameStop, AMC, Reddit users, and others. In case you haven’t, or you don’t really understand what happened,...
Read MoreIf It’s Free, You Might not be the Customer
We believe there are at least two elements to the Robinhood story that deserve to be told with emphasis. The first element is what you’ve already heard: the oddity that is short selling. The second element that we will discuss...
Read MoreOpportunity, Information, and Book Recommendations
I’m doing a little bit something different on the blog right now. I’m working on a series of posts revolving around opportunity, risk, and decision-making. The motivation for this series came out of a discussion that I had...
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2021-Q1 Near-Term Asset Management Perspective
Needless to say, things have been pretty dynamic as of late. I’m sure you’re feeling no shortage of uncertainty. So, without further ado, let’s get right into the outlook. Our Three-Point Investment Philosophy We...
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More Grace, Less Perfection: A Plea for Better
Dear Friend, 2020 was a doozy, wasn’t it? Good Lord have mercy! Do you realize that all in one year our president was impeached, a pandemic encircled the globe, rioting gripped our country, and we teetered on the edge of having...
Read MoreThe Value of Money
In case you thought that car insurance was the only thing that a caveman could teach us about financial matters (thank you, Geico®), think again. Take a little trip with me. Let’s go back in time. Yes, if you can believe it,...
Read More2020-Q4 Near-Term Asset Management Perspective
Halloween is less than a month away, Thanksgiving is a little over a month away, and Christmas is just shy of three months away. All of that adds up to the fact that it’s time for our 2020-Q3 Asset Management Near-Term Outlook....
Read MoreInstant Pre-play, Not Instant Replay
Full disclosure: I’m a diehard Clemson football fan. If I’m being completely honest, though, I’m really a diehard fan of college football in general. If there’s a game on TV, it doesn’t matter who’s...
Read MoreWe only work with two types of people
There are only two types of people who go to the doctor. Can you guess what those types are? It’s a tough question, but I’ll help you out: healthy people and sick people. How do you know which one you are? I suppose you...
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The Snoopervisor is Just Killing His Time
Whenever I get together with the snoopervisor, it always starts with the typical pleasantries, including some sort of variant of what you been up to? The snoopervisor’s answer of choice to that question? “Just killing time...
Read MoreYou have to know what will kill you so you can truly live
I’d like to take a moment to introduce you to Joyce (NHRN). Joyce has been a client of ours for the better part of two decades. She retired about 6-7 years ago and has enjoyed a solid retirement so far, including the occasional...
Read More2020-Q3 Asset Management Perspective
This newsletter is the inaugural edition of something new that we wanted to start. With the evolution of our services that we have shared with you in previous correspondence, we feel that it is important to communicate regularly to...
Read MoreThe Six Principles of Financial Planning
What we can learn from taking a vacation Four Things We Know About Vacations Vacations don’t solve problems. On vacation, you choose to do the things you want to do the most. Planning for a vacation will most likely take place...
Read MoreNew Service Model
Like you, we have been profoundly impacted by current events. Learning to live and work in relative isolation is not a transition that we would have ever chosen, but the reality is that a large part of life is how you respond to...
Read MoreWe Can Help
When we sit down to get to know someone new, we have observed that there is at least one of three basic emotions that has led to our meeting: Fear Discontent Confusion We believe that… Fear results from feeling as if something...
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