This is the second in our three part Annual Financial Checklist series. While not exhaustive, it will help you to continue to think proactively about stacking the odds for financial success in your favor. See our previous “January through April Checklist” for more ideas. May Look into College Scholarships: If you have a child in…
Sylvia Bloom started in 1947 as a legal secretary and finished as a legal secretary, 67 years later Sylvia Bloom was born in Brooklyn in 1917, the daughter of Eastern European immigrants and a child of the 1929 Depression. She attended New York public schools and graduated from high school. She worked days to attend…
“Is a Roth IRA right for me?” is a simple question with a complex answer. Even worse, myths and misconceptions surrounding Roth IRAs make them seem more complicated than they are. We’ll address the four most common rules covering withdrawals, contribution limits, home purchases, and taxes. Even if these rules don’t apply to you, it’s…
The Return of Investor Pain and Volatility Every few weeks, Jonathan slides a chair up to my desk and pulls out an updated version of a chart, the Investor Pain Index. If you search for it online, you won’t find it. To call it “proprietary” would be accurate but (says Jonathan) far too complementary. The…
Today the Dow Jones experienced a 4% drop, closing below 24,000 for the first time since November 28th (just 72 days ago). Furthermore, in the last 9 trading days, the Dow has dropped 10.3% from it’s all-time high (thus officially earning the name “a correction”). While it’s unsettling to see a pullback in the market,…
I’ve never enjoyed waiting for things. Patience is a muscle I’ve had to exercise and strengthen, whether I’ve wanted to or not. Ironically, one of the hardest things to wait patiently for is “experience.” Of course, always looking for a more efficient way, I wondered if I could gather up others’ experiences and learn from…
Without fail, the financial markets teach us lessons every year, but it is up to investors to learn. In 2017, the overwhelming lesson was a rerun: short term predictions are worthless (at best) and dangerous (at worst). We ran across a great example of predictions in Bob Seawright’s 2018 Investment Outlook. Seawright is Chief Investment…
Wrapping up our year, we wanted to make sure you didn’t miss out on our most read blog posts of 2017. We also want to say a big “Thank You!” for reading, sharing, and dialoguing with us along the way. If you have any suggestions for future topics, send them to us at [email protected]. 6…
It’s hard to go anywhere in our city in December without the conversation turning to the Lighted Christmas Balls, the Food Drive and the Running of the Balls. If you’ve lived in Greensboro twenty-one years or less, you’ve never known a December without Lighted Christmas Balls. In 1996, our daughter, Alison, came home from…
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