The payoff for “holding down the fort” for my teammates over the holidays was a long-ago scheduled ski trip the first week of January. The location — Whistler, British Columbia — was on the Marc “bucket list,” and this vacation had been scheduled, and paid for, back in 2021 on the hope that …
Ronald Reagan once wisely said, “Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours.”
Revocable living trusts have become an estate planning tool commonly used by Oak Partners clients. Often referred to simply as “living trusts”, this type of planning is best created by working with an experienced lawyer or law firm, and if executed and funded properly can help avoid the prob…
If you’ve been reading my column for a while, then you probably know that I spent considerable time in my younger years traveling through wilderness areas in North America.
The “Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement,” or SECURE Act, and its sequel SECURE 2.0 changed retirement planning in a number of important ways. The original SECURE legislation was enacted in 2019 and began implementation in 2020 during the start of the pandemic. Because of t…
Roth options in 401(k) plans are becoming more widely available with many employers. The decision to use a traditional 401(k) or a Roth 401(k) option can be a little complicated; let's go through some planning logic.
While epidemiology is fascinating, I never signed up for this pastime. Yet, in order to be an effective investment strategist over the past 20 months epidemiology has become a prerequisite, and so I trudge forward.
Every time a charge hits one of my credit cards I get a text message detailing the transaction. This helpful little service was offered to me by Chase, but now other card issuers have offered this service as well.
The Secure Act 2.0, which is one of the most material updates to rules governing retirement savings and accounts, is now law. The law was included in the huge omnibus spending bill passed late in the last Congress. While the Secure Act 2.0 updates rules on topics such as 401(k)s, Required Mi…
This week, as expected, the Federal Reserve bank raised short term interest rates by one quarter of one percent. As we have discussed often before, this policy change was focused on reducing price inflation in our economy. The policy change was the eighth interest rate increase in the curren…
When it comes to financial markets, in my opinion there are good times, there are bad times and then there are “weird” times, which of course I think are the most complicated.
A couple weeks back I received an email about my January 1st column. The reader, Dale from Westville, opined, “I really wish you would take time in your column to explain what all the free money has done to the markets. The stock buyback tricks used by businesses to artificially inflate thei…
The payoff for “holding down the fort” for my teammates over the holidays was a long-ago scheduled ski trip the first week of January. The location — Whistler, British Columbia — was on the Marc “bucket list,” and this vacation had been scheduled, and paid for, back in 2021 on the hope that …
The $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill passed late last year during the final weeks of the prior Congress included some important changes to the rules and laws pertaining to retirement planning. This legislation, termed the Secure Act 2.0, enhances and upgrades stipulations of the IRS code …
I was always the kid that wanted stuff for Christmas. No, “want” is not the word. Like Ralphie in the iconic movie “A Christmas Story,” I “yearned” for my Christmas bounty. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up and so it was practically unheard of for kids in our family to get things like…
What if we held a recession next year and no one came? At this point I feel like the pending 2023 recession has been the most heavily forecasted economic trend in history. All the economists I follow on a regular basis, as well as just about every CEO I see on CNBC in the morning, has been p…
The nature of financial markets over the past two years might make this a good time to visit the practice known as tax loss harvesting in non-IRA investment portfolios.
The IRS recently announced some extremely important updates for beneficiaries of inherited IRAs, and parts of the update are very timely as we head into 2023.
We’ve all been through a lot. For some of us this will have been the first Thanksgiving gathered in the same home together in three years. For far too many of us, our family included, during this time apart loved ones have been lost, leaving empty chairs and huge empty holes in our hearts an…
Six weeks ago, we talked about Warren Buffet’s famous quote about the economy, “only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” This maxim intends to mean that in times of rising markets, low interest rates and loose financial conditions, it is much easier to hide bot…
There are times when relying on a system to function as anticipated is so critical, where the prospect of failure is so outlandish, that the effectiveness of the system must be taken for granted before we would ever choose to engage it. The brakes on a car, the landing gear on an airplane; t…
The question caught me by surprise. As we were pulling my extremely thirsty beast of a pick-up truck into a local gas station to fill up on $4.29 gasoline, my wife asked, “Do you think that gas tax Biden is talking about will help bring these terrible gas prices down?”
Content by Finixio. Learn about the economic impact of online sports betting in Indiana.
Content by Ascend. All set to dive into the world of digital currency? Discover the secrets of how to buy Bitcoin smartly and attain profit from this lucrative investment trend.
Content by Midwest Express Clinic. Check out these essential wellness tips to improve your overall physical and emotional health while also laying the groundwork for a brighter, healthier future.
Content by Pexels. Paper trading in cryptocurrency is a great way to get experience and knowledge without taking any financial risks.
As a fiduciary to my advisory clients, one of my core obligations is to understand and identify types of investments which may not be consistent with the investor’s ethical philosophy. These interests can be moral, environmental or even political, and while I don’t lead conversations asking …
I’ve been told, a general rule of thumb in the financial services industry is the average age of a financial services client will range approximately 15 years older than the serving advisor. During my career I have found this to be roughly true, although I did seem to start working with olde…
My cousin and faithful adventure partner Scott and I were 25 miles into the back country on Isle Royale, the least visited national park. We hadn’t seen another human in days, and yet coming up the canoe portage as we were coming down were the most appropriately dressed wilderness travelers …
Famed investor Warren Buffet offers a plethora of sage advice. By far my favorite Buffet line, whether he coined it our just adopts it often, is “only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.”
In the week when stock market indexes busted through their lowest levels of the year, my news feeds are all full of prognostications of doom. Few topics are quite as seductive as the end of the world as we know it. Global warming, plagues, honeybees dying off and now stock markets hitting ne…
For family members of high school seniors, I know this column may seem premature, but it actually isn’t. While we are only a little over a month into the new school year, it’s time to start getting serious about college applications and college financing, which is why the 2023-2024 FAFSA app…
A subtle but notable change in how Indiana property taxes are calculated was enacted in the recent legislative session and enacted in June of 2022. The change will take effect in January and affect property tax bills starting in May of 2023.
There’s nothing like scary stuff to keep us all clicking and watching. If “eye capture” is the goal of content creators and advertisers, then scary stuff and sex have to rule the day. And, if scary is your goal than perhaps two of the top 10 most effective words in the English language to pu…
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