Wills: The Cornerstone of Your Estate Plan

If you care about what happens to your money, home, and other property after you die, you need to do some estate planning. There are many tools you can use to achieve your estate planning goals, but a will is probably the most vital. Even if you’re young or your estate is modest, you should [...]

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Six Guiding Principles for Biblical Decision Making

Look to God and His Word for guidance instead of relying on your own insights. (Proverbs 3:5-6)
Remember that we are called to obey our duly elected leaders as those whom God has placed over us. (Romans 13:1-5)
Jesus has called us to be “salt and light” to our culture. (Matthew 5:13-16)
We are to concerned for and [...]

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Will You Pay Taxes on Your Social Security Benefits?

Did you know that you might have to pay federal income tax on your Social Security benefits? If Social Security was the only income you had during the year, then your benefits generally won’t be taxable. However, if you or your spouse worked and had any earned income during the year, or if you had [...]

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Why UTMA & UGMA Custodial Accounts Aren’t Making the Grade

UGMA/UTMA custodial accounts let children hold assets like stocks, bonds, and mutual funds in their own names–under the watchful eye of a designated custodian–that they legally wouldn’t be able to hold outright in their own names. Earnings, interest, and capital gains generated from assets in the account are taxed every year to the child. At [...]

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Investors Clueless on Sustainable Portfolio Withdrawal Rate

A recent poll of 607 investors by Investment News yielded a very troubling conclusion:
By and large, most investors dramatically overestimate the percentage of their portfolio that they can withdraw in retirement without depleting their portfolio prematurely.
The survey results were as follow:

27% plan to spend between 1% and 4% of their nest egg,
46% plan to spend [...]

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The 1% Difference

Last year, New York City school children went door to door collecting pennies. By asking for only 1% of a dollar, they were able to raise $1 million for charity.
Sometimes the small actions we take yield big results. Take a look at three examples of how adjusting your finances by just 1% can make a [...]

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Vanguard Drops Fees on ETFs… Again.

Vanguard recently dropped fees on several of its exchange-traded funds (ETFs). This isn’t the first time Vanguard has reduced its fees, in fact, the company has made a habit of passing on savings to its shareholders as its own operating costs have gone down.
The decreases are small (it’s difficult to make meaningful cuts when the [...]

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Maybe The Smart Money Isn’t So Smart

A recent study shows that the so-called “smart money” isn’t so smart.
Institutional fund managers, when firing and hiring managers, have a track record of doing great harm to their constituents (and charging them for the privilege).
Maybe they should discard the entire concept of “active management” and create a well-diversified, multi-asset class portfolio based on low-cost [...]

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Does Your House Have Enough Storage Space?

by Terry Austin
We had a garage sale at our house a few Saturdays back in an attempt to get rid of some of the stuff we have accumulated the past few years. When I say “we,” I really mean my wife, our daughter-in-law, and her mother. I had very little to do with [...]

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Larry Swedroe on Market Timing

Every now and then an article comes out that makes me say “I wish I had written that.”
Thankfully, Larry Swedroe saved me the trouble with this piece.
The bottom line is: create a carefully and deliberately thought out investment strategy, put it into place, and leave it alone (occasional review and rebalancing notwithstanding).
Any strategy that [...]

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