A Brief History of… the Financial Services Industry
What is a financial advisor?
Do they hang out on the floor of the stock exchange?
Do they sell insurance?
Do they need to be plugged into their charging station at the end of the day?
The Financial Services Industry has change A LOT over the last 50 years.
Let’s look at the 3 major shifts in the way that mass affluent and high-net worth consumers have been served, as well as a look ahead to what is likely the 4th major iteration of advice in the coming decade, including the integration of Artificial Intelligence.
Behind the Scenes of Your Portfolio: ETF & Mutual Fund Research & Monitoring
For many investors, once they have made a decision to purchase an ETF or mutual fund, they tend to breathe a sigh of relief and move on. Although there needs to be significant upfront due diligence in selecting investments, we do not recommend blindly trusting that the managers remain consistent, nor that the specific investments continue to fit into your portfolio. One important ongoing aspect of investment management is to ensure the investment vehicles recommended remain as high conviction as when we first recommended them.
Behind the Scenes of Your Portfolio: Taxes & Asset Location
Often overlooked when thinking about your portfolio are the different ways that taxes are generated, based upon the type of accounts that own various asset classes. According to the “Vanguard Advisor’s Alpha” framework study from August 12, 2022, just by optimizing the location that different asset classes are held can add up to 0.60% annually in higher after-tax returns for investors!
Behind the Scenes of Your Portfolio: Rebalancing
We are starting a new series of blog posts looking behind the scenes of how we manage portfolios for our ongoing clients. Many of these things have been discussed in various levels of detail in the past, but we wanted to give you a full picture of what happens on an ongoing basis. Let’s begin discussing “Rebalancing”…
Behind the Scenes of Your Portfolio: How We Choose Investment Vehicles
There are many different opinions on the best way to build out an investment portfolio. As you may be aware, we have partnered with Fiducient Advisors to deepen our investment research capabilities since early 2022. We work directly with our team of over 40 analysts at Fiducient to research asset allocation decisions and the best way to structure the portfolio. This is especially valuable as the investment markets and the world generally seem to change at a much faster pace than before.
FSA vs HSA – What are the differences and how do I use them?
Put company benefits and IRS regulations together, and you’re just asking for complexity masked as an acronym. Many employers provide access to Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) or Health Savings Accounts (HSA) to employees to allow pre-tax payments of various expenses. Let’s dive into the different types and strategies around each.
5 Good Options for Whole Life Insurance Cash Value (plus 1 bad option)
In Fee-Only Financial Planning circles, it is a continual struggle to avoid blasting the insurance industry for their elaborate marketing of life insurance as anything other than insurance.
In working with clients in their 20’s all the way into their 90’s, we’ve seen countless examples of permanent life insurance sold to people who didn’t need it. Most of these are Whole Life policies that our clients come to us decades after purchasing, but while they are still paying premiums.
Compounding Explained in a “Not Boring Way”
It sounds like a word they would use on a farm.
As in, “I’ve got some compounding to do down on the back forty so I won’t be able to shuck corn with ya this afternoon”.
In reality, compounding is just one more of those financial terms that many have heard, but few can explain. The first thing you should know about compounding is, obviously, that it is fun to say. The second thing you should know about compounding is that it can be both a force of good and a force of evil in terms of your finances.