PFA Ponderings

Hey, I love living in Maine and I love winter as much as the next guy.  But somewhere around the middle of February, I start to scan for cheap flights to… well, anywhere I can go outside with a t-shirt.  (Okay, if I were a ‘true Mainah’, I’d be in…

Like most trite financial advisor sayings, this is TRUE.  But it does take some consensus on how we define two things:  Investment and Risk. Meriam-Webster’s Dictionary has several definitions for risk.  One of them is: ”the chance that an investment, such as a stock or a commodity, will lose value”. …

“I paid the bank note, the car note, an’ yes, I paid the ‘phone bill too An’ then I turned around an’ I found that the house note’s due Well, I’d love to take you out like I said I would, honey But there’s too much month at the end…

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) was only the fifth major change to the US tax code since the Internal Revenue Service started collecting taxes on income, early in the last century.  Now that it’s 2019, we’ll actually get to see the new tax code in action….

When we talk about diversification, the general rule is ‘not wanting all your eggs in one basket.’  Obviously, it’s important that we not be in a position to lose the whole enchilada if a company goes out of business. But actually, diversification plays more of a role than simply protecting…

Your quiz of the week: Are Social Security benefits taxable income? a) Yes b) No c) It depends If you’re at all familiar with federal programs and taxation, I hope you chose c without any hesitation.  Tax issues are never so cut-and-dried that they can be answered with a simple…

By the time this blog posts, many of us will have already broken our resolutions for 2019.  That doesn’t make us bad people… rather, we’re good people who make bad resolutions. Bad resolutions are those that are over-ambitious, or that are too vague, or that really aren’t all that important…

This is the last blog post for 2018, and barring a really nice New Year’s Eve rally, most of the stock market indicators, both domestic and foreign, will likely end up with losses for 2018.  Importantly, absent a really rough New Year’s Eve rout on the markets, the stock losses…

Financial terminology 101: Volatility (n): The tendency of prices to go up and down sharply over time. Given that definition, it’s pretty clear that we, as investors actually like SOME volatility (the “up”-part).  Today’s blog post is directed to the majority who really don’t like the “down” part of the…

Personal finance is complex.  At least I hope it is – I’d hate to think I’ve dedicated my career, many years of schooling and untold hundreds of continuing education hours on something overly simplistic.  Most people who hire a financial advisor are doing so to knock some of that complexity…