PFA Ponderings

If you do a Google search for “Questions to ask a financial advisor”, you’re likely to find a lot of repetition. How do you get paid? Are you a fiduciary? What designations do you have? What is your investment philosophy? These questions seem to be ubiquitous across nearly all articles…

I’ve never been a big fan of ‘Rules of Thumb’.  They inevitably cause angst for people who have no need to be anxious, or they provide a false sense of security to people who SHOULD be worried. I’ve tried to research the etymology of the phrase ‘Rule of Thumb’ and…

In the world of investing, nothing seems to create more puzzlement than the relationship between bond prices and interest rates. It doesn’t help that there are so many different types of bonds and plenty of confusing lingo. When I hear on the radio that the ‘yield on the 10 year…

Often, the most disappointed reactions we get from clients is not the result of market declines. Rather, it’s the surprise that happens when they get their tax bill. Frequently, capital gains taxes are to blame. It’s important to know what causes someone to have to pay capital gains tax. Any…

Conventional wisdom has it that Social Security benefits are for when you’ve retired. Earning money AND taking Social Security at the same time seems a bit rogue, and such schemes do have limitations imposed by the Social Security Administration. However, there ARE, in fact times when you can double-dip and…

“A recession is when your neighbor loses his job.  A depression is when you lose your job.  A recovery is when (insert name of a political foe) loses his/her job.” – old time political jab Judging by the media and clients I meet with, Recession is becoming front-of-mind.  If you…

Among recent headlines, billionaire Robert F. Smith announced that he would pay off the student loan debt of the entire Moorehouse College graduating class of 2019.  A number of presidential candidates, including President Trump, are running on ways to reduce the burden of student debt, ranging from small incremental steps…

Congratulations – you’re eligible to collect Social Security.  After all those years of putting in, you finally have some opportunity to take some income from the Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance fund (OASDI).  But here’s the question:  Should you take it NOW or wait? The answer isn’t always simple….

99 percent of the time, when clients sit with us and go over their finances, they are happy to see increases in their net worth, and disappointed to see decreases. Sometimes, however, folks come in with the complete opposite objective.  Every once in a while, someone seeks strategies for decreasing…