Laird Hepburn

I hope you’ve had a wonderful time with family and friends over the December and January holidays.  If you’ve been paying attention to the major market indicies since January 1st, you might be a little concerned.  We share your concern.

…Usually Comes Down…

… and then Goes Back Up!

I used Investing.com to create these charts but I’m not promoting it; I just like the tools.  Use it if you like.  Yahoo Finance has some good charting tools also.  There is no shortage of investing strategies and learning resources online.  Spend some time checking them out and let us know if you need help.

I hope you had a wonderful time with family and friends over Labor Day.  You did rest from your labors right? I know I worked and I saw a lot of businesses open.  Things today are a lot different than in the days of the Haymarket Riot but many remain little changed. 

What was the Haymarket Riot you ask?

What’s Different Now You Ask?

Yet the more things change the more they remain the same.

Everyone wants to be loved. We each seek significance – in our own eyes and in the eyes of others.  We do our best to love our children and families and serve our neighbors and communities. We want peace and safety. We each laugh, cry, bleed and die. Along the way, we face challenges and have opportunities.  We succeed and we fail.  We make promises and we break them.  This is just an inkling of our common ground.  We’re also a lot alike when it comes to finances.   

Financial planning is often talked about but rarely understood.  Most often, people think I mean investing money and growing portfolios. Others think planning has to do with insurance.  While those are important, neither is planning.  It’s actually kind of rare for someone to say something like “Oh, you mean you help people figure out how to achieve their goals, right?”

A goal is simply a dream with a deadline. 

•  College funding? Deadline. 
•  Retirement? Deadline. 
•  That special purchase? Deadline.

I encourage you to watch this video. It’s short and it explains planning for your goals much better than I can explain it. Not only that, after you watch, you’ll probably know more about financial planning than most!

Learn more about MoneyGuide Pro here or contact us for more info!

There is no shortage of investing strategies but successful ones generally follow some common principles laid out by Benjamin Graham (with my paraphrase and comments): 

• Always invest with a margin of safety by finding good companies trading at a fair price or better.
• Expect volatility and profit from it being cautious when the market is irrationally exuberant and dollar-cost averaging your purchases.
• Know what kind of investor you are – are you a long-term investor or a trader? Both make money but in very different ways.

Of course, you could always hire a professional to either help you or take on the investing task for you.  Your money, your choice.

Disability affects everyone.

Did you know May is Disability Insurance Awareness Month? Guess who made this up – the insurance industry of course.  But just because a bunch of insurance companies got together to try to convince you to buy disability insurance doesn’t mean they’re wrong.  If you need your paycheck, you need to protect that paycheck.  There’s nothing you can do about the economy, inflation or Acts of God, but you can work to protect your income from four common things that may happen to you if you become disabled.

Four bad things happen to the long-term disabled: