When we help people understand that their financial lives are Truly Cared For®, we usually think about how we help them plan, invest, protect, and give, but that doesn’t always address the reasons that people hire us.
Before I joined Foster Group, I served 24 years as a Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) Specialist in the United States Air Force. It might seem like quite the career transition from Airman to Financial Planner. However, the two paths have more in common than one might expect.
2022 was a historically painful year as an investor with stock markets experiencing a bear market, and bond markets having one of their worst years ever. However, as we enter 2023, I’d like to consider the positives.
Time is the greatest money-making asset you can possess. The earlier you start investing, the easier it is to ensure a lifetime of financial success. Parents and grandparents, there may be an opportunity to give the gift of financial success to your young adult family members while also enjoying estate and tax planning benefits for yourselves.
As with many things in life, there are usually lessons to be learned from our experiences that can be carried over into other aspects of life. Here are a few things jumping out of an airplane taught me about investing.
Risks can often feel much different to retirees. The overarching risk for retirees is that something takes place that results in a permanently lower standard of living. Retirement researcher, Wade Pfau, has identified three major categories of risk for one’s income in retirement.
We’ve all heard the adage, “Money can’t buy happiness,” but the truth is more nuanced. Let's dig into the research.
What are the primary drivers of a happy retirement and overall wellness?
In financial planning, goals are important. There are different planning strategies we implement for different types of goals, and it is crucial for your advisor to understand how you plan or hope to use your money in the future.
What caused the stock market to rise by over 20% in the second quarter of 2020 even as the COVID pandemic was out of control? How about the over 11% rise in the fourth quarter of 2021 as inflation ticked up and the Fed was warning of rate increases? It seems a little more obvious why the US stock market has fallen in the first 6 months of 2022, but should it have fallen more…or less?
Does war in Israel mean a big market meltdown? It’s hard to escape the war news. One way to think about the future is by looking at the past for similar circumstances.
The month of January was marked by negative returns for global stock markets. But, as the well-worn phrase, “Is your glass half full or half empty?” implies, our view of, or the way we feel about the state of markets as investors, may be more related to our personal dispositions than what the numbers indicate.
“What books would you recommend?” “What podcasts do you listen to?” At Foster Group we often get asked questions like these. Here’s a short list of some recent responses from our team.
Right after, “What will the stock market do next?” the positioning question may be the most asked and re-asked question by investors of all types.
In my experience, the joy of generosity is not dependent on monetary value or other objective measures of size or significance. Generosity done well always has the potential to bring joy to both givers and receivers.
