Planning for Future Healthcare Expenses
"What is worth insuring?" The answer almost always boils down to how much you'll have to pay to insure the thing you don't want to lose -- whether it's your mustache, your fantasy football player, your home or your health.
Planning for Retirement? Practice Could Make Perfect
Retirement isn’t a reward you one day receive at random. It’s not something you jump into without a thought in mind. You work up to this day with purpose, precision, and dedication.
Playing Jazz and Your Finances
Successfully playing jazz starts with fundamentals. The same is true of our personal finances.
Positive Planning Opportunities in a Negative Market
Strangely, a down market and the response of the government to it has created potential planning opportunities that wouldn’t have otherwise been there.
Positives About the Market
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.
Predictable Mistakes
We believe that investors increase their chances of success by avoiding predictable mistakes, those practices that sound like they should work but have been shown time and again to have very low probabilities of success.
Things to Ponder This Holiday Season
At Foster Group, the most important thing we do is help our clients have peace of mind. The planning, investing and conversations that lead to peace of mind vary from client to client. The benefits, however, are similar.
Things You Can Do Today to Be Ready for Retirement
We often see a lot in the news about how many people aren’t prepared for retirement. But saving for retirement in a 401k doesn’t have to be scary or complicated.
Thinking About Stock Market Volatility
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?
Thoughts on Life and Leadership from Nine of Des Moines’ Best
Three Categories of Risk for Retirement Income
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.
Three Commonly Missed Opportunities by Executives
I’ve had the opportunity to work with a number of executives over the years and have found some commonly missed financial opportunities.
Three Fun Budgeting Benefits
I’ve found some fun benefits to budgeting outside of the normal spend less, save more mantra.
Three Tips to Help Set Yourself up for Retirement
Retirement. It’s something everyone thinks about at some point in their lives. When I see or hear about the people who have retired most effectively, three themes stick out to me. Let’s dive into them.
Three Ways to Make Saving Automatic
Here are some ideas and tools you can use to help make your saving automatic, the biggest key to growing your savings.
Three Ways to Teach Kids Important Financial Skills
Whether you’re a business owner or not, here are three ways to start talking about money and building financial skills with your children or grandchildren while they’re young.
Time to Revisit Your Cash Reserve Fund
Nearly four out of ten Americans lack enough money to cover an unexpected $400 expense? The statistics on this have remained consistent over the years. One of the first steps in building a strong financial foundation is creating an emergency fund. The idea is to prepare for the unexpected expenses of life.