If you haven’t been watching the headlines, thinking about the stock market, buying a house or applying for a line of credit, then you may have no idea that interest rates have recently gone down. Indeed, the Federal Reserve (the Fed) announced last month it is cutting its benchmark rate by 0.50% to a target rate of 4.75% to 5% (from 5.25 to 5.50%). Interest rate changes reverberate throughout the…
Investing will not make you financially secure. Investing will help you stay financially secure. Investing allows you to outpace inflation and optimize your assets. It’s not a secret path that lets you skip the line to financial freedom. For some, there is this idea that they can make up their savings shortfall by selecting the right investments. They think if their investment portfolio worked harder for them, they wouldn’t have…
Recently, we had an opportunity to do a question and answer session with one of our valued tax partners, RAC CPA Group, PLLC. RAC CPA is run by Josef Dassler and Paul Saxton with offices located downtown, Seattle. We took the time to ask the questions that we thought would help our clients understand what is important when working with a tax partner and their outlook on the 2025…
For many parents, when it comes to thinking about money and kids, there are so many questions to think about. How do I raise my kid without spoiling them? What is a fair allowance? Do I pay them for chores/grades? Do I pay for private school? Do I pay for their college? How do I give them the best chance at success in life? Should I leave them an inheritance?…
What we remember A few weeks ago, I had the chance to hike Half Dome in Yosemite National Park for the second time in my life. The first time was over 23 years ago with two close friends. The three of us reunited, added one more long-time friend, and ventured out again to conquer the 8,800 granite peak, climbing 4,800 feet of elevation to reach the top. It was a…
Our national media cycle is a non-stop barrage of mostly gloomy headlines focused on topics that generate clicks and views. Unfortunately, we are biologically wired to focus and react more to negative news than to positive news. In the information age, you can always find data points to confirm your opinion (cognitive bias, anyone?). But, in this post, we thought we would take the liberty of highlighting some of the…
We are constantly discussing what it takes to meet our long-term financial goals with clients. However, we also discuss how important it is to live, today, finding our own balance between our future needs and our current needs. To be sure, travel budgets are a worthy goal! With summer upon us, we’d like to give a nod to living in the moment and share some of our team’s personal travel…
Recently, two regional banks, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank have been caught up, to some degree, in the making of their own demise. Both were seized by regulators last quarter, as their depositors realized the banks were struggling to keep up with withdrawals and were being forced to sell securities at a loss, to keep up. Ultimately, regulators intervened, citing a lack of confidence in their respective management…
Recently, I had a chance to preview a personal finance book by a best-selling author that focused on how to build and manage your wealth. During the process of reading an early draft of the book, it struck me that it is easy for many to think of wealth building and wealth management as the same thing. However, they are distinctly different and should be considered separately. Building wealth is…
LOOKING BACK It’s difficult to know what the future will hold without understanding the past. 2022 was a difficult year in the market. An unprecedented, rapid increase in interest rates by the Federal Reserve, created significant market volatility and negative returns for the year: Consequently, the S&P 500 finished down -19.44% and investors experienced the risk side of the “risk/reward” relationship. What was different about 2022 was that the negative…
