I briefly touched on asset allocation in my last post about 529s. So I felt it was a good segue into this post: Asset Allocation is an all-encompassing term for where and why you put your money in certain places for retirement. At its most basic, the two most general categories are Stocks and Bonds. For simplicity’s sake, consider Stocks as “More Aggressive” and Bonds as “More Conservative” in a general sense. What this really […]
Investing
So when people talk about finance, investment, retirement, etc. they always just throw 3 numbers at you (529 – College Savings Plan is one of them). “I maxed my 401k, but need to rebalance my 403b. Then I need to contribute some more to my 457b. I also need to set up that 529 for my kids.” These three numbers refer to the Internal Revenue Code subsection. So they sound scary, but they’re really not, it’s all related […]
What is a 529?
Ok, so in the last two posts of this series, 1 and 2. We talked about how I don’t really like financial advisors and then how some of them are ok. Now we move on to the last of this series: how to find a good one So let’s review first. We want a financial advisor who is: Educated Experienced Fee-Only Preferably one that aligns with your risk portfolio. Education: As I discussed in my […]
Finding a Good Financial Advisor
Ok, before you read this post, go read this one first. So here’s the thing. The idea of a financial advisor isn’t an inherently bad one. This person has some knowledge and expertise that you presumably don’t have. So you meet this person and they advise you on your finances… basically a consultant. Any consultant desires a fee, and rightly so, as they have provided a service, hopefully a value one. You receive a service and […]
Financial Advisors – The “Good” Ones
The term “financial advisor” feels inherently safe. It connotes a sense of knowledge and experience in finance, enough to advise other people about it. After 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school, and who knows how many years of residency/fellowship, the last thing most doctors want to do is to learn all this “finance stuff”. Most doctors don’t seem to understand just how important (and potentially costly) it is to not learn about […]
Financial Advisors
There are a lot of different types of funds you can buy. So then… why index funds? The general idea behind index funds are that they should have the lowest expense ratios and should have no load or any other hidden costs. By having the lowest costs possible, and simply tracking the market rather than actively trying to beat it, you have the highest chance of coming out ahead over the long term compared to an actively managed, […]