Bitcoin is has been in the news a lot recently. As of August 24th, the price of ‘physical’ Bitcoin had increased by 336%, year-to-date. Of course, as anyone who has looked into purchasing direct Bitcoin already knows, the process of “investing” in Bitcoin is rather complicated and poses a litany of unique risks.
In most lines of work, you read about “best practices”. Well, let’s take a moment to apply best practices to your finances. You may be just beginning your financial journey, fresh out of college. You may have children or grandchildren that are starting their first real job.
Perhaps, you just want to get serious about your finances. This savings guide is designed to help organize cash flows, so that money is being used in the most efficient manner possible.
This article is based on information released in April of 2017 concerning the Trump Administrations plans for tax reform. For analysis concerning information released in September 2017, click HERE.
Rapidly advancing from rags to riches, or riches to… far more riches, is obviously exciting. However, the improper management of this wealth can be detrimental.
You don’t have to look hard to find stories about how athletes, lottery winners, inventors, or estate beneficiaries have gone broke despite coming into enormous wealth. An inheritance or windfall should not be handled flippantly.
I had an interesting conversation with someone who was asking about the mutual funds we employ. Specifically, he asked if we use “Five-star mutual funds”.
I probably shouldn’t have been surprised, based on how ubiquitous Morningstar is for investment research, but I had never been asked about Morningstar Star Ratings before.
In the world of detailed analytics and minutiae, Morningstar star ratings are a throw-away metric. It is a crude approximation of a narrow slice of a mutual fund’s story.
Disclaimer: Ferguson-Johnson Wealth Management and our advisors do not sell or place life insurance, nor do we have any financial incentive to recommend or refer life insurance for our clients.
I often come across interesting images or thought-provoking data that I want to share with our community, but may not dictate 1,000+ words on the subject. Today, I want to launch a new series that explores these fun-facts in more bite-sized pieces. Click the image above for an expanded view.
Rules of thumb are common in the investment world. There’s the “rule of 72”, which gives us an idea of how often money will double. The safe retirement withdrawal rate lets us know how much we can “safely” draw from retirement portfolios without significant risk of long-term depletion.
Finally, there is the your age in bonds rule, telling us how much of an investment account should be in fixed income at a given time.
Last week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (“The Dow”) cracked the 20,000 point mark. It’s fun and exciting, and it’s seemingly and indication that the stock markets and economy are doing well. Or at least that’s what financial media purports.
So, what does the Dow reaching this level actually mean? Well, in truth, very little. The Dow, as a benchmark, is an archaic, arbitrary bellwether of the US economy. The Dow is a bad index.
On average, young adults today have more debt and earn less money than their parents did at the same age (adjusted for inflation); rent and housing costs, in and around cities, have significantly outpaced wage growth; and increasing automation and globalization are creating new challenges for young people trying to start a career.
Because of this economic environment, your children and/or grandchildren are likely struggle with money and finances more than you did. So, what are some ways you can help your kids with money?