Words of Candor

I never thought we would see 30-year home loans touching interest rates in the high 2s, but 2020 was a weird year for all sorts of things.
Losing a loved one is an incredibly emotional time, and is often made more difficult by time-sensitive tasks like funeral arrangements or turning off streams of income like Social Security or pensions. Then you may learn you have inherited assets that come with additional taxes for you.
Early on in your efforts toward retirement savings, it’s easier to accept market volatility given the potential for growth over a long period of time. When actually preparing to retire however, your mindset needs to change. You are no longer looking only for the best performing investment, but for the most consistent investment. In retirement, volatility has the potential to accelerate the depletion of your assets, especially during a declining market, and since statistics show most 65 year olds will live to be 85 or 90, you need your savings to go the distance.
Saving for college is very similar to saving for retirement. In both scenarios, we aim to have a certain amount of money put away by a specified period of time before beginning withdrawals. Here’s three things to keep in mind when saving for college:
In the U.S., more than 189 million Americans have at least one credit card, and on average, most consumers have four with an average balance of about $8,400. In our experience, most credit card debt stems from two issues: either someone doesn’t have a budget and has overspent, or they do not have an emergency savings for when a major expense comes up. Let’s talk about that second reason today.