Sense and Cents: Money Matters for Kids

Parents want their children to grow up to be financially healthy. We all have a money script, or a default mode in the ways we interact with and use money. Often our money patterns are ignored, inherited, imbibed or intentional (or a combination of all these). When ignored, we live in a constant state of…

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Contingency Fund: Individual Retiree Risk Management

The goal of this article is to provide an actionable framework for contingency planning for individual retirees through the modern retirement theory (MRT) perspective. Contingency planning encompasses a retiree’s risk management processes, techniques, and strategies, along with a choice architecture. Our goal is to provide insights that are mitigating to those conditions within longevity that can impair or impact a retiree’s ability to remain retired. We offer three risk categories—known, unknown, and unknowable—as an organizational scaffold that demands an intentional choice be made by the retiree. Then, to guide an individual retiree’s decisions about contingency planning, we put forth an active risk selection matrix. The 3-R matrix can be used for guiding and evaluating risk choices through risk recognition, risk reduction, and acceptance of residual risk.

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Your Investment Plan – What’s It Based On?

Your Investment Plan

“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?1” While these questions were originally directed to modern culture at large, we think that they can also be applied to investing. Investors must forge a path, or hire a guide, through information and knowledge leading to a…

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Are We There Yet?

It’s summer. Travelers have packed their bags and vehicles and are making their way to beloved destinations – the beach, the mountains, the city. Anyone who has taken a road trip with kids will have heard and identify with the refrain, “are we there yet?”  With inflation running at 40 year highs, mortgage rates climbing,…

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Investing Math for Everyone

Math numerically expresses objective facts and reveals patterns. How can everyone evaluate the massive amount of numbers and invest with confidence? Markets go up and down daily, appearingly randomly. This leads some to see markets as a gamble or unreliable. We hope to show that everyone can focus on the time frame in order to…

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Russia & Ukraine War

“The strongest of all warriors are these two – Time and Patience.” – Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace Russia has declared war on the Ukraine. War is brutal and ugly. The forthcoming human stories of the harm done to those who are in these conflict zones break our hearts and trouble our minds. Though we are thousands…

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Investing & the Dunning-Kruger Effect

Everyone wants to be viewed as competent, skilled, or excellent at tasks we undertake. Social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger observed the tendency of the unskilled to overestimate their own ability, without ever knowing that they lack skill. Their 1999 paper, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead…

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Annuities in the Age of COVID

Jason Branning was a speaker for an education event for the consumer and financial services industry press. This discussion is about fiduciary advisors utilizing commission free annuities in the face of COVID and low yield.  Read More

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