How to Decide if Renting or Buying a Home is Right for You

For most people, the best reasons to own a home have little or nothing to do with whether it's a good financial investment. Everyone desires a comfortable place to live and raise their family. Which house you choose, and how you pay for it, is not just an investment. First, it's a lifestyle choice.

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3 Questions to Ask When Planning Your Financial Future

Not only do many people not have a financial plan, many of them don't understand what such a plan should involve. One way to deal with this is to engage a qualified financial planner. Whether you take this route or go it alone, a financial plan should be the answer to issues raised by key questions about your future.

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Invest Like Norway, Not Yale

David Swenson, the chief investment officer of the Yale endowment fund, has gained notoriety over the past several decades to manage the Yale endowment fund.  In the early 1990s, he decided to place a gigantic chunk of the endowment into alternative assets like real estate, hedge funds, and private equity.  The results were spectacular.

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WISE Money – Stubborn Bulls and Stubborn Bears are Both Wrong

Some people—perma‐bulls—are always predicting that the stock market will go up, and others—perma‐bears—are always predicting that it will go down

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WISE Money – Wedding To-do List: Give Yourself a Money Checkup

Amid an engagement, it's easy for couples to overlook key financial points that can affect their financial security and their relationship. As couples plan their wedding, it's a good idea to do some foundational financial planning, as well.

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“Fight The Fights That Are Worth Fighting”

Do you work with a financial advisor? If so, is that advisor required to put your interest ahead of his/her own? If you are like 99% of other investors out there, you probably don’t know for sure. The vast majority of advisors are brokers or have the option to operate as a broker, and therefore don’t have to act in their client’s best interest.

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The Predictive Power (Or Lack Thereof) Of Stock Market Indicators

There is really no indicator that we know of that can predict stock market performance.  If there ever were, it would very quickly be arbitraged away since markets tend to be fairly efficient.  Merrill Lynch uses a metric they call the “Sell Side Indicator” to determine future stock performance.

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Pay Me My Fair Share- Profits vs. Wages

One of the big themes we have seen over the past several years is capital over labor.  Corporations have seen an explosion in income while paying their workers some of the lowest wages in history. Here is a chart that shows labor as a percentage of GDP (blue) versus corporate profits as a percentage of GDP (red).

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Why Are Interest Rates So Important?

In the investment world, much of the talk over the past few weeks seems to be revolving around the spike in interest rates and what that means for the global financial markets. 

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