Best Financial Life

Empowering You to Live Your Best Financial Life

Our expertise in financial, investment, and retirement planning will guide your path to financial fulfillment.

Investing in Individual Stocks? Here’s What You’re Up Against

Buying individual stocks might feel like a smart move — but the odds are stacked against you. In this blog, we break down how Wall Street analysts operate, why their deep advantages make stock picking a losing game for everyday investors, and why index funds have outperformed even the pros over time. If you want your Financial Plan built on solid ground, this is a must-read.

Let Experience Guide Your Investments—Not Emotion

Discover why the most successful investors embrace “boring” strategies to build lasting wealth. Learn how patience, diversification, and long-term thinking can outperform market fads and Wall Street hype.

The Market Is Your Toolbox—Use It Wisely

Investing isn’t a game—it’s a tool to build long-term wealth. Learn why thoughtful, steady strategies still outperform hype and how to use the markets with purpose.

Why Smart Investors Start by Admitting What They Don’t Know

After 30 years in finance, I’ve learned no one consistently beats the market. This blog shares a better approach: global diversification, emotional resilience, and realistic goals. Forget stock tips—focus on a strategy you can stick with, even in downturns, to reach your personal financial objectives.

Don’t Be Fooled by the Word ‘Guaranteed’

Not all guarantees are created equal—especially in investing. This blog explores the truth behind “guaranteed returns,” why real long-term growth comes from the stock market, and how economic resilience shapes smart investment strategy.

Invest Smarter, Not Harder

Most investors underperform the market — and it’s not because they pick the wrong stocks. The problem? Emotional decisions. We tend to buy high when the market feels safe and sell low when fear takes over — exactly the opposite of what works. This blog breaks down why it happens and how you can build a smarter, long-term strategy to avoid this common pitfall.

How Space Exploration Changed the World—and Your Investments

The technology we rely on today—like virtual reality and mobile tools—was once science fiction. Thanks to the space race, these are now part of everyday life. Progress is unstoppable. The question is: Are your investments aligned with the growth ahead?

A Financial Plan Lacks Value Without a Spending Strategy

Is your financial plan really complete? Many people focus heavily on investments, but this only makes up 25% of a well-rounded strategy. The missing piece? A flexible, intentional spending plan. Understanding your spending isn’t about cutting back—it’s about taking control.

How to Prepare for Market Crashes: Essential Tips for Investors

Market crashes are unpredictable—but they don’t have to derail your financial journey. The key to surviving (and thriving) during market downturns lies in preparation. Think of it like being a scout: always ready for what’s to come.

Why Money Is More Than Just Currency: Understanding Its True Value

How much is enough to sustain your lifestyle? Learn the key difference between currency and money, why inflation matters, and how to plan for a secure financial future.

The Great Investment Lie

True investment success comes from patience, discipline, and sticking to your plan, even in turbulent times. Don’t fall for the myth—focus on the steady, proven approach that truly grows wealth over time.

Four Hard Truths

Whether your plan is in your head, in an Excel spreadsheet, or managed by a professional, there is no doubt that these four hard truths must be accepted for your money to have a chance at outliving you.

How To Get Paid In Retirement

In retirement, you will begin spending down your assets and stop receiving a paycheck. This is one of the most difficult mind-shifts we go through in our lifetime. But it doesn’t have to be.

Surviving a Down Market: One Mistake You Can’t Afford

There are many mistakes we can make when investing, the most significant of which is sitting out of the market. Most of the others lead us to the conclusion that we should sell our portfolios and "wait for a better time to invest."

What a Great Financial Planner Can Do for You

In this “bullet point post,” I’ll share what I believe you need from your Financial Planner (even if that might be you!)

Why It Pays to Pay Taxes

Most people will delay paying tax as long as possible. We see this quite often in taxable investment portfolios where you can choose to sell investments with gains or losses when readjusting your portfolio.

The First Financial Question

The great majority of what passes for financial advice is directed at optimizing instead of drastic improvement. Any tip, hint, or singular transaction is a tweak on your financial situation and should be treated as such.

How To Define What You Want Out Of Life

If I were to ask you what your goals are for your life, would you be able to answer? Or, would it evoke a sense of overwhelm or fear that you won’t be able to achieve or accomplish everything you want to in life? That you can’t or won’t do “enough.”

The Last Dumb Investor

Given the market has always risen over any 17-year period, this poor soul must have bought on October 9, 2007, just before the S&P 500 index threw in the towel and dropped nearly 50%. That dumb buyer would have “lost” half their money in just a little over a year.

Don’t Let Your Investment Plan Crash With The Markets

In many cases, philosophies are the basis for how we think and plan. If you can see how my simple driving philosophy helped here, perhaps you can see how an investment philosophy may help when it comes to your money and the market.

Does Your Financial Advisor Buy Lottery Tickets?

When we trade our cash for things, we are either investing or making a purchase, and it is imperative to understand the difference. For me, buying a lottery ticket every once in a while gives me the chance to dream a little bit of what life would be like if I were to win. At no time do I actually believe I will win – we all know how steep the odds are – but I know for a fact that I won’t win if I don’t buy a ticket.

8 Investment Strategy Mistakes to Avoid

When was the last time you truly forgave someone? I’m talking about a time when someone did wrong to you with no explanation — leaving you bewildered as to why you were treated that way. And, unfortunately, you had no real recourse, except to pick yourself up and move on. But before you could truly do that, you had to forgive that person.

How to Save Time on Your Finances

When it comes to assessing and changing your financial life, what’s holding you back? Is it finally weeding things out and making the change? Is it the inertia or that you find yourself falling back into old habits? No matter what it is, if you genuinely want to spend less time and find more value, you need to break the habits, commit to the change, and weed things out.

How to Avoid Putting All Your Eggs in One Basket

The phrase in the title of this post is said to have been first used in the novel “Don Quixote,” and is written as follows, “It is the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not venture all his eggs in one basket.” The message, of course, is that it can be quite risky to keep all your valuables in one place.

What is Financial Planning?

Financial Planner. Financial Advisor. Investment Advisor. Or even an Investment Adviser. Do these terms create vibrations of stress in your life? I’m going to tell you exactly what I do for clients – not as a sales pitch, but so that you may be able to take some of this away and apply it in your life.

7 Mistakes Investors Make

We all make mistakes – I know I’ve made my share. But for some reason, when it comes to investing, we are prone to repeating our mistakes – over and over. I think it’s because the “lesson” we tell ourselves we learned isn’t the right one.

Rely on the Wisdom of the Crowd

If we invest in a market-like portfolio, with wide diversification and diligence around our appropriate asset allocation, we can predict the return it will provide fairly well. It takes planning to ensure we can do everything we want given the realistic returns we can expect from such a strategy.

I Just Sold Some Stock—Now What?

You’ve finally pulled the trigger, selling a chunk of your company stock and leaving you with a pile of cash sitting in your brokerage account. What now? Now you have a pile of cash and need to know what to do with it. Let’s talk about that.

Give a Job to Every Dollar You Have

In today’s busy world, you might often feel like you’re drowning in responsibilities to your family, coworkers, clients, and even your neighbors. There’s always someone or something saying you ought to be doing something.

Make Your Extra Cash Work For You

Some people are concerned about spending their extra cash, while others are concerned that they’re not investing it. In either case, this situation can easily be avoided through a simple process that makes your cash work for you.

Successful Investing: The Value of a 5-Year Cash Flow Plan

How should you invest the money you plan to spend in 2 years to buy a house/boat/car or go on a trip? The answer is, you shouldn’t. In this blogpost, we discuss how to truly get into the mindset of a long-term investor by projecting your net cash flows over the next five years and being sure NOT to invest them.

The Limited Significance of Your Money: Exploring its True Value

There are only four things you can do with your money: pay taxes, spend it, invest it, or give it away. That’s it. Not very exciting, is it. What is important, is how you use your money to get the life you want.

Don’t Set It and Forget It

Ok, so you’ve bought into ignoring short-term market fluctuations, but it’s likely not that simple. In my experience the idea of investing for the long run can fade quickly when the market gets stressed.

Unlocking the Power of Diversification: The Key to Financial Success

It is unfortunate, but to understand why diversification works, we must understand a little math. This mathematical magic is the key to constructing a portfolio that your well-thought-out financial plan deserves: a beautifully diversified investment strategy!

The Rising Price of A Good Time

How much will you spend in the future? This is an important question, and we can get nearly there by looking at your current expenses. However, the biggest determinant of your future spending is actually inflation.

Why SVB Is Important For Your Portfolio

On March 8th, SVB was trading at $267 per share. By March 10th, you couldn’t give your SVB stock away. Investors lost $16 billion in 2 days. It’s easy to say, in hindsight, that it couldn’t happen to you, but there are some 8500 employees who just lost tens of millions of dollars in their company stock.

How to Use Roth Accounts

I like to call Roth Accounts the “Never Taxed Again” account because you are taxed on the money you put in, but you are not taxed when you take it out nor are you taxed on the earnings.

How to Use Traditional Retirement Accounts

Traditional Retirement Accounts are tax-deferred. This means you get a tax deduction when you put money in, and you pay tax when you take money out (usually in retirement). Most typically, these are your Traditional 401k and Traditional IRAs.

Why Diversification Works

Why Use a Trust?

A revocable living trust is a legal method of passing assets from one owner to the next without going through probate. Trusts typically provide much greater protection for your wishes.

The Rising Cost of a Good Time

How much will you spend in retirement? This is an important question, and we can get nearly there by looking at your current expenses. However, the biggest determinant of your future spending is actually inflation.

Retirement May Not Mean You Actually Retire

How much time do you have left?Knowing the answer to this question would greatly ease your financial planning process. But, of course, this is one of the many variables we don’t know.

The Upside To A Market Crash

If you are in the savings/investing mode, would you rather stock prices today be over or under the true value of the companies you are buying?

The Importance of Having Access to Your Money

Needing access to your investment accounts in an emergency creates enough of a logistical hurdle but holding investments that may take weeks or months to sell can really cause a problem.

Your Investments Should Be Experienced

When investing, it is easy to be attracted to the various vehicles, sectors, and strategies that surround us. Wall Street (and other financial agitators) knows this and they invent new angles every day with the primary goal of getting into your pocket.

Use The Markets Like a Tool

Investing has become a game to most, but it should never be approached this way. From meme stocks to crypto, many of you are being far too cavalier with your investments.

A Guarantee That’s Not Truly Guaranteed

Do you want a guaranteed investment return? If you answered yes, I hope you added the condition that it depends on who is providing the guarantee and what that guarantee actually is.

Don’t Just Do Something! Stand There!

The annual update to DALBAR’s Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior (QAIB) study confirmed once again that when we make moves in our portfolio, we are much more likely to be losers rather than winners.

Guns vs. Butter

We have limited resources, be they friends, family, money, skills, experience, or whatever. There is nothing we have that is without limit. The key to finding your own financial happiness is allocating your resources appropriately.

You Can Never Go Back

Our technological progress has only just begun. If you want to participate in this growth financially, the best approach is through company ownership in a diversified fashion among industries, geographies, and sectors.

Rebalance Your Portfolio

Your Long-Term Portfolio has target percentages for each fund and asset class. We start investing by placing those amounts in each fund so that we are perfectly balanced. The day you initially invest will be the last day you are perfectly balanced.

Structure a Portfolio Whose Behavior in Market Crashes is Acceptable

If you are 40 years old, you will likely experience 5 to 8 more market crashes during the rest of your life. You can try to predict them and trade through them, but history says you won’t be successful as no one has ever done so through more than one or two.

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Empowering You to Live Your Best Financial Life