Credit Cards are awful! Don’t use a credit card, you will never be able to get out of debt! Never get into credit card debt! We have all heard those statements before. While those statements can be true for those that do not have self-control, they are not true for the rest of us. Credit cards can provide a boost to any financial plan if used properly. Financial Planning First, lets talk about a basic financial principle, financial planning. If you already have your own financial plan, good on you! You can skip to the next section. If you don’t have a financial plan created yet you might be thinking, I don’t need one I don’t have enough money, I already have a good sense of where I am at fin
The term “fiduciary” is often used and referred to in conversations regarding retirement plans. But, what exactly is a fiduciary? The Department of Labor (DOL) has defined a fiduciary as any person or entity who exercises discretionary control or authority over a retirement plan or its assets. Further, the DOL has stated that the “primary responsibility of fiduciaries is to run the plan solely in the interests of participants and beneficiaries and for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits and paying plan expenses.”[1] THE ROLE OF A FIDUCIARY A fiduciary is entrusted to make decisions for the benefit of another and is held to the standard of prudence and trust. The standard of prude
Creating a forecast for the upcoming year is fun – we have a blank canvas on which to operate; there are no incremental benchmarks to measure against to see if your forecast is in line with reality. The more difficult part of forecasting is the moment of truth when we lay down our forecast from a year ago versus the reality of what has transpired. A quick refresher, we opine on a variety of statistics and economic events, along with various side prognostications on sporting events; but, we focus on only three economic indicators in our annual forecast. The three indicators are: U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP), interest rates, specifically the U.S. Treasury 10-year yield and the stock ma
