I read a great article last week in the London Times. The title alone was an excellent piece of investment advice: “Waiting For Calm Seas Means Missing the Boat.”

The article noted that many stock markets around the world are up 50 percent from their March lows. Since an annual return of 8 percent is a fair return, the equivalent of six year’s returns has been crammed into the last five months.

This was predictable. On March 12, three days after what proved to be the bottom of the recent fall, I gave a webcast to my clients imploring them to stay in the markets and not miss the rebound. I explained that most bear markets are up 78 percent in the first three years after the market bottom, and that 50 percent of that recovery happens in the first six months. If those statistics hold, we have seen two-thirds of the entire return one could expect to receive for the next three years. Continue Reading »

Today, the Wall Street Journal’s Financial Advisor Blog named The Financial Wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge as one of the most recommended books by financial planners, calling it a “book for all seasons.” 

Kristen McNamara, who writes about practice management for Dow Jones Newswires, asked financial planners for books they recommend to clients at different life stages. 

There were three books that made the list for “New Clients:”   

1. The Financial Wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge, by Ted Klontz, Rick Kahler, and Brad Klontz
2. The Intelligent Asset Allocator,  by William Bernstein
3. Winning the Losers Game, by Charles Ellis.

You can read the entire article by clicking here.

We recently added an option to our blog postings where you can elect to receive them instantly, daily, weekly, or monthly.  After a lot of discussion, we’ve elected to drop the monthly option.  Many of you are clients, and we feel that a monthly mailing of our postings wouldn’t be timely and would be so overwhealming that important notes may get missed.   We also have  elected that the default option for our e-mails will be instantly, post-by-post, rather than weekly.  If you have any questions about how to elect the option please click here  or call our office (605-343-1400).

Based on my experience as a financial planner, most Americans have no clue what they should be spending on their lifestyle. The problem is that most of us are not anticipating the “unexpected” expenses like car repairs and medical bills. It’s rare that these are actually unexpected; it’s more of an issue of failing to plan for those expenses. What follows is some financial advice for anyone who struggles with budgeting in general and budgeting for lifestyle expenses.

The Bucket System
We’ve recently started introducing our clients to a powerful new tool that helps you determine what lifestyle you can really afford. It’s a system called First Step Cash Management. We refer to it as the “Bucket System” because it divides your money into three “buckets.” Continue Reading »

A financial planning client of mine has started an interesting blog.  Almost everyone over 50 suffers from some type of memory loss, or at least thinks they do.  This blog addresses her journey with her spouse, who has dementia.  She has given me permission to share this with readers of this blog.

Judith writes, “How do you know if it is just memory lapses or if you are living with a form of dementia?  Memory lapses are when you have trouble once in awhile retrieving a word. It is more likely dementia when someone has trouble doing a task once familiar and easy for them. If in doubt, see a neuropsychologist for evaluation for memory and cognitive processing.”

On August 20th, we are pleased that George Frear, of First Western Insurance in Rapid City, will give us an update on auto, homeowners, and umbrella insurance. This type of insurance, called property/casualty, is often the “ugly duckling” of the insurance world. I find more neglect, confusion, and coverage problems in this area than any other.

Be sure to join us for this informative presentation.  We will offer it via a teleconference on Thursday, Aug 20, 2009, at 2 pm MDT/4 pm EDT.  Click here to register.  The podcast of the session will be available after the teleclass takes place.

How many new credit card applications have you received in the mail lately? If you do get one, shredding it is an even better idea than usual. Chances are if you send an application in, it may not be approved anyway.

The economic crisis has already reduced the number of new credit cards. According to data from the Equifax credit bureau as cited in a USA Today article published online on July 7, there was a 38% drop in the number of new credit cards issued in the first four months of this year as compared to the same period last year.

In addition, Congress has recently passed legislation to impose new restrictions on credit cards. These regulations, which will take effect in early 2010, are intended to protect consumers from practices such as arbitrary interest-rate increases and hidden fees. Continue Reading »

Last Tuesday was the first day we began using an automated application to send out our newsletter.  Along with saving us time, the application offers benefits to you as a reader!
 
If you would like to change the frequency of our e-mails, you can click on the link at the bottom of one of our newsletters where it says “click here to unsubscribe or change your delivery preferences.” You will then be given options that will allow you to receive a newsletter for each new post, daily, weekly, or monthly. You can even choose to receive an e-mail for each new post AND weekly in order to ensure you don’t miss out on anything.
If you decide not to change, you will continue to receive the newsletter weekly.

If you have further questions you can call the office at 605-343-1400.

At last, I’ve learned the real cause of our current recession. The majority of the cascading poor financial decisions over the past 10 years were made by politicians, bankers, financial executives, and consumers who were under the influence. This explains a lot.

All those bad decisions, however, weren’t affected by drugs or alcohol—but by lack of sleep.

What does the number of hours we sleep have to do with the current financial crisis, or with making sound money decisions in general? Just about everything, according to Dr. James Maas, professor of psychology at Cornell and author of Power Sleep. Dr. Maas spoke at the 2009 gathering of the National Association of Personal Financial Planners (NAPFA). Continue Reading »

ABC posted a series of questions with answers provided by Rick Kahler, Ted Klontz, and Brad Klontz.  The questions cover an array of financial problems that recent viewers of the ABC 20/20 special posed.  You can read the article here.