For a financial planner, there’s nothing like being featured in The Wall Street Journal. Unless, maybe, the featured story is about one of your long-ago investment mistakes.

Rick’s cautionary tale about buying a tax-lien certificate opens an article about using self-directed IRA’s to buy unusual investments. The piece by James Sterngold, “A Nervy Approach to Retirement Saving,” was published in the online edition on May 17, 2013.

To learn more about self-directed IRA’s, or just to find out how Rick bought a house that wasn’t there, you can read the entire article here.

Eat your Ramen noodles when you’re young, and you won’t have to eat them after you retire. That’s the short version of the advice Rick offers in an article by Leslie Geary published May 15 at FoxBusiness.com. He is one of the financial advisors cited in ”Five Excuses Why People Don’t Save for Retirement.”

The article includes some excellent advice for anyone who hasn’t yet started saving for retirement. You can read it here.

I was a bit confused when I received an email today from a local business owner congratulating me for being named among the top financial advisors who have most transformed the financial advice profession.  I thought perhaps he read my online resume and was referring to when BusinessWeek named me as one of the top 15 financial planners in 2009.

A little research shows that InvestmentNews is doing a survey as part of their 15-year anniversary issue- asking readers to select the top five most transformational advisors from a list of 26 candidates.  I am totally surprised and honored to be among that group, which reads like a Who’s Who of financial planning.  Even more surprising, I consider ten of them to be personal friends!

If you want to check out the survey you can access it here.

Imagine this scenario: A bunch of college kids, on their own for the first time, sharing a house. And you’re their landlord.

Anyone who remembers the movie “Animal House” may shudder at the very idea of this as a real estate investment option. In the right circumstances, though, it can be a way for college students and their parents to save money and even make money. Buying a house and using rent payments from roommates to cover the mortgage can reduce college housing costs and build equity at the same time.

Some of the advantages to this form of college housing are described in an article by Ingrid Case in the March 1, 2013, issue of Financial Planning magazine. Rick is one of the advisors cited in the article, which you can read here.

“Have you charted the right path to financial security?”

An article by Donna Rosato in the Jan/Feb issue of Money magazine asks this question and poses eight questions to help you find out. Rick is among several financial advisors cited in the article. One of his suggestions is to increase your job security by saving a small amount every year to fund professional memberships or classes to keep your skills up to date.

Read “Are you financially secure? 8 questions to ask” in the current print issue or in the online edition.

A recent article in Investment News featured an interview with Rick about the ways that client’s money scripts can affect their behavior.

You can find the article here. Please note that you may have to register for the site in order to read it.

With all the talk about tax rates and the fiscal cliff, hardly anyone has mentioned what is probably the most effective and least understood tax in the federal arsenal: inflation.

Wait a minute. Isn’t it confusing to call inflation a tax?

It is. That confusion is exactly why inflation is the ultimate stealth tax.

One of the few deficit-reducing measures that has the support of both parties and President Obama is a change in the way the government measures inflation. Our lawmakers have agreed on another in a series of adjustments to the way they calculate the consumer price index (CPI). The proposed changes will understate the future CPI even more than the current formula already does.

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So the economic train is speeding faster and faster, and the edge of the fiscal cliff is getting closer and closer, and the passengers are starting to scream. Meanwhile, the guys in the cab of the engine are arguing about whether to hit the brakes or blow the whistle.

What’s the best thing for an investor to do? Nothing.

Based on my emails this week from clients and readers of my column, there seems to be widespread concern among investors that we’re on the verge of panic and the markets are about to head south.

It reminds me of the good old days, back in the fall of 2008, when the markets were dropping 900 points a day. I’m sensing that the fear among investors about going over the fiscal cliff is similar to the fear of four years ago. The only difference is that the markets aren’t falling today.

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“What are your ‘Money Scripts’?” The Wall Street Journal asks this question in an article by Thomas Coyle published in the December 9 online issue. Coyle based much of the piece on interviews with Rick and with therapist Dave Jetson, who offers financial therapy to KFG clients.

Read the complete article here.

What’s the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire?

Three zeroes and a comma.

No, this isn’t a bad joke. It takes one thousand millions to make one billion. That’s a huge difference.

Over the past couple of years, especially during the presidential election, one of the hot-button issues has been whether the wealthy are paying “their fair share” in taxes. A great deal of the media coverage and political rhetoric, from President Obama on down, has lumped “millionaires and billionaires” together.

That makes as much sense as putting a housecat and a tiger into the same cage and saying they’re just the same.

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