“When we were first starting out our mortgage rate was ten percent, not a two percent adjustable.” –says any parent who bought a home in the 1970s Dear Reader, Remember when you understood how the banking system worked? They lent you money, you bought a home, paid them back for what felt […]
Vanguard GNMA and a Winter of Political Polarization
Anyone who tells you politics has nothing to do with investing is simply not paying attention. In this winter of political polarization—a deep freeze—politics matter. Case in point. Look at Vanguard GNMA. For most of 2018, Vanguard GNMA has been sledding from a peak of $10.45 in January. Guess when the trough, or bottom was […]
Sig Sauer M17 and M18
“The M17 and M18 pistols are manufactured by Sig Sauer, who earned the $580 million contract to produce the weapons in January of this year,” writes Kris Osborn at the National Interest. “The new pistol is built with a more ergonomic configuration to better accommodate the widest possible range of hand grip techniques for soldiers […]
Babson College Announces New President
“Babson College, which marks its centennial next year, has tapped a familiar face to replace Kerry Healey, its outgoing president and the first woman to lead the Wellesley business school,” reports the Boston Globe. “Stephen Spinelli Jr., a cofounder of Jiffy Lube International, Inc. who worked at Babson from 1993 to 2007, will become the […]
Coldplay: A Head Full of Dreams
If you like Coldplay (I do) then you’ll love their new documentary A Head Full of Dreams (Prime Video) covering the British quartet’s first two decades. What stood out to me was when lead singer Chris Martin told the camera that all of their best songs were written in only ten minutes…but it takes months […]
Your Retirement Life: Gone Fishin’ at Bud N’ Mary’s
On a recent trip to the Florida Keys, a client visited Bud N’ Mary’s in Islamorada, FL. If you’re a fisherman you’ll want to check out this neat video about this sport fishing institution.
“E.J., Has Your Phone Been Ringing off the Hook?”
With market volatility creeping upward, this is once again a question I’m getting, but I urge you to reread what I wrote back on February 28, 2018. Well this was a fun month for the stock market with wild swings from high to low of around 2,000 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. One […]
Storing Water for the Winter
The official start of winter is coming soon. Make sure you read my post from November 9, 2018 before creating your water storage plan. You don’t have to be crazy to store water. Over the weekend I completed my winter water storage. Below is a great video on how you can do it with 55-gallon […]
Wealth Management Pitfall: ESG, Part II
Earlier this week, I wrote to you about the pitfall of environmental, social and governance investing, or ESG. Thousands of investment firms have signed a pledge to follow ESG and abide by a United Nations sponsored statement of principles. The problem here is multifold. First, your investment advisor should act as your fiduciary not an […]
Top 10 Reasons to Own an AR-15
You’ll benefit from spending some time reading “Top 10 Reasons You Should Own an AR-15,” by Mark Overstreet writing for the Federalist. One of the major misconceptions with the AR-15 is that it’s “automatic.” This is false. If you pull the trigger of an AR-15 and hold it in for five or ten seconds—one round […]
Wealth Management: Year-End Planning
One of the “must dos” for any serious investor is to make sure your investment house is in order as year-end quickly approaches. Ensuring that you have the best technology is an important way to do that, and I have found through years of experience with different custodians that Fidelity has always been the industry’s […]