Insurance is boring. Really boring. Experimenting eating paint chips might be more entertaining, if significantly more hazardous for your health. This boredom, along with education and training on how to evaluate insurance, costs consumers over a billion dollars a year in fees, conflicts, and opportunity costs. You too, probably find insurance pretty boring, but when you’re given an opportunity to …
Wolves at the Gate – Part 1
“Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.” – Warren Buffett It’s a simple but powerful piece of wisdom that the Oracle of Omaha shares with others when the markets are booming or crashing. Human nature often compels us to wait until things are past the point of ideal to get involved in something, and often …
A Full Layout
“A full layout” is a dreaded phrase for those who have been in the military. It involves being given a packing list for some sort of operation, typically dozens of items long, which must be crammed into a rucksack. From that point, a full layout is the forced process of pulling the contents of the rucksack out and laying them …
Riding out the Storm
It’s an expression you’ve heard before. “Riding out the storm.” Usually it’s quite literal: families staying at home during a hurricane, huddling in the living room around the fire during a blizzard, and so on. But the idiom comes with a much more literal background. In naval excursions, particularly over long distances and upon the ocean, storms can reach peaks …
The Market is on Sale
Good news! The market is on sale. Why do I view it so optimistically when the average news report makes it sound like the world is ending? Well, a bit of context is required. My first year as a financial planner was an interesting one. Within a year we had Chinese market volatility, the first big drop in the preceding …
Penny Wise and Pound Foolish
Welcome! Today’s reading covers how recently someone chose to give up $933,353 over $84,735. Interested? Read on! Recently I set up a Retirement Plan for a medical practice. With over a dozen team members, the practice had utilized a 401(k) plan up to the present day that was structured more like a traditional pension, i.e. where everyone’s money goes into …
Alphabet Soup – Professional Designations
What? There are too many letters after my name? I don’t see how my full list of professional degrees and professional designations are an issue! So what if my name is Daniel M. Yerger Masters of Business Administration Certified Financial Planner Chartered Financial Consultant Accredited Investment Fiduciary Certified Divorce Financial Analyst. …Okay you might have a point. But seriously, all …
What does Fee Only mean for you?
Big question, loaded question, a lotta people ask me that question. (Ten points if you get the reference.) Back in August of 2018, I wrote a piece called “In the Trenches”, talking about how the talking heads of financial planning got together and decided that financial planning itself wasn’t enough, but that the future of financial planners lay in being …