This week’s The Distillery is a fascinating read about an often misunderstood topic: inflation and the effects of purchasing power. In fact, the author exposes a common myth that if you suspect future hyperinflation, you should sell stocks. The reverse is typically true, while your best move prior to a hyperinflationary environment is actually to take on more debt and use it to buy more stocks!

This week’s The Distillery addresses an interesting aspect of not just retiring early, but retiring early and then considering going back to work after an extended period of absence. How has your industry changed? Have your certifications expired? Is the technology landscape vastly different? While it’s easy (and enjoyable) to fantasize about retiring early, thinking through leaving retirement to return to work is not so easy (or fun) of an exercise.

This week’s The Distillery was timed perfectly with a conversation I had with a client the other day regarding delaying social security benefits and the current costs of doing so (withdrawing from your portfolio) versus the future benefits of delaying (increased SSI and survivor benefits). Kim Blanton of Squared Away, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College’s blog, offers a fresh new perspective on delaying social security benefits by solving for the equivalent amount it would cost to purchase an annuity in the private market. We hope you enjoy!

This week’s The Distillery revisits the topic of home country bias. Or in other words, the extreme overweight of one’s home country in their investment portfolio. As Meb points out, those who have had a home country bias the last ten years have been handsomely rewarded (and pretty lucky), but if investment history tells us anything, it’s that past performance is not indicative of future results! Enjoy this well researched piece on global diversification.

This week’s The Distillery by no means offers investment advice into the frenetic, and surprisingly correlated, Trump-Twitter-Oil relationship. Instead, just enjoy the beauty that is the Trump character. As much as the general public would like to believe there’s not much going on inside that head of his, the subtle strategies he employs often come to light well after they’ve been implemented….via Twitter!

Enjoy!

This week’s The Distillery caught my attention not so much because of the title, but more so because it provides a view into the decision-making process we (planners) go through when solving through the same question with clients. Aside from an interesting planning exercise, it shows you just how much of the planning process is art and client-centric, opposed to science and strictly numbers.

This week’s The Distillery isn’t directly related to financial planning, but could be applied to investing or just about anything you’re dedicated to in life presently. In fact, this was the first of many articles I read this week while looking for blog content. I kept thinking, I need something more “financy.” But every time I read something new, I couldn’t stop thinking about the first piece. So much so, that it’s now what you’ve received in your inbox!

Please enjoy this beautifully formulated and absolutely heartfelt piece by Drew Dickson of Albert Bridget Capital...

Lately I’ve been drawn to the authors who are writing frankly personal finance topics. This week’s The Distillery is another such piece, with tid-bits of interesting extras sprinkled throughout. For those BMW, Audi, Benz owners, unless you’ve already banked a large portion of future Retirement funds, this article may not sit well with you. However, you’re the exact audience it’s intended for!

Enjoy!

I have a new focus on dumb news. My new analyst, Joe Jones, spends an hour or two a day searching for the best in dumb news. I also think that USA Today is the best newspaper in the world. There is wisdom in idiocy. I was unhappily scrolling through Facebook the other day and saw that one of my smart friends had posted a dumb article about the excellent Toronto Raptors basketball player who, despite making nearly a hundred million dollars, still drives a 20-year-old beater SUV. He said of the car: ...

This week’s The Distillery addresses the classic question of how much do I need to save each year, and for how many years do I need to save that amount, until I am a “millionaire?” The question (and answer) is fairly simple when using average returns to solve for your one million dollars at the end of the rainbow, but a lot of people don’t get there as quickly given that the ride is never as smooth as the spreadsheet math.

Enjoy!

If you were contributing $5,000 a year into an investment account with the goal of amassing $1 million, you can get there, assuming like Baron said, you have patience….

This week’s The Distillery isn’t the most exciting read, but it’s an important read. For investors, we have to constantly weigh our options, selecting the ones we believe will have the greatest future risk-adjusted returns for our particular goals. The problem is, we never know quite how those returns will realize, and sometimes the strategy which has historically proven to provide the greatest risk-adjusted return, is taking longer than usual to do so. Could things be different this time? Likely not, but staying the course is proving to be even more difficult, but oh so important.

We hope you enjoy the author’s well thought out piece on the timely Value vs. Growth debate.

Value stocks have struggled for a long time now. Although the degree of underperformance can vary significantly based on the metric you use and the universe you apply it to, there is no question that the past decade has been a bad one for value investing. And the past five years have been even worse. I have always been a big believer in value, but it is only natural for all of us to question an investment strategy that struggles for this long...