Sometimes it can be difficult to explain the cultural differences between financial planners and wirehouse brokers, especially when many wirehouse brokers give their agents the job title “financial planner”.  However, there are very distinct differences.  Below is a short explanation of the general differences in nature of fee-only financial planners opposed to brokers.  Financial Planners [...]

As Congress is currently debating the debt ceiling issue, Social Security is suddenly front page news again. The first thing to understand is that there IS a solvency problem with Social Security.  Alice Munnell, Director for the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College University points out that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the [...]

We are becoming more aware that a lot of Americans are not financially prepared to fund their own retirement, especially with the recent headlines. The difference between being able to afford retirement and not, can be surprisingly thin if you know the right levers to push. A recent article in SmartMoney magazine illustrates the point [...]

If you’re curious about how much, in aggregate, U.S. citizens are worth, and how that worth compares to the value in 2007, you can visit The Big Picture and see a variety of charts, created by an organization called The Chart Store.  The second set of charts on the web site shows that in the [...]

We’re hearing a lot about taxes these days, mostly about the need for Congress to raise or lower them, make them more fair or simpler, or perhaps do away with them altogether. If this feels like a familiar discussion, it is. Since the passage of the Tariff Act of October 3, 1913 (which implemented the 16th Amendment [...]