Life Events

The surge in U.S. retirements during the Covid-19 pandemic was led by older White women without a college education, according to research by the St. Louis Federal Reserve.

The son of a terminally ill father consulted me recently. He was in dire emotional straits. If you had been his advisor, would his outcome have been better?

I find it difficult to act as a social worker. I’ve no background in psychology. I’ve no skills to help warring couples find their bliss and agree on a center point when they have differing opinions.

By expanding its use of reverse repurchase agreements to nearly $1.6 trillion, the Fed has kept money market funds solvent and prevented a systemic failure.

Ask yourself these questions when seeking a trust partner who not only is committed to a partnership service model, but can also deliver.

What makes life worth living? This question is at the heart of financial life planning and financial therapy.

The new year could bring a new you. Despite what the poets say, money, or at least financial security, can be one of the most important steps toward happiness. On the other hand, money mismanagement and debt can result in financial anxiety, which can cloud decision making and lead to a bad cycle.

A central part of the “American Dream” is to buy a house, pay it off over time and retire with hundreds of thousands of dollars of equity in the home.

Global central banks are set to spend 2022 diverging, as some take on the menace of inflation and others stay focused on boosting economic growth.

Finding the right professional to manage your finances is challenging. Financial professionals have many different titles, certifications and qualifications, but which type is right for you?

We're sharing four areas of work female advisors should resolve to pay special attention to in 2022 –plus, how you can give those resolutions staying power.

Bob Huebscher’s mother passed away on December 23, 2021.

Are we living in 1858 or 1968?

That is, are America’s divisions so profound and political institutions so crippled that we are poised for a breakdown akin to the Civil War? Or is the current polarization the product of conflicting social forces that can be gradually reconciled or redirected into more healthy electoral competition?

First comes love and then comes ... a frank discussion about the realities of moving in together.

President Joe Biden extended the pause on federal student-loan repayments by another three months as the U.S. faces a fresh wave of Covid-19 cases from the omicron variant, removing a near-term threat to millions of Americans’ finances.

Capitalism’s death warrant was signed on March 19, 1968. That is when President Lyndon Johnson eliminated the requirement that the Federal Reserve back the U.S. dollar with gold reserves.

The value for clients is higher with larger portfolios than small ones. The fees should be higher too.

It has been my tradition to informally rate the investment-related books I read in the past year. I have also included some novels and books of general interest. Here is my list of winners and losers.

Federal Reserve officials intensified their battle against the hottest inflation in a generation by shifting to end their asset-buying program earlier and signaling they favor raising interest rates in 2022 at a faster pace than expected.

The Federal Reserve, caught embarrassingly offside in its view of U.S. inflation, had to do something to wrest back the narrative with its final policy decision of 2021.

I’ve seen a lot of celebrity and CEO couples who have been married for a long time go through a divorce. The usual norm is that marital assets are subject to division. But where do financial investments fit into this equation?

Advisors breach their fiduciary duty when they fail to recommend guaranteed income products.

The U.S. is poised to enter Year Three of the pandemic with both a booming economy and a still-mutating virus. But for Washington and Wall Street, one Covid aftershock is eclipsing almost everything else.

They’ve only just entered the workforce, but a significant swath of the newest crop of U.S. employees are already making plans for an early exit.

As you near the end of Q4 and gather your thoughts, goals, and priorities for 2022, we have one piece of advice: Streamline your business!

Jerome Powell’s pivot toward a quicker withdrawal of stimulus paves the way for a more agile Federal Reserve in 2022, one that’s willing to raise interest rates faster than expected if inflation lingers or hold back if the pandemic worsens.

We mix up logic with emotion, data with information, and information with wisdom. Steven Pinker’s new book, Rationality, is a step-by-step guide to unmixing these and using hard-headed logic to arrive at useful conclusions.

How can advisors help clients who lack sufficient savings for retirement – those who accept the need to take on risk to achieve capital growth, but insist on a minimum income to fund essential expenses?

The popular yet embattled statue known as “Fearless Girl” might have to find a new home again, while its creator also contemplates making nonfungible tokens of the Wall Street icon.

For the first time in four years, venture investors are backing more crypto and blockchain startups in the U.S. than they are in Asia—a sign that China’s crackdown on alternative currencies has chilled the country’s upstart industry.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said officials should weigh removing pandemic support at a faster pace and he retired the word “transitory” to describe stubbornly high inflation, though a new Covid-19 strain remains a risk.

The justification for the 4% rule was based upon historical investment performance from 1925 to 1995. But what is the value of relying on those results when today’s economy is so different?

During his second inaugural address, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that America should serve its soldiers long after they were done serving it. Coming just weeks before final victory in a gruesome civil war that killed at least 750,000, his words would become the motto for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Service offerings that were premium yesterday may be considered ho-hum today. To keep your clients loyal and attract new business, you need to continually create “delight” with strategic updates.

Depending upon the decisions advisors make in the near term, their practices will either be setup for monumental growth or inevitable decline.

With the financial independence, retire early (FIRE) movement on the rise, Americans are targeting early retirement. I will explain the FIRE movement, the steps you can take for early retirement, and how an anti-financial plan helps you achieve your goals.

Is there a gender-based promotion gap? Are there too many women who do well on the job, but are not considered seriously for career advancement?

We’re all salespeople in some sense, fiduciary financial advisors included.

The message from two new pieces of proposed Social Security legislation is clear: We have passed the point where we can expand benefits.

In this article, I share steps 2 and 3 of my three-step process for how I used surge meetings to turn my chaotic practice around and triple our revenue in three years.

Women in the U.S. have been among those hardest hit economically by the Covid-19 pandemic, knocked out of the workforce by the double whammy of a child care crisis and the pandemic recession.

Inflation is why the 4% rule never made any sense.

If your clients bought a bad Medicare policy, it was most likely because they used a bad insurance agent – or no agent at all! As the owner of a Medicare insurance agency, I will teach you how to find a good agent without trying to sell you on us!

The majority of the wealth in the U.S. is controlled by baby boomers. However, two rising trends in this dominant demographic are creating complications, not only for boomers and their advisors, but also for the children of boomers who constitute an increasingly vital current and future client group.

I explored the first four of 12 lasting effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy and financial markets in my previous column. Here are four more: greater use of telecommunications, a shift in preferred residences, more employee independence and an increased emphasis on online shopping.

A rule of thumb for how much U.S. retirees can “safely” withdraw each year without fear of outliving their savings just got a haircut.

This is the time when you are preparing an end-of-year/holiday letter for your clients. Unfortunately, fewer than 1% of them are going to derive any meaning from it. Use this template to create a holiday letter with some pizzazz.

The economy is at maximum employment. Inflation is running red hot and increasingly showing signs it is persistent. Having neglected one mandate and largely fulfilled the other, why is the Fed so slow to reduce asset purchases and unwilling to contemplate hiking interest rates?

The trading desk was just embarking on a second banner year when senior executives started defecting to the likes of Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Millennium Management. By this fall, many of the team’s heaviest hitters had gone.

The employment-to-population ratio of Americans ages 25 through 54, the most straightforward measure of the health of the job market, has now clawed back about 80% of its pandemic losses.

Gender-based stereotypes have an insidious impact on how women advisors are perceived, their ability to attract clients, and their career path in corporate environments. I blame it on John Gray.

This summer, when Fame Lady Squad launched, claiming to be the first ever female-led crypto art collective, it quickly raised $1.5 million from people who wanted to support underrepresented artists.

Americans are racking up bills on credit cards, returning to pre-pandemic habits after emergency relief programs ended and the economy reopened.

Here are nine things every female solo advisor should know about launching and growing a wealth management practice.