Year: 2023
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4 Financial Best Practices for Year-End 2023
Created: November 15, 2023
Categories: Advisor Role/Value, Article, Evidence-Based Investing, Financial Planning, General Audience, Listicle, Tax Planning, Wealth Management
Description: Share this piece with clients and prospects to offer four financial best practices for year-end 2023. This year's tips cover managing cash reserves, maintaining one's investment portfolio, tax strategies, and time management.
A Meaningful Message for Thanksgiving/Holidays (2023)
Created: November 3, 2023
Categories: Client-Focused, General Letter/E-Mail, Holiday Greetings
Description: Use this short message to be in touch with your clients for the U.S. Thanksgiving or the general 2023 holiday season. This piece shares an upbeat message on the value of year-end reflections.
Financial Quick Takes: Compared to What?
Created: October 26, 2023
Categories: Advisor Role/Value, Article, Evidence-Based Investing, General Audience, Quick-Reference
Description: This piece describes the apples-to-orange comparisons investors tend to make between their well-built, globally diversified investment portfolio versus fleeting hot hands and/or "the market." Readers are encouraged to instead consider fund management and costs in selecting appropriate holdings for their unique portfolio build, and invites them to reach out to you for assistance.
Quarterly Client Letter – 2023 Q3
Created: October 1, 2023
Categories: Breaking News, Client-Focused, Economics, Evidence-Based Investing, Quarterly Client Letter
Description: Reflections on a mixed-bag quarter and how to remain focused on long-term outcomes and personal financial goals instead of reacting to the latest undependable forecasts.
Financial Quick Takes: Wisdom of Crowds vs. Popular Delusions
Created: September 25, 2023
Categories: Article, Behavioral Finance, Evidence-Based Investing, General Audience, Quick-Reference
Description: Are markets wise, as James Surowiecki suggests in "The Wisdom of Crowds"? Or are they delusional, as described in Charles Mackay's "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds"? This quick take summarizes why they can be either or both, and how that shapes your investment recommendations. By creating and sticking with a low-cost, globally diversified portfolio, investors can capitalize on group wisdom and avoid group mania.
Financial Quick Takes: Making Mistakes
Created: September 5, 2023
Categories: Advisor Role/Value, Article, Behavioral Finance, Evidence-Based Investing, General Audience, Quick-Reference
Description: A quick-take piece emphasizing the difference between avoidable investment mistakes versus random market misfortune. By eliminating avoidable mistakes, investors can also lower, but not entirely eliminate, the possibility of experiencing negative investment outcomes.
A Balanced Look at Stock Buybacks Series REPORT
Created: August 4, 2023
Categories: Evidence-Based Investing, General Audience, Politics, Report, Stock Buybacks, Tax Planning
Description: Our 3-part series bundled into a full-length report, exploring how and why stock buybacks can help investors, hurt them, or be a neutral event, depending on the particulars.
A Balanced Look at Stock Buybacks — Part 3: Risks Amidst the Rewards
Created: August 4, 2023
Categories: Article, Evidence-Based Investing, General Audience, Politics, Stock Buybacks, Tax Planning
Description: Part 3 of a 3-part series exploring how and why stock buybacks can help investors, hurt them, or be a neutral event, depending on the particulars. Part 1 described how stock buybacks generally work, and emphasized the importance of investing in a globally diversified portfolio, rather than chasing or fleeing particular stock buyback opportunities. Part 2 covered how companies may use stock buybacks to strike a balance between sustaining current and future shareholder value. In this, Part 3, we cover how the power of stock buybacks can become weaponized in the wrong hands, and why the government is keeping its eye on them.
A Balanced Look at Stock Buybacks — Part 2: Sustaining Current & Future Value
Created: July 31, 2023
Categories: Article, Evidence-Based Investing, General Audience, Stock Buybacks
Description: Part 2 of a 3-part series exploring how and why stock buybacks can help investors, hurt them, or be a neutral event, depending on the particulars. Part 1 described how stock buybacks generally work, and emphasized the importance of investing in a globally diversified portfolio, rather than chasing or fleeing particular stock buyback opportunities. In this, Part 2, we cover how companies may use stock buybacks to strike a balance between sustaining current and future shareholder value. In Part 3, we'll cover how the power of stock buybacks can become weaponized in the wrong hands, and why the government is keeping its eye on them.
A Balanced Look at Stock Buybacks — Part 1: How Do Stock Buybacks Work?
Created: July 31, 2023
Categories: Article, Evidence-Based Investing, General Audience, Stock Buybacks, Tax Planning
Description: Part 1 of a 3-part series exploring how and why stock buybacks can help investors, hurt them, or be a neutral event, depending on the particulars. This Part 1 describes how stock buybacks generally work, and emphasizes the importance of investing in a globally diversified portfolio, rather than chasing or fleeing particular stock buyback opportunities. In Part 2, we'll cover how companies may use stock buybacks to strike a balance between sustaining current and future shareholder value. In Part 3, we'll cover how the power of stock buybacks can become weaponized in the wrong hands, and why the government is keeping its eye on them.
Quarterly Client Letter – 2023 Q2
Created: July 3, 2023
Categories: Client Experience, Client-Focused, Evidence-Based Investing, Quarterly Client Letter
Description: This quarterly letter celebrates strong quarterly and YTD returns, while encouraging clients to stick with their long-term investment strategy across strong and weak markets. It also includes an homage to the recently passed Nobel laureate Professor Harry Markowitz.
Dividend Stocks – Part 2: Dividend Stocks vs. Total Return Investing
Created: June 28, 2023
Categories: Article, Dividend Stocks, Evidence-Based Investing, Fixed Income, General Audience, Retirement Planning
Description: Building a concentrated position in dividend stocks may appeal to some investors as a way to withdraw income from their investment portfolio. In Part 1 of a two-part series, we explored how dividend stocks really work, and why stocking up on them is not our preferred technique for creating a dependable cash flow in retirement. In this Part 2, we cover why we instead prefer a total return approach to building wealth and generating efficient cash flow as needed.
Dividend Stocks – Part 1: How Dividend Stocks Work
Created: June 28, 2023
Categories: Article, Dividend Stocks, Evidence-Based Investing, Fixed Income, General Audience, Retirement Planning
Description: Building a concentrated position in dividend stocks may appeal to some investors as a way to withdraw income from their investment portfolio. In this Part 1 of a two-part series, we explore how dividend stocks really work, and why stocking up on them is not our preferred technique for creating a dependable cash flow in retirement. In Part 2, we'll cover why we instead prefer a total return approach to building wealth and generating efficient cash flow as needed.
Unsung Money Mentors: Personal Financial Columnist Sylvia Porter
Created: May 30, 2023
Categories: Article, Dimensional Fund Advisors, Evidence-Based Investing, Financial Planning, General Audience, Unsung Money Mentors
Description: In a recent piece, "Who Is 'the Media'?" we offered our broad take on “the media,” and how to identify islands of investment insights across the oceans of daily news. In this follow-up, we focus on America’s first personal financial columnist Sylvia Porter (1913–1991), and the impact she made on the global financial press. This piece is also part of our continuing series on Unsung Money Mentors.
Is the Debt Ceiling Bringing You Down?
Created: May 10, 2023
Categories: Breaking News, Client-Focused, Economics, Evidence-Based Investing, General Letter/E-Mail, Politics, Scary Market Insights
Description: A client reach-out to reinforce the importance of sticking with a personalized, globally diversified portfolio, regardless of how the debt ceiling crisis plays out.
What Is the Media?
Created: April 27, 2023
Categories: Article, Breaking News, General Audience, Scary Market Insights
Description: While we often take aim at "the media," not all news is harmful. By understanding the different types of media coverage, and their roles in our decision-making processes, investors can better differentiate quality news from harmful distraction.
Quarterly Client Letter – 2023 Q1
Created: April 2, 2023
Categories: Breaking News, Client-Focused, Economics, Evidence-Based Investing, Quarterly Client Letter
Description: This quarterly letter reflects on the impact of inflation, interest rate, and banking news in the quarter past, and how, if you’d missed the events in real time, you may not even have known they’d happened. Invest instead according to your investment strategy and individual goals.
Is Social Security Going Bust?
Created: March 26, 2023
Categories: Article, Family Wealth, Financial Planning, General Audience, Politics, Report, Retirement Planning
Description: An analysis of what is projected for Social Security, some of the fixes Congress is exploring to replenish its reserves, and why taking Social Security early just to avoid potential cuts in benefit, is only shifting financial risks rather than eliminating them.
Bank Run News
Created: March 13, 2023
Categories: Advisor Role/Value, Breaking News, Client-Focused, General Letter/E-Mail, Scary Market Insights
Description: A client reach-out to comment on current bank runs, beginning with Silicon Valley Bank.
Unsung Money Mentors: The Legacy Dan Wheeler Left Us
Created: February 28, 2023
Categories: Advisor Role/Value, Article, Client Experience, Dimensional Fund Advisors, Evidence-Based Investing, General Audience, Unsung Money Mentors
Description: In the first of what may become a series of unsung money mentors, we reflect on the legacy the recently passed Dan Wheeler left for the independent, fee-only advisor community in general, and evidence-based investment advisors in particular. The piece covers his influence on the advisor community before and after he joined Dimensional Fund Advisors.
4 Ways to Apply the 80/20 Rule to Your Financial Pursuits
Created: February 5, 2023
Categories: Article, Evidence-Based Investing, Financial Planning, General Audience, Listicle, Security, Technology
Description: The "80/20 rule" suggests 80% of an outcome is often the result of just 20% of the effort you put into it. In that spirit, this piece offers 4 financial best practices where the 80/20 rule applies. These include staying invested across varied markets, emphasizing asset allocation over stock-picking, having a basic financial plan to guide the way, and freezing your credit report to minimize financial fraud.
Financial & Identity Theft Quick Reference – U.S. Version (UPDATED)
Created: February 5, 2023
Categories: Advisor Role/Value, General Audience, Quick-Reference, Security, Technology, UPDATED Content
Description: UPDATED FROM SEPTEMBER 2018: Use this quick-reference to help U.S. clients and prospective clients combat financial fraud and identity theft. Design into a front-and-back flyer or poster for rapid reading or to complement the similar, longer report on the same subject.
Financial & Identity Theft Quick Reference – Canadian Version (UPDATED)
Created: February 5, 2023
Categories: Advisor Role/Value, General Audience, Quick-Reference, Security, Technology, UPDATED Content
Description: UPDATED FROM SEPTEMBER 2018: Use this quick-reference to help CANADIAN clients and prospective clients combat financial fraud and identity theft. Design into a front-and-back flyer or poster for rapid reading or to complement the similar, longer report on the same subject.
Quarterly Client Letter – 2022 Q4
Created: January 4, 2023
Categories: Behavioral Finance, Client-Focused, Economics, Evidence-Based Investing, Fixed Income, Quarterly Client Letter, Scary Market Insights
Description: This quarterly and year-end client letter looks back on negative returns in 2022, and cautions clients against letting potential pessimism alter their asset allocation decisions. You never know what the near-term future holds, so long-term planning remains advised.
What’s in the SECURE 2.0 Act?
Created: January 3, 2023
Categories: Article, Breaking News, Family Wealth, Financial Planning, General Audience, Report, Retirement Planning, Tax Planning
Description: A five-page overview of key provisions in the newly enacted SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022, including updates that impact: (1) savers/investors, (2) employers/plan sponsors, (3) current spending (such as emergency expenses), (4) Roth accounts, (5) RMD requirements, and (6) charitable giving.