OUR WEALTH MANAGEMENT BLOG
Could you retire at age 50?
Could you retire at age 50? What if you had to? Over ½ of ALL workers could be forced into retirement by age 50, according to ProPublica, and the Urban Institute. No, there’s no way this would happen to you though, right?Clearly, it’s a less competitive...
Denver7 NEWS Interview: U.S. GDP drops for a second quarter as financial experts warn of looming recession
The video and interview excerpts: https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/u-s-gdp-drops-for-a-second-quarter-as-financial-experts-warn-of-looming-recession#:~:text=DENVER%20%E2%80%94%20The%20country's%20gross%20domestic,1.6%25%20in%20the%20first%20quarter....
Deferred Compensation Four-Part Series – Part Four: Deferred Compensation: Financial Planning Opportunities and Tradeoffs
Introduction: Deferred compensation plans are complicated, overlooked, underused. Yet, these plans are one of the best opportunities to save A LOT on taxes. Like a nuclear power plant, they’re old, misunderstood, and some only remember the few events when they’ve...
Deferred Compensation Four-Part Series – Part Three: Deferred Compensation Risks: Change of Control in Acquisition, Bankruptcy, and Irrevocability of Distributions and Investment Options
Introduction: Deferred compensation plans are complicated, overlooked, underused. Yet, these plans are one of the best opportunities to save A LOT on taxes. Like a nuclear power plant, they’re old, misunderstood, and some only remember the few events when they’ve...
Deferred Compensation Four-Part Series – Part Two: Should I defer my compensation? How do I invest it?
Introduction: Deferred compensation plans are complicated, overlooked, underused. Yet, these plans are one of the best opportunities to save A LOT on taxes. Like a nuclear power plant, they’re old, misunderstood, and some only remember the few events when they’ve...
Deferred Compensation Four-Part Series – Part One: Deferred Compensation Plans 101
Introduction: Deferred compensation plans are complicated, overlooked, underused. Yet, these plans are one of the best opportunities to save A LOT on taxes. Like a nuclear power plant, they’re old, misunderstood, and some only remember the few events when they’ve...
Bear Market Talk: “I Bet YOUR Clients Are Freaking Out Right Now.”
I reached out to every client in our practice last week and many clients said something like: “I bet your other clients are freaking out right now. Eric, I’m fine. I’m a long-term investor.” Some even went a little further: “How are you doing Eric?” “I’m sure you’re...
Have you been Greenwashed into owning ESG/ SRI Investments?
What is socially responsible investing (“SRI”) or environmental social governance (“ESG”) investing? Socially Responsible Investing and Environmental, Social, and Governance factors aim to make capitalism (feel) “good,” and punish companies that do “bad” things. “Bad”...
15 Steps BEFORE getting laid off, quitting, fired or taking a severance
(Eric Note: I fixed the graph for the FED. We are slightly off on the bullseye; the bottom scale is a little off too Federal Reserve graph makers...) “Right now, in the labor market, there are two job openings for every unemployed person. It’s at a historically...
When is Tax Loss Harvesting worth it? + How to, Mistakes, and Benefits
When is Tax Loss Harvesting worth it? + How to, Mistakes, and Benefits What is tax-loss harvesting? Selling positions in a loss. Then, immediately replacing a position with a similar, but not *identical security. A loss offsetting future portfolio income or gains, or...
Fidelity Target-Date Funds Take $100k+ in Returns
Fidelity Target-Date Funds Take $100k+ in Returns Hiding in Plain Sight: Expensive Defaulted Target-Date FundsBelow are two client examples. Each Fidelity 401(k) Target Date Fund ranged in internal fees from 0.55% to 1.00% (e.g., expense ratios). Instead of clients...
April 2022 – Just Markets: Economic and Capital Markets Update
Spring 2022 Market Commentary - Just markets. Just Us. A lot has changed. So, are we undergoing many long-term regime changes, or are these just short-term trends? From interest rates and inflation, to housing and technology stocks, what’s happening in your...
Client Survey Unedited Results
MARGIN's clients participated in an NPS Survey– here are the unedited results. ——————————————————————————- How do you trust words that sound too good to be true? You read them for yourself. You’re more likely to walk into a place if it has windows for you to peak...
Just Markets, Plain and Simple
Misinformation ≠ Education I used to think markets commentary wasn't a good use of time for our clients. But, with so much profit conflicted "education," I've had enough. "Vending machines don't belong in monasteries. So, I created this video as a sacred place to talk...
AMA: Retiring at 40 & traveling the world full-time
AMA: Retiring at 40 & traveling the world full-time No, it’s not some fairytale, it’s a reality for more and more people. Including my friends Eric and Katie. I’ve been intrigued with early financial independence and traveling the world before 40. So, I found...
FREE Exercise: Find What REALLY Keeps You From Achieving Your Financial Goals.
Because do you really care about saving taxes or making more money if you can never BE, DO, OR have what you want in life? Sorry, what’s the point? Remember. YOU had a dream...Remember the moment? Then... Doubt. Resistance...Stephen King scary...
2021 Road Map – Getting Better – For Our Clients
“Less than half (47%) of the Fortune 500 companies spent anything substantial on R&D, in 2018” While they may be profitable...these companies are at the greatest risk from new competitors, startups, changing customer demands and market shifts.” Top 1000 companies...
MARGIN – 2020 Client Successes
2020 - Year Two: Surviving To Thriving Let me catch you up From 2018 to 2019, cease and desist (ex-employer) lawsuits hit my door-step as I was brining our Thanksgiving turkey; old clients who referred to me as their “son” stopped answering my calls; immediate family...
Is Inflation Closer to 10% per Year?
Almost 50% of all US Dollars in circulation were printed in 2020 Let’s back up...In 2008, the Federal Reserve added about $2 Trillion (with a T) to the financial system. Avoid global contagion meltdowns. Avoid the next Great Depression. Avoid turning into Japan. Avoid...
When is it okay to do something that “doesn’t make financial sense”?
Definition of “it doesn't make sense financially”: “Choosing against conventional financial wisdom, or for a financial outcome that will probably (based on traditional financial education, history, probabilities, calculations, or simulations) leave you with LESS...
What Next? A Harvard PhD Virologist Interview on the Coronavirus
On March 12th at 3PM MST, I had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Michelle Arnold, a virologist who earned her PhD from Harvard. In her current role, she works at LSU Health in Shreveport as an Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology. Michelle does not...
You’re not thinking; you’re just being logical
As Niels Bohr (Danish physicist, philosopher and Nobel Laureate) apparently once told Einstein, ‘You are not thinking; you are merely being logical.’ With apologies to logic (and my overly stoic friends) Sorry Seneca, Aurelius, and Aristotle, humanity’s greatest...
The BEST Investment Newsletter
This post was inspired by investors who tell me they use a newsletter to pick stocks, that diversification is for losers, and it's easy to beat the market. Here's a case study in what happens when you follow financial newsletters sent straight to your front door....
“The market” is NOT your portfolio
Years ago, a client sent me an e-mail. It simply stated: “Us down, the market up, why?” Why am I underperforming the ubiquitous “market”? I blame financial media. Fox. CNBC. MSNBC. Barron's. Bloomberg. Money. Forbes. Dave Ramsey. Suze Orman. All of ‘em, for giving...
Re: “It’s not the right TIME to invest”
Is investing really all about timing? You wait for the right time: corrections, recessions, pull-backs, blow-ups, and inflection points. Then, BAM—you make hay, and get out. Do it again and again. That's how investing works, right? Clichés like "time in the market,...
Flipping Off The “Average Return”
Unmet expectations cause us distress. At times we lose perspective. When things are going well, we bask in the warm sunshine of +20% returns. But when it temporarily and inevitably floods worst-case -30% returns, we forget there are seasons. Return seasons. Sorry,...
Understanding Poverty Can Help You Become Wealthy
What really keeps people in poverty? Is it the same self-destructive patterns that hold us back, whether we’re poor, middle class, or wealthy? Are we all really not that different? Isn't a foundation of wealth built and lost in the day-in-day-out decision making...
Cutting Off 4 Fingers for a “Rule of Thumb”
When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly—as that a sentence must never end with a particle—and perceive how implicitly even the learned obey it, I think: "Any fool can make a rule, And any fool will mind it." - ...
The Best Advice You Never Received
So…What do you actually do for me? Before I launched MARGIN almost two years ago, an obsessive quest began: What were my peers really delivering to clients? Not just their marketed online services. Not just the lip service of their pitches. Not just their portfolio...
Fast Food Financial Planning
Welcome back! I haven't written you in a while, but I promise there's a few good reasons: As you see, we've revamped our site! Check out our new complexity based flat- fee structure (for current clients, nothing is changing for now). We've also added the story behind...
Beyond the Basics: The Colorado High Income Professional(s) Tax Checklist
Did you pay too much in taxes this year? If you’re a high-income skilled professional with W2 income, you’ve probably noticed that you pay a lot in taxes each year. You may have also felt like you owed more this year, due to the withholding changes associated with the...
Maybe It’s different this time in the market? Or Maybe not…
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80% of Financial Independence Retire Early Talk Tastes like Chicken, So What’s my 20% Secret Sauce?
"The combination of saving a sufficiently large portfolio AND acquiring a large skill set is key. The skills acquired bring a second layer of security and expand adaptability…. If society continues to prosper, the portfolio will carry the day. If it doesn't, it is...
Recession Investing Mistakes for Dummies
There would be this advantage in traveling in your own country, even in your own neighborhood, that you would be so thoroughly prepared to understand what you saw you would make fewer traveler's mistakes. - Henry David Thoreau You think the "experts" know, so you...
Mo’ money, Mo’ problems: Do firms chasing a billion dollars under management really mean better outcomes for you?
"Habit 2, begin with the end in mind is based on imagination--the ability to envision in your mind what you cannot at present see with your eyes. It is based on the principle that all things are created twice. There is a mental (first) creation, and a physical...
Welcome to H.S.J./Miller & Associates/Colorado/Denver/Seasons Private Capital Management, we are the best, comprehensive, fee-only, fiduciaries ever…
Please relax. Take a seat The best place to solve client challenges is... In our window laced conference room, with our oval shaped well-polished cherry oak board room table, but don't forget our perfectly modern hue grey wall too. One. Only. Please. That one wall...
How can you be (MUCH) wealthier? Learn more than money.
"Most of us, however, are specialists…Each specialist sees something different. A typical Engineer will think in systems. A psychologist will think in terms of incentives. A biologist will think in terms of evolution. By putting these disciplines together in our head,...
Is college really worth it? That depends…Do you really see it as an investment, or free pass to the middle class?
"Dad, why is college going to cost me $160,000 when I'm older." - My 10-year-old Is 4-years of college with a mortgage of debt the best path to equip our kids to be financially successful? An investment, or a hasty middle-class checkbox? I was in Boulder this summer...
What version is your current financial belief operating system? You 1.0?
"Man is a growth by law, and not a creation by artifice, and cause and effect is as absolute and undeviating in the hidden realm of thought as in the world of visible and material things." ― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh What are your financial beliefs and habits?...
Financial Planning adds Tangible Value, but that’s not the most important part…Part Two
"Here is natural instinct and here is control. You are to combine the two in harmony, now if you have one to the extreme, you will be very unscientific. If you have another to the extreme, you will all of a sudden be a mechanical man, no longer a human being. It is a...
Is there ANY return—whatsoever—in using a Financial Planner? No! Well maybe…Part One
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People are frugal with money, but waste so much…
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Colorado 529 Plan – CollegeInvest – Podcast Interview with Brennan Hannon
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I Was At Your Free Steak Dinner; What You Didn’t Say: I Have a Pending Felony…
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How you get Sold: Market-Linked CDs
<![CDATA[ We sell these things like hot cakes to people who want FDIC insurance, and no risk - Veteran Financial Advisor at Colorado Bank. You're thinking...I wouldn't fall for that...I've been with my advisor for 10+ years, and they would never... They do...I've...