Tag / Why Plan?

by Stuart

Financial Advisors: Shit or the Shittiest?

Photo by Shane on Unsplash

Retirement planning is hard. Sure, there are simple techniques anyone can use to map a path. Yet those techniques require data and effort. Most people don’t want to spend precious free time crunching numbers and making tough, life-impacting decisions. Most people – myself included – would rather find someone who can just take care of it. You know, a Guy (here used in the gender-neutral sense).

I know more than a few people who have found their Guy: a personal finance manager who promises to make retirement all anyone could ever hope for. They’ve got products that minimize risk and maximize gain. They promise they can beat the market and, in return, ask for a mere few points off the top. You know, for the effort.

I don’t buy it for a second.

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by Stuart

The Slow and Steady Drain

Read the article. No notes. Ironically coming from a subscription-only site (but the above link is free).

The average consumer spends $273 per month on subscriptions.

2021 poll of 2,500 by digital services firm West Monroe

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by Stuart

Good News yet no Good Vibes

Photo by Bob Coyne on Unsplash

I’m delighted to see inflation coming down. Add to that, all the good news around unemployment, consumer demand, and gains in The Market paints an increasingly rosy picture. It’s all awesome, right?

Not so fast.

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by Stuart

An EV Retirement

Jaguar I-Pace at Flo commercial charger, photo copyright Stuart DeSpain

Electric cars generate a lot of passion. Like pretty much everything, nowadays, divisions run deep. I happen to believe climate change is a very real and very significant threat to our survival (probably lost a lot of readers there) but I’m not here to make an environmental statement. This blog is about finances so I’m here to talk money. Specifically, I think EVs can play a role in reducing financial risk.

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by Stuart

Well hasn’t this been a fun month?

Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash

September 2022 looks to be the worst financial month in recent memory. Until October. I guess we’ll see.

The Fed raised interest rates. The tech sector – led by Adobe Systems acquisition of Figma – bombed hard, with the S&P 500 losing 7% in the first three weeks of September. Inflation, while possibly slowing, is still no bueno. Even if you’re not following finance it’s hard to escape gloomy news tracking the spiral.

It might be easy to assume this doesn’t touch anyone outside the moneyed classes. Well, that would be wrong. Remember, pain always rolls downhill. We’re all in a place where making informed financial choices is more important than ever.

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by Stuart

Gap Planning

What other photo could I possibly have chosen?

Here’s a simple budget tool that you can apply all over the place. The first thing you need to do is measure your gap. The math is dead simple: subtract expenses from your income and the difference is your Gap.

BILL icon at right by Adrien Coquet from the Noun Project
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by Stuart

Own Your Plan

Retirement plans are unique to individuals. Circumstances vary wildly, from financial position to personal goals to where you choose to live. So don’t think we think our plan will work for anyone other than us. To be honest, it’s a big assumption our plan will work at all 🙂

I do have a core philosophy: own the plan. I get the temptation to “have a guy” that sorts it all out. There’s a ton of complexity, misinformation, and uncertainty. There’s no real way to know if you’ve got it figured out or if you’ve got it all wrong.

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by Stuart

Is It Now Yet?

These two were not concerned with retirement. Not then at least. If there’s no time like the present I guess, some three decades later, we might want to think about it. A little. Probably.

Like most people we know our “retirement plan” was very much a casual thing. We’ve been putting money into work-sponsored 401ks because it’s a thing you do. We knew social security will be a part of it but didn’t know how much (or how little). In essence we had a retirement HOPE and not a retirement PLAN.

As we dug into the details Tina suggested we capture our findings to a Facebook page and, now, this blog. We don’t pretend to know what we’re doing so take this all with the biggest grain of salt you can muster. Still, we hope our discoveries can give you something from which to start your own journey.July 24, 2021