Steve’s Blog

We've all heard that delaying social security can result in a permanent increased payout of up to eight percent annually. Every year you get older and don't take the income, your eventual income can rise. The income growth can be up to eight percent annually once you...

Retirees are finding it increasingly challenging to retire and feel certain they will always have a surplus of income in relation to their expenses. Once a person leaves the work force, effectively becoming unemployed for thirty or forty years, the question is how...

One choice you will have to make with your retirement money-- if you are ever going to sleep well at night-- is to determine if you are a long term value investor -- or a market timing speculator. Let’s first define the difference between investing and speculating. An...

The market is reacting to President Trump's tough stance on Chinese theft of our intellectual property. If he doesn't take a stand now, China will own us outright in ten to twenty years. Having to pay a few more bucks for consumer staples for a year or two is a small...

With all the good news in the stock market and the economy (except for a hiccup here and there) it is easy to assume that we are sitting at a point in history that is ideal for the person about to retire. I take an entirely different viewpoint. I believe we have...

Getting paid to own your investments is always a good thing. In fact, dividends can be thought of as the key difference between a pure speculation and a true investment. Speculations rely only upon supply and demand. Investments, on the other hand, provide you with a...

When you are considering when to collect retirement benefits from Social Security or you are designing a financial plan to fund your full retirement, one important factor to take into account is how long you might live. A well conceived plan should include multiple,...

Who Needs Long-Term Care? When you are still in good health and feeling too young to worry about the idea of needing care yourself one day, it is easy to skip over the concept of protecting yourself. After all, there's always tomorrow-- or next year, right? Here's the...

2017 has been a surprise in many ways—both politically and financially. At this time a year ago in 2016, Hillary Clinton was a “shoe-in”, Donald Trump was 10 points down in the polls and fighting off the Billy Bush scandal, and market pundits were predicting a bull...

There are four basic phases to your financial life: 1) The Start Up Phase (age 20-35) where you are struggling to get ahold of your finances and get to a point where you can truly start saving, then comes 2) The Accumulation Phase (age 35 to 55) where you get serious...