Mind Over Money

It happened again! How could we add 163,000 jobs and then see our unemployment rate go up to 8.3 percent? There are three pieces of jobs data that tell us about the condition of the labor market. Two are reported monthly, and one is reported weekly. The weekly number tells us how many new claims [...]

Davy Jones died. I know that may not mean much to you, but he was an integral part of my growing up years. It was the Monkees. It was the transition to the 70s, and I was just a kid watching each Saturday morning as that zany foursome sang and schticked their way through a [...]

The retail season started with a bang, as traditional retailers added 6.6 percent to their sales from last year. Online retailers are picking up steam that is fueled not just by improvements in economic trends. More and more, we are shopping from our computers. While the big shopping day for traditional retailers is Friday, the [...]

Thanksgiving week found us traveling through the Arizona desert. My dad had been wanting to take a trip to the Grand Canyon. At 83, he needed our help to make the journey. We had never seen the canyon, so this seemed like a good family trip. We flew into Phoenix and rented a car for [...]

As a Chartered Financial Analyst, I am bound by the CFA Code of Ethics. As a registered financial advisor, I operate under federal law that recognizes me as a fiduciary. Both sets of rules require me to behave better than my local congressman. The integrity of our financial markets depends on disclosure and fairness. All [...]

The idea of retirement, much less a plan to cover it, is a modern one. In most countries, Grandma just moves in with you when she can’t support herself anymore. General Motors started the first private retirement plan in 1950 in the United States. It was a defined benefit plan, also known as a pension. [...]