MONEY matters

-How much money do you need to retire, or as I like to say, stop working for money, and not be at risk of outliving your financial resources?

When it comes to managing your personal finances, spending, particularly overspending is one of the most challenging aspects of living within your means. It’s not that you don’t have good intentions, because most people really do want to stay on a spending plan, it’s more complex than that. Spending money causes an emotional rush in our bodies. It’s a natural high. It’s short term pleasure for what could turn out to be long term debt. It’s the nexus between money and your emotional intelligence (EQ) that often creates the problem of overspending. 

Create a speed bump on the road to spending

For many investors, low cost index funds are just too boring. Here’s an article from the New York Times by Paul Sullivan titled, Index Funds, Dowdy to Some, Get Notable Endorsement, that adds some gravitas to the fans of index funds.

He interviews Burton Malkiel, author of investment advice books,who practices what he preaches. In his retirement portfolio, he says "all the serious money is indexed."

Visiting clients at their home is old school, I know that, but I still love it. Sometimes I feel like the small town doctor making house visits. At a recent client meeting in Sebastopol, CA, before we moved into the discussion about financial planning, my clients shared pictures of baby grey foxes that set up home right in their front yard.

Another local client always wraps up our meetings by opening a bottle of his own estate grown wine.  Living in wine country feels like a movie set as we sip and chat while overlooking his beautiful vineyards.

From the start of the financial crisis right up until today, we have been bombarded with story after story of how much wealth was vaporized from the global financial system. It seems all the news is about dollars and cents. How much did your 401k or 403b go down? How about your IRA’s, your home value? Everything is focused on the material-money, and little conversation is had discussing the emotional, physical and spiritual ramifications this crisis is having on regular people’s lives.

As a financial planner working mainly with couples, I see firsthand the damage this crisis has had and continues to have on relationships. Let’s face it; money is a tricky enough subject to deal with when things are good. But when the s**t hits the fan, whether it’s a job loss, too much credit card debt, too much spending, not enough saving, you name it, the inability to communicate and resolve conflict grows and grows and the risk to your relationship grows as well.

“He who knows the universe and does not know himself knows nothing”-Jean De La Fontaine, 1679

15 Best Performing Stock Markets in 2009 (local currency terms)*

As many of you know, I’m a huge fan of John Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group. He penned an op-ed piece today, "Restoring Faith in Financial Markets" offering his usual common sense wisdom on the state of the investing world in 2010. Definitely worth the read,