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Why I Bonds May Be the Most Underappreciated Savings Vehicle
Your end of year to-do list is already overflowing. You have to prepare and send holiday cards, put up lights, get the holiday-themed lawn ornaments up, make cookies for neighbors, prepare the guest...
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Things That Are Rare
Let’s have an honest conversation about things that are rare. 1) A perfect game in baseball In over 210,000 Major League Baseball games spanning 140 years, there have been just 23 perfect games. 2) A...
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Underwhelmed, Most of the Time
Investing in the stock market probably does not feel boring in December 2018. Scary, volatile, unsettling, and capricious are terms that might be used to describe investing over the past few weeks....
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The Rewards of Fear
26 days into my professional career, something that had never happened before, happened. And it was not an unprecedented event that largely went unnoticed – like the time, early in my career, when I...
View ArticleSnowfall in Finland Is Above Average This Winter So Why Do The Knicks Keep...
You may have heard the news. Between October 1st and December 31st, the stock market delivered its worst quarter since 2008 to culminate its worst year since 2008. It was the stock market’s worst...
View ArticleThe Mortgage Myths We Naïvely Believe
Baseball, apple pie, mom, Chevrolet, hot dogs, and home ownership. Americana. To question any of these things is un-American. And so it becomes a largely unquestioned truth that borrowing money to...
View ArticleCan Student Loans Fairly Be Labeled “Good Debt”?
Last week’s Astute Angle post explained some fallacies related to mortgage borrowing and how the free pass treatment of home mortgages as “good debt” leads to poor financial decision-making. In...
View ArticleSocrates Demystifies the Social Security Decision
The Greek philosopher, Socrates, left no known writings. Only secondary sources exist for historians to piece together a recount of his work and teachings. The Platonic dialogues – roughly 30...
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Flu Vaccines and Small Sample Sizes
I got a flu shot in the fall of 1999. It is a seemingly trivial detail of life that should be long-forgotten but was, instead, memorialized by what followed. A few weeks after receiving this...
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When Roth is Wrong
In the book, Predictably Irrational, author and esteemed behavioral psychologist Dan Ariely wrote an entire chapter about the strong emotional impact of getting something for free. He describes how we...
View ArticleImpending Tax Law Changes That May Impact You
The House of Representatives passed a bill on May 23rd known as the SECURE Act (Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019) which would initiate the biggest changes to retirement...
View ArticleRecessions. Markets. Risk.
Investment offices teem with daily data releases and economic news bites. Afternoon market round-ups attribute the day’s movements to whatever data points best fit the narrative of the day or week....
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RPG Spotlight: RPG Principal and CFO, John Evans
Happy 2020! Alan Thomson here. I want to take a few moments to reflect on the past and cast an eye to the future. The last few weeks have been wonderful as they have presented many opportunities to...
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CAPE’s Are Better Than Crystal Balls
You would never drive your car with your sight glued to the rear view mirror. You would likely wreck or find yourself lost. Yet many investors are guilty of that very thing. They select stocks,...
View ArticleThe SECURE Act: What You Need to Know
The SECURE Act is by far the biggest retirement-oriented legislation to be enacted in over a decade. Many Americans are left wondering, “What does this mean for me?” Here’s what you need to know. 1....
View ArticleThe Mortgage Myths We Naïvely Believe
Baseball, apple pie, mom, Chevrolet, hot dogs, and home ownership. Americana. To question any of these things is un-American. And so it becomes a largely unquestioned truth that borrowing money to...
View ArticleCan Student Loans Fairly Be Labeled “Good Debt”?
Last week’s Astute Angle post explained some fallacies related to mortgage borrowing and how the free pass treatment of home mortgages as “good debt” leads to poor financial decision-making. In...
View ArticleSocrates Demystifies the Social Security Decision
The Greek philosopher, Socrates, left no known writings. Only secondary sources exist for historians to piece together a recount of his work and teachings. The Platonic dialogues – roughly 30...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Flu Vaccines and Small Sample Sizes
I got a flu shot in the fall of 1999. It is a seemingly trivial detail of life that should be long-forgotten but was, instead, memorialized by what followed. A few weeks after receiving this...
View ArticleClik here to view.
When Roth is Wrong
In the book, Predictably Irrational, author and esteemed behavioral psychologist Dan Ariely wrote an entire chapter about the strong emotional impact of getting something for free. He describes how we...
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