By: Laura Walton AFC® We track the march of time in hours, minutes and seconds without much thought. I start my workday at 8AM, head home for the evening around 5 and so on. Throughout the day I work down my “to do” list. Turns out I could, and probably should, be more scientific about…
By: Laura Walton AFC® Everett Dirksen, Senate Minority leader in the 60’s, is noted as saying, “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you’re talking real money.” Take off a few zeros and the same is true for you and me. When I’m working with a client to create their net worth statement, they…
By: Laura Walton AFC® The saying’s origin is disputed. With a history of invasion, starvation and mass emigration, some say it mocks Ireland’s history of adversity. Or it may go back to California Gold Rush days when many fortunes were made by miners who happened to be Irish. It may have been a derogatory term…
By: Laura Walton AFC® “Managing money is the most profitable business in the United States.” Jason Zweig pulled this quote for his recent Wall Street Journal article from a 1996 speech made by Arthur Zeikel, then president of Merrill Lynch Asset Management. Zweig’s article, “Financiers, Heal Thyselves,” applauds the recently announced pact by Jeffrey Bezos (Amazon), Warren Buffett…
By: Laura Walton AFC® Hyperbole – synonyms: exaggeration, overstatement, magnification, embroidery, embellishment, excess, overkill. There’s been a lot of hyperbole in the financial news the last few days – below are some examples I culled from news stories: a big whoosh lower massive selling the Dow plummeted two huge sell-offs in a row stop the…
Johanna Willett’s article “This free Tucson finance class for millennials helped me master money” appeared last week in the Tucson Life section of #ThisIsTucson, an online platform of the Arizona Daily Star: This free Tucson finance class for millennials helped me master money – Johanna Willett A free Tucson course wants to make you the master of your…
By: Laura Walton AFC® Couples who report disagreeing about finances once a week are over 30 percent more likely to get divorced than couples who report disagreeing about finances a few times a month. This from a study of 2,800 couples surveyed in 1987 by the National Survey of Families and Households. In this survey, both husbands…
By: Laura Walton AFC® ‘Tis the season for charitable giving and, with tax filing just around the corner, you may be able to re-direct tax dollars owed to the State of Arizona to a charity or school of your choice. Arizona offers a dollar-for-dollar credit for certain programs: The Arizona school tax credits: Credit of…
By: Laura Walton AFC® I meet with a lot of young adults through our 3rd Decade program and I’ve noticed what they pay for auto insurance is all over the map. So I was relieved to see the recent story in the Arizona Daily Star that reported just that – the headline read “You could…
By: Laura Walton AFC® The promo intrigued me – a story about a having trouble making ends meet on $100,000 income – so I found it online. Bear in mind that the median household income is $59,000 – we should be able to make it on $100,000, right? NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro reported on four conversations with just…