By: Laura Walton AFC® This is what I told my husband when he called on his way home at the end of the day one Friday. And then I started recounting them… I was walking back to my car from Johnny Gibson’s Downtown Market where I’d stopped to pick up a couple of items on…
By: Laura Walton AFC® For our 3rd Decade program, it’s all about the bass, in our case, the bottom line. Now that we’ve had a chance to track ‘before’ and ‘after’ net worth statements for our participants, we’re seeing “all the right junk in all the right places” to take a line from Meghan Trainor’s hit song.…
By: Laura Walton AFC® I promised a more objective way of choosing a financial planner in my recent blog on how advisors dress. How they charge is a good place to start. Not only will it tell you the cost of the service, but it will give you a good idea who you’re dealing with.…
By: Laura Walton AFC® As with many favorite recipes, the ingredients are simple but the dish is a crowd pleaser that is served time and again with predictable results and rave reviews. As you know, Warren Buffett’s secret investing ingredient is the low-cost S&P 500 index fund but, he says, the mega-rich can’t believe that…
By: Laura Walton AFC® In a recent Freakonomics episode, four heavy hitters chatted about active versus passive investing. Sound dry? Not at all! Below I’ve shared some of the best of the podcast but I heartily recommend listening to these super-heroes of the everyday investor. First, let me introduce you to the speakers: Kenneth French,…
By: Laura Walton AFC® Did you know we had a lost week? Apparently the 20.3 days of vacation that we took on average between 1978 and 2000 shrank to just 16 by 2014 – this is a crisis! But the good news is that it’s trending up…to 16.8 days in 2016. This week’s quiet offices,…
By: Laura Walton AFC® With the 4th of July coming next Tuesday, many of us will have a little extra time on our hands. I’ve got a couple of ideas for you. There is, of course, vacation. Husband Dave passed on a fun idea from the Wall Street Journal. It’s the brainchild of a creative travel…
By: Laura Walton AFC® Pretty much everyone has one – it’s the thing you do on the side –the thing you’re interested in outside of work. It could be your hobby, it might even be your passion. And it could be lucrative. You’ve heard the expression, “don’t quit your day job.” Well, Killer Mike and…
By: Laura Walton AFC® Tucson has a bit of a “startup” culture – maybe even more than a bit. This weekend, the TCI Foundation will participate in a forum for young professionals, Ignite 520. Tucson Young Professionals (TYP) is the drive behind this event. They describe themselves as a “group of diverse young professionals united together to…
By: Laura Walton AFC® If you earn and spend money, you pay taxes. Let’s see how they all add up and inject some humor into the subject. Some interesting stats for the 2015 tax year: The IRS received 150.6 million returns 50 million of those returns showed no federal tax liability That meant the average taxpayer…