By: Laura Walton AFC® Good math skills + good behavioral choices = good financial outcomes…but we struggle with both. Statistics show that two-thirds of us are poorly prepared to make good financial decisions! The National Assessment of Educational Progress, aka the Nation’s Report Card, tells us that just 37% of American high school seniors were…
By: Laura Walton AFC® Those were my client’s opening words at our last meeting. We’d met a year earlier and agreed on an aggressive savings goal to meet his retirement needs so I was, of course, interested in his epiphany. “I realized I needed to save $100 a day!” The good news? He’s doing it!…
By: Laura Walton AFC® Even when we identify something we’d like to change, it’s not often easy. After all, we’re likely replacing one habit with another. But, as with most challenges, there are tricks to succeeding. First, of course, you have to commit to something – your goal. The commitment is your rational choice –…
By: Laura Walton AFC® A successful life isn’t often the result of winning the lottery, being plucked out of obscurity by a talent scout or even being born into a wealthy family but rather it’s the result of doing the right things consistently over time. I tossed aside my idea for today’s blog when I…
By: Laura Walton AFC® “Homeownership’s Tax Benefits Fade” was the title of the Bloomberg article that appeared just a few days before my recent conversation with a couple about buying versus renting. The deduction for mortgage interest has long been seen as a primary motivation for homeownership. Homeowners can deduct from their gross income the…
By: Laura Walton AFC® In 1969, Joe Dominguez quit his Wall Street job at age 31 with $70,000 saved (the equivalent of $466,000 today). His book, Your Money or Your Life, co-written with Vicki Robin, has inspired generations world over to re-evaluate their relationship with money. First published in 1992, it offers 9 steps designed to…
By: Laura Walton AFC® It’s all what you get used to. Since 1973, our average house size has increased by 1000 square feet while the average household size has dropped from 3 to 2.5 persons. And how do our homes compare with those in other countries? Only Australia beats us – see the chart. The…
By: Laura Walton AFC® The line for charitable donations is often left blank when I create a budget with a client but that’s not to say they aren’t charitable. In 2015, a Gallup World Poll asked over 150,000 people which of the following three charitable acts they had undertaken in the past month: helped a stranger, or…
By: Laura Walton AFC® When I started driving, gas was 35 cents a gallon! Adjusted for inflation that’s $2.26 a gallon today. Who would have ever imagined today’s prices would be lower than that? Below are the average annual miles driven by age group according to the Department of Transportation: Age Male Female 16-19 8206…
By: Laura Walton AFC® We typically think of saving for retirement as a spending issue. A spending issue usually translates into cutting back on the very things we enjoy – travel, eating out, shopping, etc. That’s hard to get excited about. But what if we framed it differently? We know that if you save $2400…