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Want to know what goes on in my head?  Chances are you'll find out here.

Monday, August 28, 2023

“There is unrest in the forest There is trouble with the trees For the maples want more sunlight And the oaks ignore their pleas…”  -Rush     There has been a lot of trouble with trees this summer....

Wednesday, August 2, 2023

Do you know how a toilet works? Me neither.

Friday, June 30, 2023

Air Travel is a miracle we don't really appreciate.

Wednesday, May 17, 2023

You Gotta Pay Your Bills

Tuesday, May 2, 2023

As we live our lives, we lose things. But we also gain.

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Monday, April 3, 2023

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” -Shakespeare...Whether the Bard likes it or not, we need banks to run our modern society, so it's more important that ever to watch them carefully.

Thursday, March 2, 2023

Getting to the ripe old age of almost 57 has clarified one thing for me: I don’t have any time to waste! 

Tuesday, January 31, 2023

What do they say about hindsight?  It’s 20/20, right?Some upscale subdivisions outside of Scottsdale, Arizona, built under an obscure provision in the zoning laws, have recently been cut off from water. Drinking water; these...

Sunday, January 8, 2023

Well, it’s a new year.  I’m optimistic for this new one, despite the number. “2023” just doesn’t seem to roll off the tongue, does it? It’s one of those in-between years that sometimes gets lost...

Wednesday, November 30, 2022

You might think that I, as a CFP® professional, flawlessly manage my own personal finances. After all, I am constantly answering questions about the best way to save, the right choices to make, and the things one should never do...

Thursday, November 3, 2022

In my mind, there are many reasons to look forward to the future. And my job, in part, is to give folks the tools to understand that life is full of promise. Look, I might have an over-developed sense of sunny-sided-ness, and I know...

Wednesday, September 28, 2022

I’ve often said in this space that we all benefit by experience; we often call this “wisdom”.   It might have been helpful to know a few things back when I was younger, but youth often ignores the...

Tuesday, August 30, 2022

Much has been made of the recent announcement by President Biden that the Federal Government will cancel up to $20,000 of college student debt. The question is...is it fair?

Wednesday, August 3, 2022

Maps and Financial Plans have a lot in common. They help us go places.

Monday, June 27, 2022

Have you ever built your own house with your own tools? You probably haven’t, but you might have hired somebody to build one for you. You may have a rudimentary understanding of how a house is built.  You tell a...

Thursday, June 2, 2022

People drive cars around every day.  To operate a motor vehicle in every single part of this country, a person must attain a certain age and pass some kind of test. A license to operate a motor vehicle is issued to that citizen,...

Monday, May 2, 2022

Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Friday, February 25, 2022

Monday, January 31, 2022

We are in a world of worry. We can change this.

Monday, December 20, 2021

Wednesday, December 1, 2021

Good times make weak people. Weak people make bad times. Bad times make strong people. Strong people make good times. The last two years have been a time of change. After a decade of good, prosperous times, we became complacent, which...

Thursday, October 28, 2021

Have you been frustrated lately trying to locate your waiter? Did you get caught in the slowdown of Southwest Airlines? Does it seem like it takes a lot longer to go through the supermarket checkout? When can those yard people finally...

Saturday, October 2, 2021

In 1982, John Naisbitt published a book called Megatrends: Ten New Directions for Transforming Our Lives. A self-described futurist, Naisbitt took a stab at trying to predict 10 trends that would change our society over the decades to...

Monday, September 6, 2021

What do we do the next time? The anniversary of an event gives us a chance to reflect on what it meant. September 11th reminds us to think about that fateful day in 2001 when the world lurched. We often attach extra significance to...

Monday, August 2, 2021

What’s the goal of a life? I’m not trying to get into any religious or philosophical debate. I’m not questioning existence. I’m just wondering out loud what all of us may have thought at one time or another:...

Saturday, July 3, 2021

Can you hear that sound? There it is…hey, we haven’t heard that in a long time. What sound do I hear? The absence of screaming. 2021 is not 2020. Last year there were so many things about which we all got pretty riled. A...

Friday, June 4, 2021

Is your dog afraid of sausages? Do you have noodles on your ears? Whose circus monkeys are these?

Thursday, May 6, 2021

Where are all the babies? The preliminary results of the 2020 Census were just released. The headlines talked a lot about which states will gain or lose in the US House of Representatives, but there was a much more alarming set of data...

Thursday, March 25, 2021

Did you get your shot yet? We can look back at the past 14 months and think about what we didn’t get to do and what we lost, but one thing is certain: medical care took a giant leap forward. A year ago, our world began...

Thursday, February 18, 2021

Have you ever failed to get something you really wanted? Maybe you had your heart set on a college acceptance letter from your “top” choice, only to be rejected and have to settle for a different school. Or you thought you...

Friday, January 22, 2021

President Biden’s inauguration speech made me think back to one of the more famous inauguration speeches in history, Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 Inauguration speech. The country was in the midst of a terrible depression and...

Thursday, December 24, 2020

Let’s all face it: 2020 has been awful! And not in some “my-team-lost-the-in-the-playoffs” or “I-had-a-flat-tire” way. This year has been terrible.

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Things I never thought I’d say 30 years ago: I need to water the lawn; where’s my phone? Flying cars still don't exist. I love your mask; where can I get one like yours? Wait, the guy from The Apprentice?? We still fill our...

Monday, October 5, 2020

This will be my last blog post before the November 3rd elections for President, Congress, Governor, and many other issues. With all of this material to write about, why am I stuck? Why do I hesitate to write about the election?...

Thursday, September 3, 2020

“Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for...

Friday, July 24, 2020

So, it looks like we’re doing this. I am a sports fan. I’d venture to guess that a majority of Americans are sports fans. Certainly St. Louisans are massive baseball fans, dubbing ourselves the “best fans in...

Thursday, June 18, 2020

I recently started a YouTube Channel and called it “90 Seconds of Wisdom”. I think I will have wise words for people to hear and pass along to others. Lately, however, I’m feeling far from wise. My...

Thursday, May 21, 2020

I didn't seek this fame. I never wanted to be a star. But now I have a YouTube channel. Oh, great, you say, now even my financial planner is so vain that he feels he needs to plaster his face all over the world. There is some truth to...

Monday, April 27, 2020

“Mann Tract, Un Gott Lacht” - an old Yiddish adage meaning “Man Plans, and God Laughs.” I was at a conference in early February about how to create a well-run financial practice. One session was a keynote by a...

Thursday, March 19, 2020

Welcome to the end of the world. Sorry, that’s a terrible way to start a blog post. It’s a joke! At least I HOPE it’s a joke. I’m a big fan of apocalyptic movies, but it’s because I have the faith to...

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

I just spent two days in a hotel ballroom occasionally staring at a really nice beach out the windows at AssetMark’s Gold Forum, an annual conference with lots of topics relevant to financial planning. I took a bunch of notes and...

Saturday, January 25, 2020

Here we go again. A Presidential election year. Sigh. Why does it feel so exhausting? Why are we so worried?

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Rather than wading into the national political chaos, I thought I would write about a cause upon which we can all agree. What is that unifying cause? I want to get useless expressions out of our daily vocabulary! I’m talking...

Friday, September 20, 2019

I’ve been told I was born in the United States of America, and for as long as I can remember, I have lived in this country. I have a birth certificate that verifies this, but I suppose it could have been forged when I was born. I...

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Who are these people, and what are they doing?

Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Greetings, graduates! When I was asked to give you a commencement speech today, I was deeply humbled. The fact that I wasn’t actually asked to give you a commencement speech is the main reason for my humility, although my lack of...

Tuesday, April 9, 2019

“In three words I can sum up everything I know about life. It goes on.” -Robert Frost We are three months into 2019, and I I’ve hit the “Clint Eastwood” trifecta of life events: The Good: My daughter...

Friday, February 1, 2019

I recently learned an important fact: I’m not same person I was 30 years ago. The most immediate causes of this revelation were a couple of self-induced injuries. Way back in October of last year, I ran into an old high school...

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Money is not happiness. You don’t believe me? Let me ask you this: who is the happiest person you know? Is that also the richest person you know? Maybe, but probably not. Who is the happiest person you’ve ever heard of? For...

Thursday, October 11, 2018

Voting is the only way anything ever changes.

Monday, August 13, 2018

Do you know how much you are worth on paper? If I asked you to write down the value of all of your financial assets (bank accounts, retirement accounts, investments, etc), do you think you could do it accurately? My guess is that...

Monday, June 4, 2018

I'm way wiser than I used to be. At least I'm wise enough to pass on some wisdom I stole from others...

Monday, April 2, 2018

Have you ever bought a new car? It’s often a dicey proposition. First, you have to decide you actually want a new car. It’s not the best of financial decisions: a new car loses about 11% of its value the moment you drive it...

Friday, February 16, 2018

Strangely enough, I don’t remember my birth. I have been told I was born in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States of America. I have a piece of paper that says so. I had nothing do with the choice of where I was born, but I...

Friday, December 1, 2017

Recently, I interviewed myself:(Jim the Interviewer): Hey Jim! You look great today!(Jim the Financial Planner): Thanks, Jim! So do you!(Jim the Interviewer) I'd like to ask...

Monday, August 7, 2017

I'm not a terrible golfer. Sometimes I play terribly, but I'm not terrible. So why is it the one thing I do on a regular basis that causes me to experience true frustration and anger so often? Why am I not a great golfer? I started...

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."- Joseph Wittreich "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."- George Santayana "We spend a great deal of time studying history, which, let's face it, is mostly...

Friday, March 24, 2017

I've got a machine in my pocket that, quite literally, can access the entirety of human knowledge within seconds, allows me to communicate with most of the people in the world, can give me instantaneous updates on the worlds' news, and...

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Ok, so here we are. As I write this, we are six weeks past what was one of the most surprising elections in the history of the United States. I'm pretty sure even Donald Trump's supporters doubted he would win. I assumed lots of people...

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves...

Friday, May 20, 2016

You may have heard we have a Presidential election this year. I've given my thoughts about past elections, but as far as this one goes, it's a doozy. There isn't a person reading this who can honestly say he or she has seen a...

Friday, April 8, 2016

I'm about to turn 50, and I'm really surprised that: An African-American US President just gave a speech extolling the virtues of a free society in Havana with a Cuban President Castro sitting in the audience. Something exists that is...

Friday, January 29, 2016

Of all the human emotions, fear is the most powerful. Fear of predators kept us alive on the plains of Africa as we evolved from our simian ancestors. If your beliefs are more biblically-based, then you know that fear of outsiders...

Monday, November 23, 2015

Time seems to be going faster all the time. The older I get, the quicker the days, weeks, and months pass. It's like Einstein said: time is relative, and from my position in the universe, it seems to be accelerating. When you're young...

Friday, September 25, 2015

The discussions in the country are often confrontational and unpleasant. I think that if we could just agree on a few facts, we'd all have a basis for better interactions. We often get into heated discussions and take sides, when in...

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

I had just run 25 miles very quickly, and I was in trouble. All my life I had not really done much in the way of individual accomplishments. So I decided to run the Everest of physical challenges for mere mortals, a marathon. 26.2...

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

My son reminded me the other day of a quote that I used to throw at the kids all the time when they were growing up. (No, it was not the quote from the Jedi Master Yoda: "Do, or do not. There is no try." although this is a classic) The...