The CARES Act The CARES act or Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security act is a federal law that in part directs the use of the 2 trillion dollars of funding for COVID-19 relief aid. For the purposes of this article, we are going to focus primarily on the stimulus checks or economic impact payment. These stimulus checks continue to be the sources of confusion amongst conversations, so I think before we talk about how to use it, we need to clarify some of the many questions surrounding it. What is it? The stimulus check is money that is considered a 2020 tax credit that citizens are being given if…
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Embrace the Ride: Investing for the Short Term vs the Long Term
As I talked about in my previous post on Market Timing, I start out by stating that the majority of us are and should be investing for the long term. Long term meaning expected retirement dates 10, 20, or 30 years out. I say this again now, because I think it’s important to look at the market history over a short time frame vs a long one to show that the recent events, albeit scary, are right on track with history. If anything, the recent extended bull market may have been the outlier. What may look like extreme stock market volatility on the micro level is really just a small…
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Market Timing: Is Now the Time to Get Out of the Market??
This week especially I have received questions and have seen countless Facebook posts asking if “now was the time to get out of the stock market”. So I think it’s time we address this oft asked question to hopefully help decrease fear and avoid some of these costly mistakes. So to start out, the majority of us are and should be long term investors. Meaning, we have a retirement goal set for 10, 20, 30 years into the future. If you are a short term investor, you are either beginning the transition to retiring soon which usually equates to moving more towards bonds or you are gambling. Market Timing (i.e.…
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Coronavirus: The Importance of a Financial Crisis Plan
It was Sunday at noon when I received a call from my secretary. I had missed her call earlier in the day and it was her off day so I figured it was important for her to call again, so I answered. See, at this time, I was hiking a trail in the outskirts of Sedona, practicing social distancing. So I found a spot with okay service near the peak of the trail and answered. I was supposed to be hiking Zion National Park, and visiting Las Vegas this weekend for the first time during possibly the best sporting event of the year, March Madness. I had even taken two…
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Cutting Your Housing Costs: Americans Spend ⅓ of Their Income on Housing Alone
2019 was a crazy year for my living situations so I knew I wanted to write an article about it. I’m not writing this article to say these are the necessary steps to reach financial independence or even to improve your financial position. I’m simply writing it to show that there are sacrifices or small changes that all of us can take to decrease our monthly spending on housing. And sacrifice may be a strong word choice as well. Possibly re-framing our thoughts may be a better way to put it. Housing is expensive so if we can find different avenues to cut this cost we can save a lot…
