In 2017, we were again reminded of the importance of following an investment approach based on discipline and diversification vs. prediction and timing.

These days most companies offer some form of employee benefits. Among the most common are insurance plans (health/dental/vision), and if you’re lucky, a savings plan for retirement. 

When it comes to identifying what’s wrong with your investment portfolio, costs are probably not near the top of your list. But they should be!

In retirement, paying higher costs (through investment fees, expense ratios, and advisor fees) can reduce your income and overall balance, leaving you with less money to spend or pass on to your heirs.

In Part One of our series highlighting some of the glaring issues related to your investments, we talked about understanding what you’re invested in and why. In Part Two, we focused on what it meant to accurately measure how your portfolio is performing.

In Part One of our series on Why Your Investments Are Terrible, we talked about the importance of understanding what you’re invested in and why. Here, in Part Two, we’re focusing on performance.

Measuring your portfolio’s performance seems pretty straightforward. I mean, if your portfolio returns have gone up for the year that’s good and if they’ve done the opposite, that’s probably bad...right?

Remember the popular ad campaign that ended each of its commercials with the question, “What’s in your wallet?”

How could you not?! It was run like clockwork on every network at all times of the day.

But as often as you saw the commercials and perhaps even considered the contents of your wallet, chances are you probably overlooked a much more consequential question than credit card rewards.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a substantial uptick in questions on the subject of selecting individual stocks.

To be clear, our perspective is, if you’re picking individual stocks, it’s a lot like gambling. Sure you can win big, but the subsequent emotional rollercoaster can be as volatile as the prices of the underlying stocks.

Every year, millions of Americans rely on Social Security as a primary source of their retirement income. Unfortunately, given the complexities of the program, many are finding out that uninformed decisions made throughout the filing process, can prove costly over time. Whether retirement is around the corner or you have several years of work ahead, here are some common Social Security mistakes that you’ll want to avoid.

Among the biggest challenges that an individual will face in their lifetime is the transition from working to earn a living, to sustaining that same standard of life through retirement. For years we’ve become accustomed to saving money in preparation for retirement, which -- independent of other variables -- is great. However, the psychological reversal of a save first/spend later mentality is a difficult process, to say the least.

It’s been estimated that the average adult makes anywhere from 5,000 to 35,000 semi-conscious decisions on a daily basis. While these numbers may seem absurdly high on the surface, when you consider the amount of responsibility we each take on in a given day, it’s not hard to see how that number can increase fairly quickly.

The true value of financial advice is a topic of intense debate these days. And, to be completely fair, both sides have a reasonable basis for their arguments. With technological advances (including the advent of Robo-advisors), there are more available options for consuming financial advice than ever before.

A recent survey conducted by PWC determined that 45% of American workers attribute money matters as their number one source of stress. That ranked higher than their jobs (20%), relationships (15%), and health concerns (15%), by a wide margin.

With its far-reaching effects, and controlling influence on other areas of life, it's no wonder that unresolved financial stress continues to be a leading cause of concern for many adults.