What is the WHY behind your investment philosophies?

Over the past few years, municipal bonds may have fallen out of favor due to the fact that, until recently, the returns in the stock and bond markets were generating steady returns.

With the holiday season looming, it’s not too soon to do your year-end tax planning. One of the consequences of achieving financial success is that, what was once a relatively straightforward tax return increasingly becomes more involved as more tax issues come into the picture.

Highlights of the attachment:

• 64% of American adults do not have a will, an increase from the 57% of adults that did not have a will in 2011 (source: Rocket Lawyer).

• Germans conduct 80% of their financial transactions in cash. Only 32% of Germans own a credit card (source: Deutsche Bundesbank).

Most people would argue that living in a digital world, with instant access to an endless stream of information has made us smarter and more self-empowered than past generations. Investors believe that it has “leveled the playing field”, enabling them to make investment decisions based on the same information once only available to the investment pros.

Choosing a financial advisor is tough. There are generally a lot of options so how do you differentiate the crème de la créme of advisors who you can really trust to manage your hard-earned money?

You may have heard statistics or evidence that multitasking can actually make people less efficient. Actually, in many cases that’s true. Generally speaking, multitasking decreases the level of knowledge and understanding in a given task; and, sometimes it can lead to doing many things but not really accomplishing anything.

Money is just one of those things that sometimes brings people as much pain as it does pleasure. As the economy in an up cycle of the recession, things are looking better but just the thought and uncertainty of an unstable economy is often enough to bring the fear back into people’s minds