When most people think about “investment strategy,” they immediately jump to asset allocation—the mix of stocks, bonds, and alternative investments that matches their risk tolerance and time horizon. But there’s a second, equally important concept that rarely gets discussed outside of professional planning circles: Asset location. If asset allocation is what you invest in, asset location is where you place those investments. And getting this right can add tens of thousands o

In my last article, I talked about the basic types and terminologies of bonds. We learned about terms like coupon rates, par values, and maturities. The thing that used to confuse me most about bonds is their pricing. I would hear on the news that interest rates were up, and bond prices were falling. That didn’t really make sense to me. Wouldn’t higher interest rates make bonds more attractive? Actually, it’s the opposite. Today, I’ll explain how it all works. The two

I was aware of bonds early in my investing career but will admit that I didn’t really know that much about them or how they actually worked until I took a basic financial management course as part of my master’s program in finance. I just knew that they paid out interest, were less volatile, and had lower growth potential than stocks. I was comfortable with the risk of the stock market and wanted the growth, so I didn’t have much interest in bonds and had very few in my por

We all know that we need to invest to achieve our long-term financial goals, right? But are we confident in knowing how to invest? My last several blog posts have been about making smart decisions with your portfolio that will help you maximize your return, minimize fees, and manage your risk. Today, I’m going to talk about bonds—not the nuts and bolts of how they work, but how to decide if your selections are meeting your goals. Stocks or bonds? When we think about portfol

In my last article, I pulled back the curtain on expense ratios—those “silent fees” that can drag down your portfolio without you noticing. But keeping costs low is only the first step in smart portfolio management. The next question is: how do you actually measure whether your portfolio is performing well? That’s where alpha and beta come in. These two simple metrics can show you not just how much you earned, but how much risk you took to get there. Passive vs Active Investo

As a financial planner, I review a lot of investment portfolios and have learned a few things by doing so. There are some common mistakes eating into portfolio returns that investors are unaware of or have just overlooked. Over my next few posts, I am going to discuss some ways that we can all be a little more careful with our portfolio selections. Today’s post is about paying attention to hidden fees, namely mutual fund expense ratios and sales loads. First, why do I refe

The sky is falling! At least it kind of feels that way if you are paying attention to the stock market and watching the value of your portfolio plummet. The S&P 500 index has lost over 17% since its record close on February 19, 2025 at $6144.15 to the April 7th close at $5074.08. That is a quite a dip in less than two months! In times like these, it is very tempting to get out before things get worse and before you lose more money. But before you start clicking “sell” on al