Our Blog: The Bishop’s Piece

Do you have an Aging Plan?

No one likes to think about getting old, but it’s an eventuality that we cannot escape. Sooner than later we should start thinking about how this process will affect our lives, the lives around us and put together a plan to deal with these changes, also known as an aging plan. An aging plan is […]

Investing with Purpose

What is the difference between investing and having a financial plan? While investing can be fun and invigorating, especially when everything is going well, there will inevitably be a time when performance suffers and this is when having a financial plan is critical. A financial plan provides a “purpose” to your investing. When we have […]

Strategies to Pay Less Tax

As we are now in the thick of tax season, I get asked frequently “how can I pay less in tax?” While you should usually be happy to pay more in federal taxes (because that means you probably made more), there are strategies that with a little time and effort can reduce your overall tax […]

Financial Missteps

Personal finance, like just about everything else, is mainly common sense. Advice like “don’t spend more than you make; start investing while you’re young; don’t loan money to friends with the expectation of getting it back,” have been around for generations, and most likely will survive the next few generations as well. Even money mistakes […]

Control What You Can

The pain being inflicted by a diversified set of asset classes in 2018 hasn’t been witnessed since Don Mclean’s American Pie was #1 on the Billboard charts. Ned Davis Research organizes assets into eight major categories from large US stocks to commodities and not one of them is slated to gain more than 5% for […]

How to Effectively Use an Annuity

Annuities come in many different shapes and sizes but at the foundation they are an insurance product that issues some sort of guarantee. As many of you know, I am not a big fan of insurance products or the ways they are sold, but being a financial planner I cannot look past their utility in […]

Double Up Tax Strategy

We are in the last quarter of the year now and the holiday season is right around the corner. People are preparing by doing their holiday shopping (which I heard my mother-in-law is already done with –IMPRESSIVE) and it is also a time when charitable giving increases. I have not started or even thought about […]

Is Diversification Dead?

With recent wide performance differences between stocks (16.07%) vs. bonds (-4.00%), US (16.07%) vs. Non-US (-1.61%) stocks, and Information technology sector (30.21%) vs. Consumer staples sector (-1.4%) is diversification dead? Should we no longer spread our portfolio out among different asset classes, geographic regions or sectors? If you use history and probability to build a […]

Active vs Passive Investing Debate

In my 13 year career as a financial planner I have not typically condemned certain products. All products have a purpose and if used in the correct situation for the correct person can add return or protection to a client’s plan. You may often hear people say you should never use annuities or you should […]