How Americans Plan for ...

The Wall Street Journal’s piece on a five-year plan for retirement contains two interesting pie charts that give some insight into how Americans plan for retirement. The first asked current workers where they stand with planning/saving for retirement. The responses were: 40%...

Revisiting the Advice t...

The following is a guest post from Marotta Wealth Management . In 2010 I published a column entitled “Now’s Still the Time to Buy a House.” Investing is like chess in slow motion. It is important to review your moves to see how they turned out. Sometimes they...

Determine a College Bud...

Here’s a piece from the Street that says parents in their 40′s shouldn’t sacrifice saving for retirement over saving for their kids’ college expenses (I agree, BTW). But the part I want to highlight in this post is farther down the page and says this: There is a...

How to Live Better on L...

The Wall Street Journal tells the story of an ex-accountant who improved his lifestyle despite the fact that he down-sized his income big-time. To give specifics, he earns less than 75 percent of his former salary but takes home almost 90 percent as much. Add top this the fact that he...

Small and Micro-Cap Sto...

Nowadays it seems like everyone has their favorite investing style. Nowhere is this more evident than Wall Street itself. Everywhere you turn, a different investment advisor or mutual fund is touting a new magic formula for market beating returns. Do they all deliver on their promises?...

Income Statement Afflue...

After I wrote Details on Millionaires , where I noted that income only explains about 30% of the reason wealthy people are wealthy (so they are doing something other than just making money and accumulating wealth via investments), I found this post from Dr. Thomas Stanley that I felt...

Is $250,000 Really Not ...

We’ve discussed how $100,000 a year , $250,000 a year , and even $1 million a year  is not enough to live on in the United States. Until now, the examples we had were simply individuals complaining that they didn’t make enough to make ends meet — even though they made...

Over $1k to Be a Brides...

As a guy, I’ve never been a bridesmaid (of course.) So I was surprised when Main Street detailed the cost of being one as follows: According to the Wedding Report, a bridesmaid can expect to spend an average of $1,009 on everything from dresses to traveling for a wedding. And from...

Price/Earnings to Growt...

Stocks go up in price for a number of reasons: a favorable news report, an entire sector rising, the appearance of undervaluation based on historical fundamental data, or trading by technical analysts based on bullish price and volume patterns. For a stock to sustain a steep price...

Kohl’s Charge Card Re...

When the first Kohl’s department store opened in my city, it failed to capture my attention.  They have very few signs outside, and it was years before I even knew what kind of store it was. Finally, curiosity got the best of me and I eventually decided to see what they had to...