The Frankenplan is representative of a lot of people’s financial lives. It’s made up of many different parts, acquired at different times, sometimes for the wrong reasons and it is not very coordinated. It’s easy to fall into the Frankenplan trap. Let’s take Charles for example. Perhaps he bought a life insurance policy many years …

401(k) plans may contain many different provisions, which often require considerable work to administer. And the more difficult a plan is to administer, the costlier it can be. A 401(k) plan has a third-party administrator who conducts testing to ensure that the plan meets and follows IRS and DOL compliance standards as well as preparing …

Like most of our commentaries, this one is born from an analogy to real life. While exercising on the elliptical machine, I usually strive to get a certain number of steps completed within a certain amount of time. During a recent workout, and approaching my time limit, it appeared that I wasn’t going to make …

I recently read an article about a well-known actor/musician who had been estimated to have earned over $650 million during his 34-year career yet was almost broke. You may ask yourself, ‘How in the world could that happen?’ In this case, there were several issues that could be considered unique and some that happen to …

As we go through life, we make various promises and justifications to ourselves, often losing focus of a long-term goal for the sake of a short-term goal. We know we should save for retirement because it is extremely difficult to retire and live comfortably solely on a Social Security benefit. “I may die early, or …

Like most of our blogs, this one was born out of a real experience that initially may seem totally unrelated to your financial life. But trust me, it somehow circles back to it. For quite some time, when I was driving, I would sometimes find myself looking down at my turn signal since it sounded …