As parents, there’s so much we want our kids to learn: right from wrong, how to be confident, how to serve others—and how to be wise with their money. Regardless of our kids’ eventual career path, we hope they can attain financial security and have the confidence to make informed decisions with their money.
We can help them get on the right financial foot by making a few smart moves early.
Recessions have a way of making us second-guess all of our financial decisions. The uncertainty of future employment or the loss of savings in a financial downturn may cause some to doubt the validity of the basics of sound financial management.
However, it is just as critical to stay grounded when coming out of a recession as it is when you are in the midst of one. Letting fear drive your financial decisions is the worst thing you can do.
Let’s talk about some of the good foundational money habits to employ now that your finances are returning to a place of stability.
Happy Financial Literacy Month! Financial literacy is the ability to understand your comprehensive financial situation and make effective, optimal decisions using all the financial resources you have available. Financial literacy is a lifelong learning process. It is not something you can learn from a single book or course, and even professionals who have degrees in finance continually improve their financial literacy.
Therefore, Financial Literacy Month is an annual opportunity to reflect on your personal finances, celebrate the financial milestones you’ve achieved, and challenge yourself to commit to ongoing education about personal finance. With that in mind, here are 5 actions you can take to celebrate Financial Literacy Month and improve your knowledge of your personal finances starting now.
Spring puts me in a mood to organize the yard. It’s nature’s way of encouraging people to clean out the clutter and ready the garden for new growth. This approach is a good way to view your finances as well. Take a step back and look at your financial plan like you look at your garden. Is it overgrown with weeds? Does it need a little pruning? What are you hoping to plant, and where? Will it grow well alongside the others you have planted? Each of these questions serves as easy metaphors for retirement planning.
Steve Booren is the Owner and Founder of Prosperion Financial Advisors, located in Greenwood Village, Colo. He is the author of Intelligent Investing: Your Guide to a Growing Retirement Income and a regular columnist in The Denver Post. He was recently named a Barron's Top Financial Advisor and recognized as a Forbes Top Wealth Advisor in Colorado.
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Headlines would have you believe COVID has left Americans in financial tatters, but when looking at the broad data, I can’t make the same conclusion.
Make no mistake, COVID and the resulting restrictions have left a great many people struggling with their finances. Until we are back to “business as usual,” the situation for those folks is unlikely to get substantively better. But the narrative that COVID has upended our financial system is an easy one in which to get wrapped up and even easier on which to extrapolate. Remember, perspective is everything.
Looking at our progress is a great reminder of how far we’ve come. Read more →
Steve Booren is the Owner and Founder of Prosperion Financial Advisors, located in Greenwood Village, Colo. He is the author of Intelligent Investing: Your Guide to a Growing Retirement Income and a regular columnist in The Denver Post. He was recently named a Barron's Top Financial Advisor and recognized as a Forbes Top Wealth Advisor in Colorado.
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Women are expected to live another 21 years after retiring at age 65––three years longer than their male counterparts. Despite this fact, women are shockingly ill-prepared for retirement, having fewer investments and less money saved on average than men. Additionally, since women live longer, they are more at risk to experience greater inflation or market instability, making their retirement investments particularly vulnerable. In general, familial caregiving responsibilities, such as for an elderly parent or a newborn, also often fall primarily on the women’s shoulders, giving many women less time in the workforce and ultimately less money to save for retirement.[1]
Planning is a part of life. We plan our days, our years, our vacations, our careers…the list goes on. It’s easy to get so caught up in the day-to-day planning and focus only on what’s in front of us that we forget to do the most important planning of all: financial planning. If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that we never know what’s around the corner. You need a rock-solid plan to feel confident as you navigate life’s twists and turns. Read more →
A new year is often a time for fresh starts, intentional planning, and renewed motivation to conquer goals and accomplish things that are important to you. And after the year we just had, a fresh start is just what we need. As you transition into 2021 and all this year will bring, use this time to take a look at your financial plan to make sure it’s still on track to get you to your goals, no matter how many obstacles life has thrown at you lately! Here’s how to get started.
One of the greatest challenges to retirees and investors alike is inflation. Not only is this principle often forgotten, but rarely understood. So let’s discuss inflation: what it is, where it’s been, and where it might be going in the future. How can you as an investor combat inflation over long periods of time, helping to ensure that the purchasing power of your money remains unchanged for years to come?
Inflation is an economic phenomenon of price increases. Traditionally a result of increased raw material pricing (like steel or lumber), inflation also occurs when there is increased demand or less supply. Both roads lead in one direction: higher prices. We all experience inflation when we look at the cost of what we purchase over time. Compare what you paid for food, computers, prescriptions, or rent five years ago. It is an easy way to see inflation. Think about purchasing a car or a house 30 years ago versus today. Inflation is all around us.
Steve Booren is the Owner and Founder of Prosperion Financial Advisors, located in Greenwood Village, Colo. He is the author of Intelligent Investing: Your Guide to a Growing Retirement Income and a regular columnist in The Denver Post. He was recently named a Barron's Top Financial Advisor and recognized as a Forbes Top Wealth Advisor in Colorado.
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They say hindsight is 20/20, and as we make the year 2020 hindsight, it’s a good time to reflect. What did we learn? What surprised us? How can we use our past to make our future bigger and better?
It was former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who said it’s the “unknown unknowns” that get you. Unlike a “known unknown,” something we expect but don’t quite know the outcome, an unknown unknown is something no one could have predicted. The election was a known unknown: somebody would get elected; we just weren’t sure who. The circumstances may have been unusual, but there was going to be an outcome that we could anticipate.
An unknown unknown is something like COVID-19: something that comes out of left field and creates uncertainty through its mere existence. We did not understand its nature, the impact, the contagiousness, how to treat it, who would be the most vulnerable, what the effect would be on our healthcare system or how people would react to it. Even ten months later, there is still much we don’t know. Read more →
Steve Booren is the Owner and Founder of Prosperion Financial Advisors, located in Greenwood Village, Colo. He is the author of Intelligent Investing: Your Guide to a Growing Retirement Income and a regular columnist in The Denver Post. He was recently named a Barron's Top Financial Advisor and recognized as a Forbes Top Wealth Advisor in Colorado.
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Improving Investor Behavior: Where are all the Good Investments?June 21, 2021 - 3:48 pmRead any financial website, and you’ll find a common thread among the headlines: the market is overvalued. By several historical measures, the stock market appears to be ahead of itself. Valuations are high, and value-focused investors like Berkshire Hathaway Co-Chairman Charlie Munger are calling for a “lost decade,” one in which gains are non-existent while […]
