Tag Archive for: Steve Booren

man looking at sunset

From Accumulation to Freedom: A Better Retirement Mindset

I want to start with a story that’s uncomfortable and all too common. A man dies at 73 with $2.4 million. He lived in the same modest house for forty years, drove an aging car and clipped coupons until the end. He never took the big trip or upgraded anything to make daily his life easier. Instead, he just kept stacking dollars in the bank. Shortly after his funeral, his children split the money. Flush with cash, they purchase new homes, cars and consumer goods to upgrade their lifestyle — until the money runs out.
wake of a ship at sea

Human Nature Is a Failed Investor—But Your Plan Doesn’t Have to Be

When I entered this business in the late 1970s, I quickly realized that markets weren’t the real challenge — people were. Not because they lacked intelligence or information, but because the human mind is wired for survival, not investing.
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Anchoring: The Mindset Mistake That Quietly Steers Investors Off Course

I meet monthly with thoughtful, experienced investors who genuinely seek the best decisions. Despite any savviness, however, they often fall prey to a similar mental trap: anchoring. It’s not one of ignorance but of human nature. Anchoring…
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The Underestimated Orchard

The one force in finance that remains stubbornly misunderstood is compounding. Human brains have evolved to understand straight lines, not curves. We grasp addition and subtraction, but our intuition breaks down around exponential growth. We…
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Markets Have Seasons—And So Does Your Portfolio

As we settle into another Colorado winter, my mind shifts toward the seasons — their predictability, their necessity, and how much they reveal about what truly lasts. Even as the final bits of a colorful autumn fade, the gardener knows that…
target date funds

The Trouble with Target-Date Funds

Target-date funds have quietly become the default investment choice for millions of Americans. In workplace retirement plans, they’re the path of least resistance — simple, convenient and automatic. Select the year you plan to retire, direct…
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Current Events Only Raise Uncertainty

Every investor I’ve met has, at some point, asked a version of this question: “Given what’s going on right now, what should I do?” As a financial advisor, I always consider this a reasonable thought. The world is unpredictable: Wars…
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Preparation Over Panic

When a top American business leader starts rattling off reasons to fear today’s market, investors get uneasy. But in the echo chamber of media-made doubt, Jamie Dimon’s recent message got lost. To prepare for the worst, he recommended beefing up reserves, fortifying capital, and stress-testing for varied shocks. He didn’t advise hiding under the nearest desk but rather putting in the work, preparing and carrying on.
VUCA by SketchplanationsSketchplanations
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The Antidote to Ambiguity

Toward the end of the Cold War, a new kind of landscape emerged — defined by turbulence, ambiguity and interconnection. In that moment, folks at the U.S. Army War College coined the term VUCA, an acronym for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity.
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The Price of Promise

If we believe the headlines, an artificial intelligence revolution is upon us. For investors who experienced the dot-com boom, the vibe sure feels similar. But remember what human nature loves most: the chase. As history shows, it rarely ends well.
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The Certainty of Uncertainty

Remember that as investors, we are constantly on the precipice of uncertainty. We can never confidently know how anything will play out. No one can. So what should we do? With everything changing, we think we should be adapting. New circumstances require portfolio changes, right?
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The Bell-Bottom Billionaires

Being told in 1979 that two yet-to-be-founded companies would be worth more than the entire output of the U.S. economy would have sounded like science fiction. But this history offers a valuable reminder that the future is so big, it’s almost incomprehensible.
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Don’t Just Own Shares: Share Ownership

Can you name five companies whose products or services you use almost daily? What top brands are your family members unable to live without? We consistently rely on — and budget for — these brands and businesses in our daily activities.
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History Over Headlines

Perspective is in increasingly short supply right now. Business news and market commentary is ever focused on urgency. But good investor behavior requires thinking long-term, staying grounded, and resisting the belief that daily market machinations are important enough to warrant changes.
meeting mr market

Meeting Mr. Market

What would it look like to have a conversation with “The Market” (the embodiment of the S&P 500)? What knowledge might we learn from this nebulous thing if only we could ask it? Let's find out.