The list below (Source: WSJ / Phoenix Marketing International) shows the number of households with at least $1 million to invest per state. According to the table there are 163,144 millionaires in Georgia, which is down some 7,000 millionaires from 2012. How could we lose 7,000 millionaires when 2013 was clearly a winner for the…
A policeman sees a drunk searching for something under a streetlight and asks what he has lost. The man answers he has lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, that he…
I am not sure how I convinced Scarlett to give the financial planning process one more chance. Her experience with financial planners had been awful. The meetings made her feel dumb — “They looked at me like I was nuts for what I thought was a very simple question. How much do I need to…
Lifestyle Cash Flow is the linchpin of your Point of Independence. Yet when I ask, “How much after-tax cash flow does it take to support your family each year?” very few people know the answer. In our Blue Pages we call this number Lifestyle Cash Flow. It represents the sum total of every dollar spent…
I was trying to change the taillight bulb in my car this weekend and realized that the head of the screw matched nothing in my toolkit. The dealership requested $185 to replace the bulb, a price I was not willing to pay to change a lightbulb! So I headed to my local Advance Auto Parts…
Being in Omaha, Nebraska the weekend that Warren Buffett published his annual letter to shareholders was a great moment to spend time reading some of his older letters. All are online, at the Berkshire Hathaway website, which is a testament in itself to his ‘no frills‘ culture. The letters on the website go back to…
Crosshairs are only good up close. The longer the shot, the more likely the wind will move your shot off target. And so, snipers learn to aim away from the target to adjust for the journey to the target. Financial planning is very similar – aiming for a far away target with many uncertainties along…
After two gate changes and a mad dash at the Atlanta airport, I ducked into the bookstore while I waited for the passengers to deboard our delayed flight. I decided to look at the financial section, and I had to do a double take. David Booth and Eugene Fama from Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) were…
In the last 60 days, two Atlanta companies sold for more than $700 million. Founders, employees and investors who toiled for years with the hope of a better future realized their dream. They became financially independent in an instant. But as history has shown us, liquid wealth can create problems. Malcolm Gladwell’s new book David…
Matthias Schlitte is probably a name that does not sit on the tip on anyone’s tongue. That is, unless you are a professional arm wrestler. Matthias did something most of us would find freakish. In the world of arm wrestling, the only thing that matters is arm strength. And since these people wrestle by weight…