Archive for the 'Financial Education' Category

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Financial Adrenaline

What motivates someone to change their financial behavior? For example, can someone who is prone to spend every dime really be turned into a saver?

Fear can certainly be a motivator. For some it takes a tangible, in your face type fear like “I will lose my car if I can’t make the balloon payment that’s due in three months”. The force behind saving to avoid losing your wheels can be powerful.  But when the pain goes so away, often so does the temporary positive behavior. But still, something kicked in that worked.  I call this phenomenon, “adrenaline induced” financial behavior change.

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Published by JS Wolff on November 5, 2009

Financial Wellness in 2010 – Open Enrollment Tips

As November fast approaches, you are likely beginning to receive important communications about Open Enrollment. If you’re like many employees, you may have already decided to just stick with your current elections – after all, they seem to have worked out well enough. This year, more than others in the past, taking a passive approach to Open Enrollment may be an expensive decision.

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Published by Joe Larocque on October 25, 2009

Saving For College Not Adding Up Financially

Several significant trends are signaling a reset of how families plan and think about college costs. The evidence suggests that creative solutions will be required as key economic factors are conspiring to make a college degree financially more elusive.

Let’s look at the new realities of saving for higher education:

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Published by JS Wolff on September 28, 2009

Raising Financially Responsible Kids Accidentally

Recently after conducting a financial education workshop for a high tech company, a young lady in her early 20’s wanted to get together to discuss how she could retire early. She had seen an infomercial that described the beauty of passive income and decided it was her ticket to an early exit.

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Published by JS Wolff on July 6, 2009

What’s in Your Financial Constitution?

Voters in the state of California spoke loudly and angrily last Tuesday. After years of convoluted budget fixes, exotic borrowing schemes and skirting tough issues, Californians just said “no” to another series of band-aid fiscal ballot measures that just seemed like more of the same. Voter frustration has risen to such new levels that now there is even a movement to completely rewrite the State’s constitution to prevent the politicians from operating like credit drunk consumers.

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Published by JS Wolff on May 25, 2009

Historical Worst Case Financial Planning

I’ve talked to some pretty nervous investors recently…even with this latest uptick they’re not sure if they can ever trust the stock market again. With their fears being totally understandable, I decided to research an historical worst case scenario to help them evaluate the length of time they needed to be in the market to be reasonably assured that they wouldn’t  lose money.

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Published by JS Wolff on May 12, 2009

More About Sleeping at Night…a Personal Financial Stress Test

All of us have a distinct financial personality or what we call our “Money Pulse”, that is probably different than anyone else’s.  What you do or don’t do with your money in tough times says a lot about your core financial beliefs.  Often we get caught up in a herd mentality and we gravitate toward what others are doing. Consider Bernie Madoff and the famous people who invested millions without asking fundamental questions.  An economic crisis is not a time to follow the crowd…it’s a time to know yourself extremely well.

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Published by JS Wolff on April 27, 2009

Financial Decision Support Frameworks – an Estate Planning Example

Last week, I mentioned that two of the clear differences between our current economic crisis and the Great Depression are the interactive ways we now communicate and the staggering amount of data that is literally at our fingertips via the Web. Collectively these phenomena contribute to what I termed the, “data invasion”, meaning that, unless we have a way to filter, simplify, and personalize financial information we will probably not be much better off than they were in the 30′s… sort of dazed and confused.

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Published by JS Wolff on April 8, 2009

The Data Invasion and Financial Health

Seems like a repeat question that keeps coming up in my financial wellness sessions is, “what was different about the Great Depression than what we are experiencing now?” How about for a start…communication and data!

On January 27th, 1927, two years before the US economy fell off a cliff, inventor Philo T. Farnsworth applied for a patent that is now considered the official birth date of the television. Because this medium was still in its infancy in 1929, radio and newspapers were the only tools with the ability to reach the masses. But as we know, all of these mediums are only good for moving information one way.

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Published by JS Wolff on March 30, 2009

Facing the Fear Factor

In all my years of being hanging around with professionals that consider themselves to be financial experts, I’ve never found anyone who could provide a logical explanation for how and why markets move in one direction or another? But it seems that either a general climate of confidence or fear are certainly leading indicators.

For example, it is interesting that the markets pay close attention to a concept that is anything but logical or analytical. It’s called “consumer confidence.” Webster’s dictionary tells us that confidence is “a state of confident hopefulness that events will be favorable.”

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Published by JS Wolff on January 23, 2009