Year-End Planning Tips: Roth Conversions
October 24, 2018  | By Kevin Smith

The Roth IRA is fantastic. When you deposit funds to a Roth IRA, the IRS tells us that you will never be taxed again on that money. This can be particularly compelling if you are expecting significant taxable income in…Read More

Year-End Planning Tips: Required Distributions
October 24, 2018  | By Kevin Smith

Required Minimum Distributions You did a great job building up that 401k, but the IRS eventually demands your tax dollars. This applies to people who are age 70 ½ or older by 12/31/2018. It also applies to people who have…Read More

2018 Q3 Trends – Expensive stocks outperformed cheap stocks
October 22, 2018  | By Kevin Smith

Is the ‘value premium’ dead? Investing with a preference for cheap stocks (named “value” by marketing departments) over expensive stocks (named “growth” by marketing departments) is referred to as ‘value investing’.History provides compelling evidence that investors have received higher returns…Read More

2018 Q3 Trends – Global stock market divergence
October 22, 2018  | By Kevin Smith

The difference between stock market returns from these broad regional categories have reached historical significance in 2018. As disciplined investors, we see an opportunity to buy stocks at historically attractive prices and remember that trends tend to reverse and the…Read More

2018 Q3 Trends – Interest Rates Up
October 22, 2018  | By Kevin Smith

We have observed a gradual interest rate increase since mid-2017. The change was first experienced in higher yielding cash savings accounts, which was great news for emergency funds and rainy day funds. More recently we have seen an increase in…Read More

NEW! North Austin Location
October 22, 2018  | By Kevin Smith

In an effort to better serve our clients who live and work north of the river, we have opened a meeting location at the intersection of Mopac and Far West. This is a Regus coworking office space for the purpose…Read More

Podcast: Budgeting in Austin, TX
September 5, 2018  | By Kevin Smith

This podcast breaks down the difficult challenge of budgeting for a middle to upper middle class family in Austin, Texas. Find it here: http://conversationwithkevin.libsyn.com/a-mental-model-for-budgeting We cover: What does it cost to live comfortably in Austin? Why bother budgeting at all?…Read More

US vs The World
September 5, 2018  | By Kevin Smith

Stock markets have exhibited some fascinating behavior this year, and I’m not just talking about Elon Musk tweeting Tesla’s price up and down. (Although I can’t wait for the movie to come out –  DiCaprio was born for that role.)…Read More

Trade Wars
July 18, 2018  | By Kevin Smith

If wealth creation can be defined as more people accessing better products and services at lower prices, then Trade Wars gum up the works. It is not easy to find a respected economist who favors Trade Wars because it is…Read More

Tech Update: Portfolio Insight
May 17, 2018  | By Kevin Smith

We are excited to announce a new visual investment dashboard in your Orion portal. Orion is a performance reporting system that uses data feeds from TD Ameritrade and other custodians and presents that information to you in a visual way….Read More