Sharing my latest thoughts on money and life, with an eye to empowering more women to financial confidence. I'VE BEEN PONDERING Apropos of nothing (!!), I share the recording of the Wellness Webinar we held for clients in January, where my coach Lindsay shares brain and body science about stress, and teaches us a very practical stress management tool to take back a bit of control in what can feel like an unending storm. The stock market has started to react to the uncertainty about our...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Sharing my latest thoughts on money and life with an eye to empowering more women to financial confidence. I'VE BEEN PONDERING One of my favorite personal finance books of recent years, and a blockbuster best seller, is The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. It’s amazingly insightful about being a human dealing with this thing called money, and also very approachable because (a) there’s very little math in it (!!), and (b) it’s a series of brief essays as opposed to a dense academic tome....
3 months ago • 2 min read
I'M WITH YOU People are feeling all kinds of things since November 6th. Me too, believe me. Bill and I were on a 6-day empty-nester getaway to Paris the week of the election. It felt surreal to be so far away from home, yet have every taxi driver and waiter ask us what we thought. I whiplashed between deep concern for what might come, and sheer wonder at the beauty and history (and delicious food!) around us. On the plane home, I paid for bad internet and read as much as I could to get up to...
5 months ago • 3 min read
I'VE BEEN PONDERING “It would seem those who are best at systematically saving aren’t so good at systematically spending.” You know who you are. Or maybe you don’t! Let me help: you worked hard to save your entire adult life. You were always conscious of your cash flow and conscientious about making sure you lived within your means. You value having money and assets so that you’ll be OK in the future. Now you’re a bit older. You’ve left your primary career behind, or you’re close to doing so....
9 months ago • 2 min read
I'VE BEEN PONDERING Perhaps it's being in middle age, but I feel I am having more and more conversations with friends and clients about death. These are actual conversations I've had in the past week: the shock of a friend dying young, the reality that one spouse is likely to die before the other, the tragedy of unnecessary violent deaths, and the gift of being with a parent as their time comes to an end. Of course there are also money aspects. It doesn't seem right that death should be a...
12 months ago • 2 min read
“THE ACQUISITION OF MEMORIES” They say that a checkbook and a calendar never lie. If that's true, and I believe it is, then we should occasionally ask ourselves an important question: If an impartial observer tallied up how you spend your time and money, what would they say is important to you? While I'm certainly hopeful they'd say that you spend your time and money in complete alignment with what's most important to you, I'm guessing most of us would feel that we could do a bit better. I...
about 1 year ago • 3 min read
I'VE BEEN PONDERING With the stock market hovering around all-time highs again (see 2023 returns below), it's natural to wonder what's next. Will the market continue to climb, or will we experience yet another decline? If we follow the constant doom and gloom headlines, we're likely to believe that it will be the latter. Of course, the truth is that nobody knows, which of course offers no comfort whatsoever. But negative headlines are a dime a dozen no matter where the market stands at any...
over 1 year ago • 3 min read
I'VE BEEN PONDERING Most of you know I served on a Federal Grand Jury for 18 months. Every other Thursday my fellow citizens and I found our way to a windowless room in the courthouse on 9th and Market in Philadelphia, to hear overviews from Assistant US Attorneys and testimony from witnesses, and to vote on whether or not to indict. Some cases were done in an hour; some took many months. It was a fascinating (if time consuming) look into our justice system. Our Grand Jury was assigned to...
over 1 year ago • 2 min read
I'VE BEEN PONDERING Have you thought about the day you may no longer be fit to look after your own finances? A friend pointed me to this recent New York Times article about that conundrum. (This is a "gift" link which should give you full access to the article, even without a subscription.) I was delighted to find it features a financial planner whom Janice and I happen to know, Elliott Appel. He went through his own journey when his father started showing signs of impairment. The article...
over 1 year ago • 2 min read