The Consulate Journal: Our Financial Blog

There are many benefits to working beyond the age of 70, the greatest of which is that those who work later in life—and enjoy what they do—often experience good health. If, however, a person does not enjoy the work that…

If you automatically calculate how much money you “lose” when the stock market goes down, then you may require a psychological reset if you plan to remain invested in the market. Let’s assume that you bought a house for $300,000…

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? This age-old question can be adapted to many questions on origin, including financial planning. Financial planning’s “chicken and egg” question is: Is it about saving or spending less that brings forth financial…

For many years now, I have been promoting one of the greatest and most invaluable (but underappreciated) financial planning tools—the home equity credit line (HECL). An HECL is an agreed-upon balance that you can borrow from at your own choosing…

At the time this article was written, the U.S. stock market had just lost 12 percent in the preceding 2.5 months. This type of market decline causes a serious amount of angst and worry among stock investors. Watching their account…

A broken sternum. It turns out that there is a significant amount of financial planning that results from breaking your sternum. One week after my wedding (and the day before I was to leave for my honeymoon), my mother called…

The bee seems like a simple insect, but without its ability to pollinate plants, we would most likely starve. Water seems simple enough, but it is the source of life to all living organisms. Air is nothing more than a…

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) uses algorithms (i.e., computer program applications) to examine the data that it receives and then fires off notices to taxpayers to explain distributions from individual retirement accounts (IRAs) and other forms of retirement accounts. When…

My grandmother loved history, especially our family history. As a genealogist in the time before computers, she painstakingly researched our family tree, taking trips to the birthplaces of our ancestors, collecting history, and compiling it in her library. She was…