Meanderings Archives - Rightpath Investments & Financial Planning, Inc.

Will Artificial Intelligence replace your financial planner?

Meanderings, Wealth Management / By Steven Smith / February 9, 2023

Artificial Intelligence applications — and especially chatbots, which can seemingly research and write like us humans, are becoming increasingly prevalent. Chatbots are by no means perfect in the output they produce. And they are somewhat controversial, particularly in academia, as students begin to use them to assist with their homework. The following answer to the …

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ESG Investing Back in the Arena, Political Hot Potato Gets Tossed Again

ESG Investing, Meanderings, Uncategorized / By Steven Smith / December 28, 2022

The political football has been tossed back into the hands of workplace retirement investors who want to take their values into account in managing their portfolios. At the end of 2020, the US Department of Labor, responsible under ERISA for regulating 401Ks, changed the rules for sustainable investing, moving the goal posts for fiduciaries by …

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Options for Senior Living through the Spectrum of Aging

Meanderings / By Steven Smith / April 18, 2022

Planning for our senior years would be so much easier if we knew how long we will live and the state of our health toward the end of our lives. In my specialty of retirement planning, I have to ask my clients to ponder the imponderable: late-life care. In this article I share information about …

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Dealing with the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Meanderings, News, Uncategorized / By Steven Smith / February 25, 2022

On Wednesday night, Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin followed through on his threat to invade his neighbor, the sovereign nation of Ukraine. It is difficult to know his actual motivations and what his plan is. But this is obviously an affront to the post-WW War II international order. And a tragedy for the Ukrainian people. …

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CARES Act Relaxes Rules for Charitable Giving

Meanderings, Uncategorized / By Steven Smith / April 5, 2020

The $2.2 trillion stimulus package – known as the CARES Act – passed by Congress and signed by the President on March 27 created strong incentives for charitable giving in 2020 to meet the needs of people tragically affected by Covid-19. There are provisions for both modest and more affluent donors alike. $300 Above-the-Line Universal …

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Index Funds: Good, But Not Perfect

Meanderings, Uncategorized / By Steven Smith / March 4, 2019

It’s only been a few weeks since the passing of John Bogle, the inventor of the index fund. In memoriam, I – along with many others – was singing the praises of the index fund for its ultra-low-cost ability to track the broad market. One writer has even given credit to the index fund for …

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Owed to Saint Jack. RIP

Meanderings, Uncategorized / By Steven Smith / January 21, 2019

Millions of American investors – including yours truly – owe a debt of gratitude to John “Jack” Bogle, who died on January 16 at the age of 89. Adulations have been pouring in for the inventor of the index fund (dubbed “Bogle’s Folly by critics at the time) and founder of Vanguard. Even from the …

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Lessons From the Madoff Fraud, 10 Years later

Investment Management, Meanderings, Uncategorized / By Steven Smith / December 28, 2018

Has it really been ten years? One of the low lights indelibly associated with the Great Recession of 2008 was the discovery and unraveling of Bernie Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme. It feels like only yesterday that I wrote about that almost incomprehensible fiasco in real time. But the journalist Erin Arvedlund wrote the book on …

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$1 Million May Not be Enough to Retire in Denver – Or in Our Beloved Mountains

Meanderings, Mountain Lifestyle, Uncategorized / By Steven Smith / December 12, 2018

As if planning to fund your retirement weren’t difficult enough. In a story in the Denver Post, we now learn of a study by SmartAssets that Denver – and by extension – our beloved Colorado mountains – is one of the country’s most expensive places to retire. This is largely because of the cost of …

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Where are you on the Spectrum of Financial Dependence and Independence?

Financial Lifestyle, Meanderings, Uncategorized / By Steven Smith / October 29, 2018

Where are you on the Spectrum of Financial Dependence and Independence? (H/T to financial planning guru Michael Kitces for including this article by Morgan Housel in his October 19, Weekly Reading for Financial Planners.) Continuums I love continuums. Or is it contiua? You’ve seen a million of them. They are generally represented graphically, in an …

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