As with most financial decisions, when it comes to refinancing a mortgage there are near-term costs and benefits and long-term costs and benefits. In Part 1, I reviewed a four-step framework as a starting point to determine if refinancing a mortgage is beneficial. The focus of that framework is to assess first, whether a refinance made sense in light of... Read More
Employee Stock Purchase Plans (ESPPs) are a valuable form of equity compensation and an attractive benefit of working for many tech companies. And this form of compensation is becoming more popular, from startups to blue-chip firms, as companies realize that the plans are a cost-effective way to reward, motivate, and retain employees. But just because your company offers an ESPP... Read More
For our clients that work at Intel or other tech companies, a big piece of the puzzle is helping them manage the retirement plans sponsored by their employer. For other clients, whether they’ve transitioned into self-employed consultants or run a small business with their spouse, the burden is on them to set up and maintain their own retirement plans, and... Read More
Many of our clients work in the technology industry, so we're familiar with all different types of equity compensation plans. We've recently written about two popular forms of equity compensation plans: ESPP and RSUs (here and here). In this post, we are going to look at another popular form of equity compensation—the stock option plan. Specifically, Incentive stock options or... Read More
Because of the wide range of fees, and hassle involved with a re-finance, analyzing when a refinance would make sense can seem overwhelming, but answering these four questions to start really helps: What is the long-term objective for your house? What will you gain by refinancing? What does it cost to refinance? When is the breakeven? Once you know the... Read More
This week I was scheduled to write a market update. The short version is that in 2020 it was down a lot, then up a lot, and, and as a result, now down a little for the year. (For more thoughts on the market and if it’s a good time to invest, you can watch a reply of our 23/10... Read More
Nothing is more unsettling than receiving a letter from an unknown company claiming to have financial information about you that you yourself are unaware of. On the other end of spectrum, is there a better feeling than finding a $20 bill in the old pair of jeans? Believe it or not, these two scenarios aren’t always mutually exclusive. Indeed, we’ve... Read More
“When is the best time to buy a house?” “When is the best time to have kids?” “When is the best time to pivot your career?” “When is the best time to get back into the market?” I love a good timing question and my favorites are questions like these. Questions that involve decisions, the quality of which will be... Read More
In Our Bear Market Playbook, we included rebalancing as part of the game plan when markets drop. Often overlooked as obvious and boring, it's effective and, therefore, not to be neglected. Most of the time, rebalancing is a risk management strategy as stocks get sold to fund other portfolio diversifiers. But during a market downturn, like Q1 2020, there is... Read More
Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA), an asset manager we utilize in our client portfolios, produced a webinar for clients that focused on putting the recent market volatility in perspective. While DFA’s performance track record speaks for itself, what sets them apart in the industry is their ability to assimilate complex historical data into intuitive themes that allow investors to achieve superior... Read More
