Late Bloomer Wealth

Late Bloomer Wealth

Dedicated to Helping K12 Teachers with their 403(b) & 457(b) plans.

Financial Education/Literacy

Book Review: “Your Money or Your Life”

Leave a Comment / Beginning Investing, Financial Education/Literacy / By

I have read many books on personal finance. The majority were about the quantitive aspect: the data, graphs, statistics, market history, types of stocks and bonds, and the skills needed to construct low-cost diversified portfolios. This book finishes the job by discussing the lesser status qualitative aspect: your thinking and your emotions surrounding money. Both aspects make valid contributions for the eventual, sometimes elusive goal of financial independence, and to be happy at your job and giving back to the greater good.

Book Review: The Soul of Money

Leave a Comment / Consumer Finance, Donating to Charities, Financial Education/Literacy, Frugal Habits, Women Investors / By

If you want a more emotional, personal, and passionate point of view of money, read my review of The Soul of Money by Lynn Twist. It is surprisingly similar to John Bogle’s Enough book. I have come to realize the when it comes to thinking about money, people who do not have it, think about it all the time, and those who have saved, invested and managed their money, can think of supporting causes that make this planet a better place for all of us. I have discovered that I have become a better person by discovering and learning the investment process.

7 Ways to Assist Your Parents

Leave a Comment / Financial Education/Literacy, Retired Couples, Retirement Planning / By

If you’ve got aging parents as well as children of your own to look after, you’re part of the “sandwich generation”. You may want to ensure secure future for both your parents and your kids, the stress of juggling these responsibilities can become overpowering. Retirement is becoming more expensive every day, but have your parents been investing for it?

September 30 3rdQ, 2016 Portfolio YTD Returns

2 Comments / Beginning Investing, Do it yourself investors (DIY), Financial Education/Literacy, Investor, Low Cost Investors, Passive Investment Strategy, Retired Couples, Successful Wealth Building / By

The Stock and Bond Markets are up again in the third quarter of 2016. Read how my portfolio has returned 6.7% after nine months. It’s really not complicated because my portfolio is straightforward. It’s constructed to gain when the core asset classes increase and loses value when the market goes down.
Losing is an important part of investing process, if not the most important part. The majority of people don’t understand it because they sell when their investment declines. Never sell, unless it is part of your plan, not because of bear market conditions. Have a plan and stick with it during ups and downs.

Steve’s Book Review: Excellent for Beginners

1 Comment / Consumer Finance, Financial Education/Literacy / By

I reviewed another investment book. I tell why self-published authors connect better with investing beginners than most of the traditionally published personal finance books found in bookstores. The author follows the sage advice of portfolio construction of Jack Bogle and the investment company he founded in 1974, Vanguard Group. I highly recommend this book. It’s an easy read and gets right to the point.

2nd Quarter 2016 Portfolio Returns

Leave a Comment / Beginning Investing, Do it yourself investors (DIY), Financial Education/Literacy, PreK-12 Educators / By

It’s that time of the year, the Quarterly Reports. I really hope you find these reports helpful for a number of reasons:
1. Show you how a portfolio of diversified stocks, bonds, and cash looks like.

2. Show how this diversified portfolio performs in coordination with the stock and bond markets.

3. The individual holdings are not selected at random, but for the purpose of doing a specific and important job in the portfolio. It’s always about the portfolio as a whole performing package, not about the individual holdings.

4. Each holding reflects a specific part of the domestic and international stock and bond markets.

5. While some of the stock asset classes have high correlations, stock and bond allocations are not. Including bonds in my portfolio helps preserve my money against a major and lengthy stock market crash. This is known as the stock bond split. My portfolio is 30% stocks and 70% bonds. My 30% exposure to stocks provides enough risk that my portfolio should keep up with inflation (This is not a guarantee, it is part of my diversification and asset allocation plan).

6. This portfolio is an example of a conservative portfolio for a 69-year-old retiree.

Conversation with a Fee-Only Fiduciary

Leave a Comment / Fee Only Fiduciary Financial Advisors, Fiduciary Standard, Financial Education/Literacy / By

The blog post will go help you recognise on-the-spot a fee-only fiduciary financial adviser. It is my vision of what a conversation might look like between a client and an adviser who genuinely looks out for your best interests. If you read this blog post you will be doing yourself a great favor and reducing your anxiety about your success of finding a financial adviser that is genuinely helpful, knowledgeable, a good listener and is competent and confident enough to teach clients to feel confident in their decisions.

Book Review: Trusting Financial Advisers

Leave a Comment / Consumer Finance, Fee Only Fiduciary Financial Advisors, Financial Education/Literacy / By

Here we go again. That five letter word T-R-U-S-T leads directly to our emotions. Who can we trust with our investments? How do we know that a fee-only financial adviser is trustworthy? In my previous blog post (Trust and Investing), John Bogle wrote that the only thing you can trust is that the economies of the entire planet will grow over time. As a do-it-yourself investor, you can eliminate trusting an adviser. I thought I will take up this topic again through a book review because many of you want help, and there are trustworthy fee-only advisers. This book might provide clues by the language which reflect trust that these advisers use.

According to the authors, you are not the only one who might not trust an adviser again. Most Americans are still reeling over the 2008 stock market crash. Because of 2008, trusting a financial adviser and the industry has radically changed according to the authors. They wrote: “The roots of negative selling run deep. It has a long history of success. But our culture has changed, and negative selling is no longer consistent with who we are as consumers…Yet salespeople still often find themselves in that gray area between creating fear and illustrating a need-which in turn costs them sales.”

While the book’s primary audience is for the financial professional, my review might help you gain confidence on how to evaluate a potential adviser. Remember, you are interviewing potential advisers, not the other way around. My review of this book addresses the trust problem head-on and it’s for people who are looking for a trustworthy financial adviser.

Investment Workshop Evaluation Results

10 Comments / Beginning Investing, Financial Education/Literacy, LAUSD Employees, PreK-12 Educators, Retirement Planning / By

Every time we offer one of these rare investment workshops, the workshop participants always comment that they want “more of the same.” Only two per year can be provided because of costs. UTLA and LAUSD do not fund these workshops. To their benefit, UTLA does provide the room, and Eva for paperwork and logistical support, and we thank UTLA for that support. On the other hand, LAUSD has rejected support for these workshops for years. We need to inform the Board of Education that financial literacy education is a significant benefit for their employees. If more employees knew of the district’s Award Winning 457(b) plan, more educators would save money for retirement and in the long term would save the district money.

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