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December 17, 2013 in Charitable Giving, Financial Life Planning, Gratitude, Mindful living
In our last post, we covered an important part of philanthropy: ensuring that your gifts bring joy to you and your intended recipients in equal measure. Meaningful giving is an admittedly qualitative, “Venus” measure of success. Today, we’ll visit “Mars,” where we explore some of the more quantitative components of your philanthropic plans: Effective Giving – How do you assess potential charitable organizations you’ve identified to ensure they will make good...

December 10, 2013 in Charitable Giving, Financial Life Planning, Gratitude, Mindful living
Earlier this year, we covered how charitable giving can be a win-win activity, bringing as much happiness to the donor as to the recipient. We believe this is true whether you’re giving gifts to loved ones or fulfilling philanthropic goals. But especially for the latter, the giving is best done intentionally as part of your greater financial life planning: Meaningful Giving – First and foremost, does the giving bring you joy? Effective...

June 19, 2013 in Financial Life Planning, Mindful living, SAGE Reads
Warren Buffett has admitted to it, as has his business partner Charlie Munger. Others reportedly under the influence include presidents Obama and Clinton; Madonna; Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien; and, of course, Oprah.[1] I too am hooked. We can’t help ourselves. We can’t stop reading. Thankfully, there is plenty of evidence that the more you read, the better you get. (If only chocolate worked that way too!) In his Farnam Street...

May 15, 2013 in Financial Life Planning, Mindful living, Retirement Planning
When surfing the web on your laptop, your browser has a “refresh” button, in case you want to ensure you’re seeing the most up-to-date version of whatever you’re viewing. When we were redesigning our website last year, I used that function a lot! I wish I could provide America with a refresh button, to revisit how we collectively view retirement. Too many investors are still conducting their financial planning in...

April 24, 2013 in Charitable Giving, Financial Life Planning, Gratitude, Mindful living
In the past few weeks, I’ve dedicated our SAGE blog to four streams of consciousness that combine to serve as the undercurrent, or the “life” portion, of financial LIFE planning: Gratitude Meditation Spending time with your tribe Giving I’ve intentionally saved Giving as the best for last. If you want happiness for an hour — take a nap. If you want happiness for a day — go fishing. If you want happiness for a year — inherit a...

April 17, 2013 in Financial Life Planning, Gratitude, Mindful living
Have you caught this two-minute YouTube video that’s been making its way around the social media channels lately, “Cat-Friend vs. Dog-Friend”? Be forewarned, it’s edgy. Huffington Post describes it as “tastefully offensive,” a combination I’m still pondering. Either way, last I checked, it’s nearing a billion hits, and counting. Besides offering a laugh, it provides a lead-in to this week’s discussion on the importance of spending time with friends and family....

April 10, 2013 in Financial Life Planning, Gratitude, Mindful living
If you ask me, I don’t think it’s coincidence that “meditation” and “medication” are but one consonant apart. As introduced in my last post, academic research indicates that a few minutes of daily meditation yields countless physical and emotional benefits … without any of the usual fine-print, like: “Do not drive or operate heavy machinery after taking meditation.” Once the purview of those who sprinkled their conversations with “groovy” and smelled...

April 3, 2013 in Financial Life Planning, Gratitude, Mindful living
At SAGE Advisory Group (now SAGEbroadview Financial Planning effective 1/1/2014), among our key messages on our website home page and in our practice is: Financial planning is about resolving life’s complexities – not expanding on them. It’s one reason we call it Financial LIFE Planning. Those who know me, know that I experienced my own challenging life lesson when my family and I were in a serious car accident in 2008....