Quick: What’s the biggest source of debt in the U.S.? If you answered “mortgages,” you’d be right. But that’s almost too obvious. What comes next? Cars? No, that’s third. Credit cards? Not even close. Medical bills? Someday, maybe. It’s student loans – the bankruptcy-proof ones you can never get out of until they are all […]
If you are like most of us, you haven’t thought too deeply about your retirement savings for some number of years. With the W-4 form, you might have made a selection the day you were onboarded and haven’t given it a whole lot of attention since. You get your periodic statement from your retirement plan, […]
Let’s be honest. The field of Democratic presidential hopefuls resembles a scattershot pattern of personal brands and single-issue campaigns. Even if that weren’t demonstrably true, we could guard against charges of partisanship by conceding the same could be said of the Republican field four years ago. But there’s one contender with one message that’s worth […]
Despite all the hype about the benefits of tax reform at the federal level, wage earners across America have learned to take the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 with a grain of SALT. In this case, SALT is an acronym for “state and local taxes.” Until January 1, 2018, these were deductible, to […]
As we wind down financial literacy month, I can’t help but think about the recent Marvel release of Avengers: Endgame. Why? First, I grew up a bit of a comics nerd and am now a stalwart believer that 90s X-Men are the best of all iterations of X-Men. Second, I’ve shared the experience of the […]
The United Kingdom is leaving the European Union! Implications for global trade could be disastrous! Implications for the global financial industry could be even worse! The British government is in disarray! People are panicking! But should they? To say the U.K. has weathered worse would be so trite an understatement that even the British – […]
DALLAS—April 1, 2019—Smith Anglin Financial has been recognized as a 2019 Best Places to Work for Financial Advisers as announced by InvestmentNews today. Smith Anglin Financial was chosen as one of this year’s top-75 based on employer and employee surveys delving into everything from company culture, benefits, career paths, and more. “We work hard together. […]
In 2015, IBM signaled that 90% of all the data in the world had been created in the previous two years. While there aren’t stats for what that figure is today, surely it’s higher. At last read, one minute is all it takes for the digital world to produce 3.8 million Google searches, 448,800 tweets, […]
Utility company stocks, as you’re probably aware, are considered among Wall Street’s safest bets. In return for agreeing to be highly regulated to the point where they’re practically in the public sector, the issuers are granted monopolies from the states, which virtually guarantee them a profit. It’s a small profit, but a steady one. If […]
A November 28 headline in the New York Times gushed, “Two Words From Fed Chairman Jerome Powell Sent Markets Soaring”. Jay Powell – who likes being called Jerome about as much as Jerome Seinfeld does – noted, according to the Times, “the Fed’s benchmark interest rate was ‘just below’ the neutral level, meaning the central […]