Read Doug’s articles originally printed in The Jerusalem Post.
Profile Perspectives
Proper financial planning can change your relationship with money.
4 Qualities to Look for in Choosing Money Managers
Your financial advisor/broker can help you with portfolio planning and carrying out the actual investing. He can suggest suitable purchases, but he cannot follow each and every client’s financial holdings on a daily basis.
That is where a money manager comes in. Financial planners encourage clients to hire a money management team to focus on their portfolios…. Read more
Investing Strategies 101: Buy and Hold
One of the main keys to successful investing is strategy. In the financial world, there are various approaches and strategies for handling your money, and it’s always a good idea to research them to find out whether they could be useful to you.
Over the next three weeks, I will explain the nature of different investment strategies and how they work…. Read more
5 Tips to Following Your Financial Plan
Making a financial plan is about a lot more than juggling annual returns, budgets, and anticipated income and expenses. It is a detailed snapshot of your cash flow as well as your goals, and what you are willing to compromise to achieve them.
Here are five tips to help you create and maintain your financial plan:
Avoid unrealistic expectations.… Read more
Do You Need an Emergency Fund?
Financial advisors suggest maintaining an emergency savings fund ranging from three to six months of non-discretionary expenses. Having a set amount set aside for emergencies protects your retirement savings, and helps you avoid going into serious debt when a fiscal crisis occurs. While it may be emotionally difficult to keep money in a liquid (read: not high-yielding account),… Read more
How Much it Will Cost You to Get Another Passport
Investors seeking growth and tax-advantageous investments often look to investing in a foreign country. While this is commonly done with foreign stocks or global mutual funds, there is an unusual trend in foreign investments among the world’s ultra-wealthy…moving to a foreign country.
Countries want wealthy new residents who will invest in their economies and hopefully create jobs…. Read more
Make Your Retirement Dream Lifestyle a Reality
Many aspects of retirement planning are based upon actuarial charts and life expectancy calculators that tell you how long the average person lives. It’s difficult to plan for a phase of your life based on an assumption that may or may not actualize. Even if the statistics were correct, they don’t take into account the chances of something unforeseen happening that may alter original projections…. Read more
A Free Tool for Making Better Investment Decisions
What’s missing when a motivational speaker tells you to visualize your goals? What’s missing is the “how”! People (hopefully) know about the importance of goal setting, but in fact, it’s much easier said than done. I’ve created an online tool that will help you make and achieve your goals…. Read more
How Chess Can Make You a Better Investor
How can chess, a game, help someone become a better investor?
The kind of thinking involved in winning a chess game is also extremely useful for many other aspects of life, including planning your finances. This is because both winning at chess and financial planning require tactical skills and similar behaviors…. Read more
The Retirement Budget
During your working years and “accumulation stage,” your salary helped define the size of your budget. But now, in retirement, with pensions replacing portions of your paycheck and the difference needed to be taken out of savings, your budget may need to be revised.
Meeting basic needs
Focus your attention on meeting the non-discretionary necessities of life…. Read more
Don’t Make These 4 Mistakes When Planning Your Retirement
As a CFP® professional who helps people handle their U.S. brokerage accounts from Israel, I’ve noticed four recurring mistakes people tend to make:
Over-diversifying
Diversification is an excellent financial strategy because it means that you are not relying on a single income stream. However, too much diversification can make it difficult to keep track of all of the different investments…. Read more