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Phone: 706-353-2728
Email: info@elevate-wealth.com
Cash or Bonds?
As unique asset classes, cash and bonds have some similarities but occupy different spaces within your portfolio. While bonds historically have provided higher returns than cash, today’s interest rate structure is unusual and may impact the conventional wisdom with regard to the optimal balance between cash and bonds in a portfolio. How should investors approach […]
Will Stock Returns Always be this High?
US stock market performance was exceptionally strong in the last decade. For the ten-year period ending June 30, 2023, the S&P 500 index returned 235% which is almost 12.9% per year. This is well beyond the long run average annual return of about 10% since 1926 and much higher than the 5.1% annual returns in […]
Are You Maximizing Your HSA?
When it comes to confusing lexicons, the finance industry must be one of the worst offenders. As one example, just consider the types of investment accounts available to savers: there are IRAs, Roth IRAs, 401(k)s, 403(b)s, 457s, 529s, TOD INDs, SEPs, SIMPLEs, UTMAs… and there are many more. Fortunately, nearly all of these accounts can […]
De-dollarization and Your Portfolio
If you follow the financial media closely (not recommended!), you’ve probably heard at least one pundit declare that the United States is about to lose its “reserve currency” status at any moment. And once it’s gone, the warning continues, a long parade of horribles will soon follow. Taken to an extreme, the endgame is the […]
Lingering Pandemic Distortions
If financial markets feel a bit more unsettled to you than usual these days, you’re not wrong. Volatility is elevated in the stock market and unusually high in the bond market. Uncertainty is normal, of course, when it comes to investing, but it does seem that investors have a lot on their plates to digest […]
Keep Your Eyes on the Prize
At Elevate, we know that investments are one of the core components of a well-designed, comprehensive financial plan. Investments play a crucial role; there to protect and grow your wealth, as well as to effectively transfer resources across time to fund future financial goals. Given that everyone aims for a successful investment experience, how should […]
SECURE Act 2.0: Something for Everyone
In the final week of 2022, Congress passed a large omnibus spending package which included a multitude of changes affecting tax and retirement planning. Dubbed “SECURE Act 2.0,” the new bill revises and updates many of the items in the original SECURE Act of 2019, but also introduces several new measures that will impact employers, […]
Our Team’s Favorite Finance Books
What do pundits on the news, analysts on the web, and physics around the corner all have in common? Simple! They all think they understand the market and hold the keys to financial success, or better yet, have just the book to recommend for you to find out for yourself. With thousands of finance books […]
This is Not a Prediction
At the beginning of every new year, market forecasts about the year to come start arriving from all corners of the internet. This in itself is unsurprising; a large number of market professionals are in the “prediction business” and are paid to make forecasts about future market prices and the economy. This year is no […]
The Hidden Bull Market of 2022
It’s not easy to find a bull market in much of anything this year. 2022 has been an unusually challenging year for nearly all asset classes, including stocks, bonds, and real estate. Poor bond market performance stands out in particular – a result of high inflation and sharply rising interest rates that led to equity-like […]
What is the Yield Curve Telling Us?
Here at Elevate Wealth Advisory, one of the core beliefs of our investment philosophy is that market prices contain information. The information largely relates to expected returns across asset classes, but sometimes we can extract other signals from market prices, as well. This month we’ll try to unpack what the world’s largest bond market (U.S. […]
Are Commodities a Good Investment?
Higher food and energy prices are getting a lot of attention this year and have impacted consumer budgets in the U.S. and across the world. Investors have focused on the rise in basic material costs, as well, especially in light of the declines we’ve experienced in stocks, bonds, and real estate. In fact, many commodity […]
What to Do With an Extra $1,000
Where to save your next dollar is one of the most common questions posed to financial advisers. And if you’re a saver with some extra cash, you already know that there is no shortage of options to consider. Should you pay down loan balances? Add to your emergency cash savings? Make a contribution to a […]
Things to Do in a Down Market
As any investor could tell you, the markets are off to a rough start in 2022. Both stock and bond markets are facing an unusual number of headwinds these days, including high inflation, rising interest rates, snarled supply chains, a lingering global pandemic, the war in Ukraine, disruptions in food and energy production, and very […]
How to Think About Cryptocurrency
By now, most people have heard about bitcoin, and many investors would be able to correctly identify bitcoin as one of many “cryptocurrencies” that circulate today. A full description of bitcoin, the blockchain, and the universe of other crypto tokens is well beyond the scope of this article, but for a short primer I would […]
Resilient Investing: Lessons from Behavioral Finance
Are you a resilient investor? Do you take market volatility in stride, or are you tempted to react when things get challenging? Our financial advisors have learned first-hand that resilient Investors do these three things before making any important money decision: Check assumptions Check thinking Check emotions Most people aren’t rational when it comes to […]
Are You Keeping Up with Inflation?
After many years of relatively stable prices, the sudden return of inflation in the U.S. became a key market theme in 2021. The latest Consumer Price Index data released on February 10, which showed that the annual rate of inflation reached 7.5% in January, indicated that it will likely remain a big story this year, […]
Join Our Retirement Planning Today Course
Elevate Wealth Advisory is pleased to present Retirement Planning Today, a two-day workshop held twice in February.Taught by Clark Brown, a practice leader at Elevate Wealth Advisory in Athens, Georgia, Retirement Planning Today is designed to teach you how to build wealth and align your money with your values to accomplish your goals in life. Whether you […]
Subscribe to Our WealthWise Video Series
Our team has been hard at work writing and filming content for our new weekly YouTube video series: WealthWise. WealthWise brings insightful, actionable financial advice to help clients stay on the right path toward meeting their life goals. Subscribing to our YouTube channel is easy! From Your Desktop: Go to youtube.com Log in or create […]
How to Choose Between a Pension and a 403(b)
When my wife first joined the faculty at the University of Georgia in 2006, she was given a large stack of paperwork to fill out. Buried among the several documents was perhaps the most consequential one for our finances and this related to her retirement benefits. The form required her to choose between enrolling in […]
Sticking to Your Plan is the Straightest Path to Reaching Goals
The year 2021 was a banner year for investors. The broad-based S&P 500 Index, which is made up of 500 larger U.S. companies, finished the year up 26.9%. If we included reinvested dividends, the index advanced 28.7%, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. Table 1: Key Index Returns Much better-than-expected corporate profits (Refinitiv), which were […]
7 Steps to Achieving New Year’s Resolutions
The new year is the perfect break in the calendar that allows us to take off the old and put on the new. It’s like turning the page. It’s a new chapter. It’s a new book! You can’t change the past, but you can change the future. One way we can make a change is […]
Last Minute Tips for Year End Planning
Welcome to December! There may be just a few weeks left in 2021, but it’s not too late to make some smart money moves before the end of the year. Here’s a list of last-minute tips and recommendations to help you navigate around year-end planning: Age Milestones One of the first things you should do […]
Are Exchange-Traded Funds the Future of Personal Investing?
The investment management business is a highly competitive industry that changes, adapts, and evolves over time. Over the years, individual investors have benefitted tremendously from many of these changes. We see trading commissions have declined toward zero, management fees and mutual funds expenses have been reduced sharply, and access to up-to-the minute market information is […]
