Fly Away Princess
I sat down today to write about investment property. I have a post half finished, full of numbers and insight and the kind of thing I usually love to work through. I tried hard but could not get through it.…
The Beginner’s Guide to Building Wealth
Introduction Most people think building wealth is out of reach—and because of that, most people don’t think about it at all. That mindset is a big reason why so many people live paycheck to paycheck. This beginner’s guide to building…
Blessings Come From the Worst of Times
Welcome to the Inspiration side of this site. I shared the short version of my story in the ABOUT section. I am 58 years old so there are a lot of stories to my life but this story is THE…
Weekly Notes — August 29, 2026
Why Nvidia fell and then rose an hour later Nvidia earnings came out Wednesday afternoon, after the market closed. The numbers were good. Sales were $96.2 billion, more than double what they were a year ago, and higher than what…
Accessible Wealth vs. Retirement Accounts: When You Can Use the Money, and What It Costs to Use It
Most retirement advice is about one thing: how much to save. Save more. Contribute more. Get the match. All of that is sound and good advice and things I talk about on this site. But it addresses only half of…
When Should You Actually Take Social Security?
The question people ask about Social Security is how the program works. The question that actually needs answering is when should you file for benefits. That decision has three realistic answers. You can file at 62, which is the earliest…
Weekly Notes — August 22, 2026
This was the second week in a row dropping a child off to college so I did not micromanage the daily news. From a distance, things felt very extreme. Big swings. The market headed one direction, I would work a…
Weekly Notes — August 15, 2026
Not that Weekly Notes is meant to be long but I have to keep this short this week. I have been in Baton Rouge moving my daughter into LSU, and I needed to savor every remaining moment I had with…
Weekly Notes — August 8, 2026
There were no notes last Saturday. August 1st belongs to my daughter Isabella. Since she passed away 23 years ago, I have never worked on her day. Three good quarters, three different reactions I have spent a lot of time…
Isabella’s Day 2026
It has been 23 years since Isabella both entered and exited this world. Straight from the warmth and comfort of her Mom directly to the hands of God. That is what I believe. That belief is in large part how…
The Headline Is Not the Story: Three Companies, One Week
Last week I published a post on how to read an earnings release. It focused on United Airlines (Ticker UAL) and Johnson & Johnson (Ticker JNJ). This week the market provided a few more earnings releases that helped solidify some…
Weekly Notes — July 25, 2026
We have spent more time on artificial intelligence in these notes than I planned to when I started writing them. I will be honest about that. But it is what is driving the markets right now. And if I am…
How to open your first Roth IRA: a step-by-step walkthrough
A couple of my daughter Thalia’s friends asked me recently how to open a Roth IRA. They had just turned 18, they had some summer job money, and they wanted to know where to actually put it. I had not…
Weekly Notes — July 18, 2026
Short one this week. Another hard stretch on my end and I want to spend the time I have on what actually matters. I did just get a post out on How to Read an Earnings Release so check that…
How to Read an Earnings Release
Four times a year, every public company you own puts out an earnings release. Most casual investors do not really dig into the detail when this happens. They quickly see if the company beat expectations and look to see how…
How to Evaluate an Investment Property — The Honest Math
I strongly believe in utilizing investment property to supplement your income and diversify your wealth. If you do not want to be dependent on Social Security income in retirement, investment property is a great way to lessen that dependency. It…
Weekly Notes — July 11, 2026
This one is going to be a little different from usual. I want to open with something personal and let the market piece follow. It has been an unusually hard week for me at home, and honestly, showing up to…
Dear Isabella
In June of this year I wrote a letter to Thalia as she prepares to leave home for college next month. That letter is called Fly Away Princess and it is on this site. What most readers do not know…
I Believe In Angels
This post first appeared on my old blog Good Plus One in July 2011. That blog was started when my wife was diagnosed with cancer a second time. I am bringing it over here because it is a big part…
Weekly Notes — July 4, 2026
Happy Fourth of July weekend. Some quick housekeeping before we get started. The U.S. stock market was closed Friday for the Fourth of July holiday, so this week’s official close is Thursday July 2. On to the notes. I will…
Trump Accounts: Is the Money Really Tax-Free? Not the Way You Think.
I want to preface this post with a few comments: Now to the post. After reading so much about these accounts, the main question I kept coming back to is likely one you might have as well: Does the money…
Weekly Notes — June 27, 2026
Quick note before we get started. This was a very tough week personally. Some hard news on the medical front along with some other challenges. It will never compare to the bad week, weeks, months and years when Isabella passed…
Weekly Notes — June 20, 2026
Quick housekeeping note before we get started. The U.S. stock market was closed Friday for Juneteenth, so this week’s closing prices are Thursday’s. The week was four trading days long. That actually fits the story it tells. Let’s get into…
The Hardest Part of Retirement Is Spending the Money
I recently wrote about the retirement issue of having most of your wealth tied up in your home. You can read about that at House-Rich Cash-Poor in Retirement. This post is covering a different topic and I do use my…
House-Rich, Cash-Poor in Retirement
My mother owns her home outright, owns a rental property outright, and has a retirement account that I manage for her. I tell her all of the time she is a millionaire on paper. That does not matter to her…
Weekly Notes — June 13, 2026
This was a wild week. The market swung in both directions on news that mostly was not about the companies whose stocks were moving. Alphabet’s record stock issuance from last week kept teaching its lesson. And on Friday, the largest…
$1M Isn’t Enough. Let’s Build a Path.
When I was younger, “millionaire” was the finish line. It was the lofty goal. It was the word people used to mean you had made it. It showed up in game show titles, in song lyrics, in the quiet way…
Weekly Notes — June 6, 2026
This week the AI rally finally took a real punch to the gut which it does from time to time. The priced-in lesson we have discussed on this site scaled all the way up from individual stocks to the whole…
Why Your Mortgage Rate Doesn’t Move When the Fed Does
I have gotten to the office early my entire working life. First one in, every job I have ever held, because I get a lot done before the world wakes up and I have never needed much sleep. I am…
Manage Your Money Like a Business: A CFO’s Framework for Household Finance
Why Businesses Succeed and Households Struggle After more than three decades working in some type of finance role, I have come to learn what makes businesses successful — and what makes businesses fail. The companies that survive and those that…
Weekly Notes — May 30, 2026
This week the AI rally got bigger, the rules from last week kept proving themselves, and the Cerebras story I started telling last Saturday continued in a way worth watching. Three items, all connected. Let’s get into it. 1. The…
Finding Meaning in the Worst Moments
I just finished watching The Truth and Tragedy of Moriah Wilson and felt very compelled to put pen to paper. I was feeling compelled during the entire documentary, but it was the words of her mother and father at the…
