The P&A Blog
2019 – 1st Quarter Letter – Spending dividends vs capital gains
The latest P&A quarterly letter to clients is available in PDF form. You can download it here. This letter covers the difference between spending dividend income and realizing capital gains to create needed income. Dividends are taxed at higher rates than...
Sensationalism & The Small Investor
The next several months, we will take a trip down Memory Lane by sharing articles—actually, white papers—authored by Pitt. The first is called “Sensationalism & The Small Investor,” which went to print in October 1988. Even though this paper is 30 years old, you...
Lottery-winning advice
Congratulations! You are one in 292 million. When you first saw the winning numbers, you no doubt did a triple or quadruple take. Maybe you rubbed your eyes as your heart began to race. Maybe you got down on your knees and looked to the heavens, arms...
Flipping the switch
Last month, we received an email from a client who had just returned to the U.S. after an overseas trip. She wanted to thank us for encouraging her to go and admitted, if we hadn’t nudged her, she would have missed out on the trip of a lifetime. Needing a nudge isn’t...
Disney World and the Investing World
I recently undertook the time-honored tradition of the family vacation to Walt Disney World. Despite the stories you often hear about long lines and cranky kids, we had a fantastic time. After being home for a couple of days and reliving some of the highlights of...
Four parallels between golf and investing
Looking to lower your handicap and raise your net worth? The game of golf has many parallels to investing. If you can master the four elements below, you’ll see a marked improvement not only on the golf course but also on your road to financial independence. Who’s...
My ‘SART’ goal
Last October, I had lunch with a friend. During our conversation, he asked me a question and I should have known the answer, but didn’t. I confessed to him that the answer lived in my phone. Then it hit me: I think my smartphone is making me dumber!* When I was a...
A good chance they will be around for a while
I can remember sitting next to a college friend of mine in a golf cart circa 2011 when we had a question on a golf ruling. Without hesitation, he pulled out his iPhone to look up the answer--which he found, of course, in a matter of seconds. At that time, even four...
What are investable assets?
When looking to hire an investment or financial advisor, you might run across the term "investable assets." We define this term as the investment dollars we're able to manage for you and that count toward our minimum account size. For our firm, investable assets...
2018 – 4th Quarter Letter – Behold
The latest P&A quarterly letter to clients is available in PDF form. You can download it here. Topics include cashology (the study of earning, saving, & investing money), compound interest, the Rule of 72, investment risk, & the DOL fiduciary rule.
Loss trading
In a recent devotional I read, the writer started with “Life is a series of battles and blessings, battles and blessings, battles and blessings, battles and blessings, battles and blessings…”. He extended this out for a few more written lines, and the point he made...
Points and percentages
December was a wild ride for the stock market. CNBC, the financial infotainment network, was in heaven. So many BREAKING NEWS opportunities! Of the 21 trading days in December, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained or lost more than 250 points on 12 of these...
How we invest our own money
When searching for a financial or investment advisor, it’s important to ask the right questions and to listen for the right answers. Beyond some of the obvious questions (How are you compensated? What services do you provide? Do you work with people like me?),...
Seven ways we have helped our clients
We view ourselves as a financial advocate for our clients. Those of you who have been our clients for any length of time know we do a lot more than manage investments. Here are seven ways we have helped our clients in the last month. Medicare/SHIIP – Diane and...
Do you believe what we believe?
Over the years, we have found that working with people whose beliefs match our own leads to a greater degree of success for both parties. We believe in: Emphasizing people over profits. Building authentic relationships. Working together as a team for our clients....
Leveraging technology to increase transparency & trust
As of October 2018, we manage over $1.5 billion in assets for 600 clients from 29 U.S. states with a full-time staff of 12 people. To operate this efficiently, we lean heavily on technology. The result is increased transparency and a deeper level of trust with our...
The fee-only & fiduciary difference
Financial advisors largely fall into one of two categories: those who sell products and those who do not. In industry parlance, advisors who do not sell products are fee-only and those who do sell products are fee-based. While their names are similar, their business...
Ka-Boom
My Dad is a pilot, and a good one at that. He started the learning process back in the late 80s, motivated to find a quicker way to get to our summer cabin in Northern Minnesota (in an effort to avoid the 4 hours of commercial connections from Lincoln – Minneapolis –...
