She is off to a good start, … and with savings discipline, she has a good chance of achieving her goals.

I won’t even begin to work with a client until they have completed a letter of intent, which deals with your hopes and dreams for the child, … I tell the mom, who is often...

Considering that she started saving three years ago, she has done well, … I applaud her choice to put more emphasis on quality of life and her lack of debt.

It’s going to boil down to who lets him run track. He asked me once if anybody has ever won the Heisman Trophy and an Olympic gold medal.

It’s not easy, the money only goes so far,

It’s difficult for some military personnel after five or six years who may be married, have kids and other financial obligations, … If they haven’t banked some on the side, it’s tough.

He needs to maximize his savings for his own retirement as well as his daughter’s education, yet his debt is absorbing 43 percent of his monthly income.

They hadn’t even gotten their first paychecks yet, … My biggest thing was giving them a sense of reality and what costs would be. We outlined costs and a budget, and by the time we...

You have to remember to tell all your relatives not to pass money on under the child’s name, … Anyone can blow up your plan.

The bump up to $5,000 for IRAs is huge, … It will have a big impact in retirement savings.

Even for middle-income and upper middle-income clients, when I tell them they are looking at sometimes half a million dollars or more they’ll need to leave behind, they usually say they don’t have it,

I have gotten everything from a one-page letter written in pencil to a 50-page computer generated masterpiece,

quality funds in a well-diversified portfolio that earned 9.3 percent (all accounts) in the last 12 months, whereas the S&P 500 lost 14.8 percent.

Therefore, a portfolio with 10 or even 15 funds is not uncommon.

It was a typical Brandon day.

If he saves a total of $15,000 per year, assuming an 8 percent rate of return, he should have more than $1 million by the time he’s 65, or even more if he can earn...

Financial freedom is so intertwined with what a person wants to achieve in life. It doesn’t necessarily mean never having to work again, but instead has more to do with realizing your own dreams.

Saving $2,000 annually in an Education IRA (starting in 2002) or a college savings plan (529 plan) earning 8 percent should provide the needed money. The Education IRA has the most flexibility since the new...

There’s lots of deer,