Today we will be talking about a personal favorite topic of mine – The Golden Goose Endgame. What is the “Golden Goose Endgame” So what are we talking about when we say the golden goose endgame? Well this title is a combination of words – Golden Goose refers to the popular children’s fable story of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goose_that_Laid_the_Golden_Eggs in which a farming family obtains a goose that could lay golden eggs. Unfortunately, most of these stories end with the family not realizing what a valuable asset they have and they end up killing the golden goose. In this blog p ..read more

Wow, based on our shocking research into the current housing market, we found that you are at the losing end of the wealth building spectrum just by buying a standard house. We will be testing the common phrases of “Real Estate is the best investment you will ever make” “Renting is throwing your money away” “Might as well pay yourself through forced investing with home ownership” This topic may be shocking to some people as it was to us here at PFE – To test the home ownership vs renting debate, we have crunched the numbers on purchasing a house vs renting and included all the up front costs ..read more

In today’s topic, we are going to dive into the stock market itself, both why you should love and (simultaneously) hate it altogether. Let’s dive into the reasons why the stock market is both a friend and a foe at times. What is the Stock Market If we look into the stock market itself, we first should know exactly what it is we are discussing. The traditional definition of the stock market shows the following. The stock market refers to the collection of markets and exchanges where regular activities of buying, selling, and issuance of shares of publicly-held companies take place. Such financ ..read more

In light of the recent volatile market action, it’s time to visit a personal finance saying of “Elevator down, stairs up” that we are hearing more and more. So in this posting, let’s explore the meaning of this saying, see if we can apply this to personal finance? So what exactly is “Elevator down, stairs up” and what does it mean? Well in simple terms, it relates to the way the market reacts during periods of instability and the typical way it drops and raises back up. Alternately, it can be used to describe an investing philosophy as well. Let’s explore these further. Market Instability – E ..read more

Welcome back, today we are going to discuss the financial concept of knowing yourself – Immediately, this may be confusing to some as it differs from traditional personal finance thinking but stick with us. So, what do we mean by knowing yourself in regard to personal finance? Well, there are significant implications if you are interested in learning more. If we take a couple of minutes to reflect on how we are doing, the results can be immediately self evident. For example, are you reaching your current goals when it comes to money, career, and life in general? If yes, congratulations and we ..read more

Today we are going to talk about what happed in 2020 vs 2021 – We will not be discussing the COVID-19 situation, rather what happened to investments year over year? So, let’s do a retrospective look at Mar 2021 vs Mar 2020. To begin our review, let’s rewind to Mar 2, 2020 – At the time, we posted a popular article Investment Losses – Do you need a market “shock absorber” Disaster Strikes – Mar 2020 If we look back at week of Feb 28, 2020, we saw a 5 day change of -12.36% in the Dow Jones and the pain was only starting. Based on the global pandemic and lock down efforts, we saw a significant d ..read more

Today, lets dive into talking about being successful. Specifically around defining success – What is it?, What defines success? How do you measure success? How do you define success? Today, lets dive into talking about being successful. Specifically around defining success – What is it?, What defines success? How do you measure success? First let’s start with the definition of success – The dictionary defines success as “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose” or “a person or thing that achieves desired aims or attains prosperity”. We think that the second definition best meets the needs of ..read more

Today we will touch on the different lifestyles of personal finance. Another way to phrase this topic, what type of personal finance lifestyle do you lead? Do you know there are multiple lifestyles? First Lifestyle – Optimizer The first lifestyle we will discuss today is the “Optimizer” – So what exactly do we mean by the optimizer? The goal with this lifestyle is to get the most efficient or effective use of the funds or money available. Here are a few characteristics of the Optimizer lifestyle: detailed oriented, value oriented and concerned about money. The optimizer lifestyle is those ind ..read more