Free From Broke

A Personal Finance Blog for Regular Folks

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How to Find the Best Financial Planner – 10 Qualities to Look For

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We all know how important planning our finances is.

It’s just not enough to obtain money and put it away in the bank while it earns minimal interest.

Investing is the smart way of making your money earn more money for you, but most people just don’t have the time to learn about all the investment vehicles that are available.

To solve this problem, this is where financial planners come into play.  Planners analyze your financial situation and, if you can find a good one, they can help you achieve your financial goals through the proper usage and management of your money.

The challenge now is, how can you find a reliable financial planner that will truly grow your money?

Below are 10 characteristic traits that you should look for in a financial planner during the hiring process:

[Read more…] about How to Find the Best Financial Planner – 10 Qualities to Look For

What is Market Timing and Does it Work?

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If you invest in the stock market, you might be pretty frustrated by the huge swings you’ve been experiencing on a daily basis.

That’s especially true if you’re trying to amass enough money to retire one day.  In an effort to mute those terrifying swings you might be interested in alternatives.

One of those alternatives is timing your investments.

But just what is market timing?

[Read more…] about What is Market Timing and Does it Work?

Don’t Get Too Hung Up on the Value Investing vs. Growth Investing Debate

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If you go by the conventional wisdom, investors come in two varieties.

On one hand, you have investors who ply their trade in the belief that the past performance of a stock has clues to its future performance.  Technical investing, as it is commonly known, depends much on behavioral aspects of investing, with stock charts being the main tools of the trade.

On the other hand, you have investors who believe that investing success lies in researching the business of the company on a fundamental level, and digging deep into a business? ability to generate profits over a long term.

Fundamental investing is further divided into growth investing and value investing.

Traditional media, and indeed a surfeit of financial publications, both online and offline, take pains to point out the differences between the value investing and growth investing approach.

But at the root, all investing is value investing.

To understand this, we need to go back to the basic principles of fundamental investing. [Read more…] about Don’t Get Too Hung Up on the Value Investing vs. Growth Investing Debate

The New American Family: Flexibility and Unconventional Lifestyles to Make Ends Meet

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The following was written by my wife, Mrs. Craig.  She was kind enough to share her take on our current lifestyle.  We changed things up in our household  a couple of years ago…I’ll let my wife tell the story.

The last time I wrote a story for this site was almost 3 years ago.   Much has happened since then!  I wrote a narrative about my decision to take a leave of absence from my job, as a school counselor, to stay home and raise my 1 and half year old son and 8 yr old daughter.

[Glen: here’s the article – A Mother’s Struggle Between Work And Kids]

Many events have taken place since I shared that story with you.  It was an account of a working mother who became a stay-at-home mom.  The story changed as you will see below.

Life as a Stay-at-Home Mom

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How to Change Your Stock Allocation for Value Informed Indexing in Response to Valuation Shifts

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I explained in an earlier article here (“A Better and Less Risky Way to Invest in Stocks”) why you need to take into consideration the price at which stocks are selling when setting your stock allocation.  Stocks offer lower returns and greater risk when purchased at high prices.  So those who go with higher stock allocations when stocks are cheap and with lower stock allocations when stocks are overpriced can expect to be able to retire five to ten years sooner than those who follow Buy-and-Hold strategies, according to the academic research of the past 30 years.

The purpose of this follow-up article is to offer guidance on how to know when to change your stock allocation and by how much.  I suggest a four-step process: [Read more…] about How to Change Your Stock Allocation for Value Informed Indexing in Response to Valuation Shifts