Our personal story highlights the value of working with an independent agent - not from any one product provider – so we could find the best insurance solutions. Being beholden to one company is not always in your best interest.

If you’re a high-earning professional, there can be complicated gaps lurking in your policies’ fine print, exposing you to dangerous risks. Successful families are well-advised to ensure that the excess liability coverage they think they’ve got is actually optimized for their unique needs.

Understanding how income and wealth impact happiness plays an important role in retirement planning. It helps determine both your need to save and how much risk you need to take (how much you need to allocate to risky assets).

Love the recognition that my friend, colleague and mentor Larry Swedroe received this month in Investment Advisor magazine. He truly is a warrior for spreading the necessary and good word of how investors can overcome the stresses of Wall Street’s improprieties and challenges.

At the end of the day, it’s not as much about the money as it is about what your wealth is worth to you. In financial terms, what your money is worth to you is referred to as your marginal utility of your wealth – i.e., not whether additional wealth might be achieved, but whether it needs to be. Would additional wealth impact the quality of your life in a meaningful way?

You wouldn’t leave your spare tire in the garage because you’ve never needed it before. You haven’t overlooked the importance of automobile insurance or life insurance. And yet all too often, attorneys and other individuals in high-profile or higher-risk professions fail to protect against the possibility that their careers could well experience a proverbial “flat.”