Excel in Retirement

Investment advisory services offered through CreativeOne Wealth, LLC. Clients Excel, LLC and CreativeOne Wealth are not affiliated companies. Licensed Insurance Professionals. Investing involves risk, including potential loss of principal. Any references to protection or lifetime income generally refer to fixed insurance products, never securities or investments. Insurance guarantees are backed by the financial strength and claims ...

Experts from the show:

A couple weeks Jerome Powell, the head of the Federal Reserve, stated the time has come to lower interest rates. The goal has been to lower the cost of everyday items we use while not plunging the economy into a recession. Talk about trying to walk on a tightrope over the Grand Canyon.

Believe it or not there’s even a fear and greed index that gauges which sentiment is most applicable at the...

Investment advisory services offered through CreativeOne Wealth, LLC. Clients Excel, LLC and CreativeOne Wealth are not affiliated companies. Licensed Insurance Professionals. Investing involves risk, including potential loss of principal. Any references to protection or lifetime income generally refer to fixed insurance products, never securities or investments. Insurance guarantees are backed by the financial strength and claims ...

I’m reading a book titled Think Ahead by Craig Groeschel, and one of the premises of the book is to pre-decide how we will react in given circumstances. My first thought was this would be a great book for teenagers to read. Planning beforehand for the outcome we know to be right is better than waiting until we’re under stress to think through what we should do. Under stress we may make bad decisions.

One of the reasons Gro...

People come to us for financial planning at different stages of life. Most of our clients are closing in on retirement or they’re in retirement, but that can be a 10- to 15-year window of when people generally become a client of our firm. I’ve gotten a bird’s-eye view into what works well and what doesn’t.

We normally recommend that people begin working on their financial plans for retirement when they are five years out from retire...

David starts out with a story about his recent vacation to Hilton Head Island with his family. Then he gets into some practical steps that can help you make good decisions. 

Today, I have a few practical things that sometime inhibit us from making the best decisions. When it comes to personal finances this is super applicable because we need to get our financial planning right!

I just finished reading a book called The Rich...

Another unique position we have as a company is to be able to offer solutions larger corporatized offices often do not have the ability to do. We all know the bigger things tend to get, the slower they are to innovate. Maybe it’s the bureaucracy or protocols or hierarchies, but whatever it is, when we have to deal with it it’s normally painful.

As an independent financial advisory firm, we don’t have layers and layers of corporate e...

Connect with David at hello@clientsexcel.com or call 864.641.7955.

Marty and Jess Ansen loved going on cruises so much they opted to cruise indefinitely. I came across an article that said, A retired couple have been living on back-to-back cruises for two years, and claim it's 'cheaper' than if they stayed in a nursing home in their retirement years. Hopefully you’re not feeling our inflation problem quite ...

Last week the Federal Reserve board who determines if rates will rise or fall or remain met and determined that they were going to leave rates unchanged for the time being. The board is always vague about what comes next for rates, so it’s to be determined if rates decrease later this year. 

To many conservative investors this rate environment feels like they’ve walked into a perfect situation, because our rates we earn on cash is e...

David tells a funny story about having mice. Here is the link to the newsletter he mentioned.

Excerpt from the show: The hurdle that some people have is taking the next step. They reached out for help, issues have been identified, a plan of action to better the circumstances has been presented, but we sometimes worry about what comes next.

I’ll tell you, it took hours to get the garage in order and the better part of a day...

It's easy when we face something we’re not familiar with to shy away from it or move on to a topic we’re more comfortable with. Recently I saw on social media a way to understand our national debt better. This was written on May 20th:

·      “A million seconds ago was May 8th.

·      A billion seconds ago was 1993.

·      A trillion seconds ago was 30,000 B.C.

·      The US national debt is now rising by $1 Trillion every 100 days...

You’ve probably heard by now that Silicon Valley Bank failed last Friday. 

It appears the bank rapidly took deposits over the last few years, and they needed somewhere to place their funds. And here begins the problem. The bank put money in Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities. When interest rates go up, bonds lose value.

A few depositors figured this out and began withdrawing their large deposits in the ...

Like a lot of people, I’ve always had a job where I work with people, and it’s always fascinated me to try to figure out why people think the way they do. People are unique, but their themes are similar.

In my role as a financial planner, I primarily assist Baby Boomers who are navigating how to retire. Or that’s often when we were first acquainted. In our initial meeting I always ask, “How are you feeling about the stock market?” Y...

With inflation at 40-year highs some seniors feel this year’s big cost of living increase in Social Security is falling short. Yahoo Finance had an article last week that said, “According to a new survey by the Senior Citizens League, 54% of older Americans think the 8.7% increase in the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) this year won't keep up with inflation.”

What’s troubling is that the government’s rapid inte...

When we age into the time we can claim Social Security the temptation is strong to get the money as soon as we can. In fact, most people claim as soon as they can at 62. I get it. I love having extra money in my pocket, but it’s important to understand that we may be giving up quite a bit of money.

The Wall Street Journal had an article last Sunday about this topic. It said, “A recent study, funded by the Federal Reserve B...

Did you ever read Sherlock Holmes? In the 1894 story entitled “The Adventure of Silver Blaze” Holmes noticed something odd when he was attempting to solve the mystery.

Holmes said, “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time” and the detail that the dog did not bark or make a commotion during the commission of the crime. Holmes concluded that the suspect must be someone the dog knew because the dog didn’t stir. If someone is ...

The media and the government have gotten creative with answering whether we are in a recession or not in order to make our economic situation better than reality. The traditional definition of a recession is being redefined. Historically, the definition of a recession has been two negative quarters of growth in the gross domestic production. In the first quarter of this year the GDP declined -1.16% and at the end of June the second...