Future Advisor: A new way to assess your finances

We are constantly asked, "what makes your company different than all of the other wealth managers/investment advisors/financial planners out there?" The answer to that is simple. We don't pretend like to know everything. We try to pull in as many outside resources, theories, and ideas as possible to give our clients the most well-rounded experience in our industry.

That said, here's a tool we recently found that helps assess your retirement prospects by aggregating a few characteristics and performing an analysis. The name of the tool is Future Advisor, and from what we've heard, it's very useful and practical for anyone wanting a quick and fairly thorough analysis.

Setting goals for your financial independence

There's something we don't understand. Why people choose not set goals for themselves? Furthermore, why people don't have financial goals in place?

If it's hailed by all of the "experts", both self-proclaimed and acclaimed, that people with goals end up more successful than those without (the majority of the time)..why is it that the majority of people don't make tangible goals? To make this more personal our goal is to become profitable in three years. The goal of Cloud 9's founder is to have an annual salary of $100,000 before he turns 35. He turned 21 a few weeks ago.

Now to the meat of this post. Establishing financial goals for your future can prove extremely beneficial as well as useful. What it does for an individual is that it puts a tangible, attainable, relevant, and time sensitive  "assignment" on their time horizon. It's a constant reminder to reach for the stars, a constant alert that you are slacking, it takes the place of a nagging wife (so-to-speak). And as human beings, setting up accountability parameters is always of the utmost importance when dealing with something as urgent as financial independence.

Microsoft stock splits

 Disclaimer: We pulled this post in it's entirety from an outside source. This is not our original writing. The original article from Mashable, is linked in the title.

Microsoft’s Stock Has Split Nine Times

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Microsoft has split its stock nines times since it went public back in March 1986. Put very, very simply, a company will generally split its stock when its share price becomes too high.
Since Microsoft has had six 2-for-1 splits and three 3-for-1 splits, one original Microsoft share would now be equal to 288 shares today. Interestingly the price of Microsoft’s stock at its initial public offering was $21 a share, at the time of writing a share is now around the $23 mark. One original MSFT share would now be worth over $6,000. 

I bet you're wondering, "why would they post content that isn't theirs?" Well, we wanted to write a post about stock splits and how you can look past a company's stock and see how they've faired over history, just by using their history of stock splits. This is just a reference article.

A little trick with coupons

 A few weeks ago I was helping a family friend move in Tennessee. We were talking, and somehow got on the subject of how most people overlook coupons to save money. Then she gave me an idea that as a self-proclaimed personal finance whiz (aka I can always find a way to help someone cut costs without losing quality of living), I had never even considered.

Her idea was simple, yet genius. She told me to tell clients to buy a Sunday paper on Monday...

Easy enough, right? On Monday the $1.50 newspaper (when purchasing on Sunday) is sold for $1.00. If you do the math, purchasing two Sunday's newspapers on Monday will save you $1.00 on newspapers. And those two dollars spent could save you up to $50 in food per week. Think about it :)