Financial Life Series

Financial Life Series

Welcome to the Financial Life Series! These articles are meant to help every reader make better financial decisions. They are authored by our team, and each person drew from their own experiences to share. We hope you find it helpful and continue the conversation with...
Capital Gains Budgets for Tax Efficiency

Capital Gains Budgets for Tax Efficiency

For this post, we’re going to discuss Capital Gains (which occur when selling an asset that’s gone up in value).  I know…a tax related topic…so exciting, right? Specifically, we’ll discuss how we set budgets (not to go over) for capital gains taxes and how...
The Value of Financial Planning

The Value of Financial Planning

The Value of Financial Planning  Congratulations on taking the first step toward securing your financial future! If you’re starting to create a financial plan, you’re already ahead of the curve. Did you know that only one in every three adults in their 50s makes it as...
Taxes in Retirement Q&A

Taxes in Retirement Q&A

Our own Chris Johnson recently presented a “Taxes in Retirement” seminar at the Middleton Library. We thought sharing a few of the common questions would be helpful. How do I decide whether to save to my traditional or Roth 401k? It depends! Our tax system is...
How to be a Competitive Scholarship Applicant

How to be a Competitive Scholarship Applicant

Going to college is exciting! You get to live on your own for the first time, meet new friends, and explore new interests. But, for many, college is also a source of anxiety. Aside from having to develop a new routine in a new area, many students worry about how to...
How We Pick Stocks

How We Pick Stocks

One of the questions we’re commonly asked is how we pick stocks that end up in client portfolios. It’s a fun and creative process, of which we’ll share some of our secret sauce in this post. Our investment philosophy at JSA is to identify and own “excellence” and...
Best Time to Withdraw Cash from my Portfolio

Best Time to Withdraw Cash from my Portfolio

A common question we hear from clients is, “I need to withdraw cash from my portfolio. When should we sell investments to raise that cash?” As we’ve discussed in other posts, timing the market is very difficult. You might get it right a time or two, but outside of...
Will the housing market crash?

Will the housing market crash?

Considering how strong the housing market has been recently, you may think this seems a strange question. We’ve all probably heard stories of sellers receiving multiple offers or offers without contingencies. For better or worse, real estate is more expensive almost...
Does Diversification Matter?

Does Diversification Matter?

A common question clients ask is something along the lines of “are my investments diversified?” What follows will help you determine whether that’s important for your financial life. In our world, diversification means investing in multiple areas rather than...
HAPPY HALLOWEEN: Introducing the “Hall of Fear”

HAPPY HALLOWEEN: Introducing the “Hall of Fear”

As markets moved lower in September 2021, we decided to write a piece about FEAR – because if there’s one comment we often hear, it’s that people are afraid of losing money in markets – ESPECIALLY when prices are falling. And the lower stock prices go, the more people...