Author: Sarah Yakel

This weekend, my middle son Ethan graduates from high school. Like most parents, I’m not entirely sure how we got here so quickly. It feels like just yesterday he was jumping in piles of leaves, playing around with his brother, or fishing, boating, catching insects…generally doing anything outdoors…. now we

As a quick note, the recent escalation of conflict involving Iran is a sobering reminder that markets do not exist in a vacuum. More importantly, events like these carry real human consequences, and we hope that tensions can de-escalate quickly. From a market perspective, Sarah Irving covered the historical patterns

A fresh start. My family knows this about me: every single New Year’s Day, I wake up and immediately start taking Christmas down. All of it…the tree, the decorations, the extra pillows, the sparkle—gone. Packed up. Put away. House cleaned from top to bottom. Period. They roll their eyes every year and

Each holiday season, PNC does something entirely practical — by pricing out the ridiculous. The PNC Christmas Price Index tallies up what it would cost today to buy the gifts from “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” In 2025, that cost has climbed to $51,476.12 — up 4.5% from last year. Talk about true love! (You

We have friends who have lived in London for the past few years, and we have enjoyed visiting them over the last few years. While there, we took the London Underground frequently, and our kids found the announcements to “mind the gap” entertaining. A very little Ethan and Ben at their first Tube stop Me […]

Next week, Meridian celebrates our tenth anniversary—and how things have changed… 😊 From 2015: To 2017: To 2021: To 2025: We’ve seen our children get taller, our team expand with talent, and Meridian flourish, now managing over a half-billion dollars for 575 families and organizations, across 26 states:

The past two weeks have been very emotional as an advisor—I’m not sure if it is because I’m in a reflective mood as Meridian nears our 10th anniversary in September. Or perhaps it is because of two solid weeks of meetings with clients about their financial plans, and everyone is on track and thriving…whatever

Over Memorial Day weekend, the Yakel family took a quick trip up to Cedar Point as we have two teenage boys who are roller coaster fanatics. I walked Ben and Ethan to the park for early entry at 8:30AM…and then came back to collect them at park close after 10PM (I had given up trying […]

While 2025 has been full of surprises, the double-digit outperformance of international stocks over United States stocks was on very few economists’ bingo cards for this year! Following another strong year of outperformance in the US economic growth and market returns, non-U.S. equity markets have overtaken US