Author: Sarah Yakel

Market news has continued to be painful to watch, with bonds, stocks, and now commodities falling this year.  The Meridian team has written about opportunities that we see in previous blogs (like this one or this one), and we continue to talk to our clients about the unfolding economic uncertainty and reasonable

Happy Summer Solstice! I just returned from a wonderful week at Lake Michigan with my family. I love them dearly and a great way to look after them is to make sure I have beneficiaries named on my accounts. Beneficiary designations are the way that certain types of assets are passed on to heirs, regardless of

Lucy and Tyler’s blog last week on the financial implications of installing solar panels triggered quite a few follow up questions from our loyal readers!  (Thank you to all of you who take the time to read our posts—we appreciate your feedback and questions!!!) So, we wanted to tackle the general math on home

Are solar panels worth it? This week’s blog features a client request on how to calculate if it’s a wise decision to have solar panels installed at your home. Yellow ribbon back home at the yellow barn after earning the last score for our USDF Bronze Medal! Most of us are aware of the great […]

Many of you have read Lucy’s blog about I Bonds, and we’ve been answering lots of questions about buying I Bonds and whether they are a good idea or not…so, we wanted to send a quick note to answer some of the questions we keep hearing… First of all, we scooped the Washington Post… 😉 […]

Recently, we have been fielding many questions about whether it is more prudent to use excess cash to pay off a mortgage or go invest.  While we do answer this question with regularity, the interest in paying off (or accelerating paydown) a mortgage seems to have risen over the past month.  Maybe because of the

In most cases, inflation is the enemy of investors. There are multiple repercussions when prices rise, most of which are bad. Gas prices are up throughout the country. In a recent trip to the PNW I filled up for well over $5/gallon! The Federal Reserve typically looks at raising interest rates to fight inflation.

It has been a rough start to 2022, and as quarter numbers are finalized, they are just confirming how rough it has felt for all investors:   Source: Bloomberg, FactSet, FTSE Russell, MSCI, NAREIT, Standard and Poor’s, JP Morgan Asset Management.   The only thing that is positive in 2022 so far is energy

If something you own goes up in value and you sell it, then you’ve made a profit. That profit is called a capital gain, and a capital gains tax is the tax you may owe on that profit. This tax isn’t just for wealthy investors. Capital gains tax can apply to anything of value, even […]