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The Meridian blog

Insights, Advice & a Whole Lot More

Welcome to the official blog of Meridian Financial Partners. We'd love to hear your comments as well as your questions. Oh, and our attorneys want you to read these disclosures.
Planning Basics

Growing Old But Not Up

I am not the biggest fan of Facebook—I do recognize its value and admit to scrolling regularly to see what the rest of the world is up to, but generally I am not a huge contributor. However, this weekend, Facebook reminded me that two years ago, Milo looked like this: Two short y

Sarah YakelSarah YakelJul 17, 2018
Planning Basics

Hello Robo?

High on the list for “Most Annoying Things in Life” for many people is robocalls. They come in several forms, and while all of them are annoying, a few can be downright dangerous. Often, the calls are a solicitation of some kind, but sometimes an actual person is “voice phishing”

Nathan GilbertNathan GilbertJul 10, 2018
Planning Basics

Independence Day

Happy 4th of July eve! Tomorrow we celebrate our nation’s fight for independence with BBQs, pool parties, and fireworks—and oddly enough lots of hot dogs. Apparently, Americans consume over 150 million hot dogs on July 4th. Pretty impressive.Our forefathers fought for independenc

Sarah YakelSarah YakelJul 3, 2018
A young girl poses in front of Van Gogh's Starry Night painting
Family & Life Events

The Starry Night

Weekend in NYC with the Kids My family and I recently spent a weekend in New York City, and we packed a lot into a very short period of time. A boat ride around the Statue of Liberty, the Museum of Modern Art, Frozen the Musical, a “bubble” show, Gulliver’s Gate, delicious lunche

Nathan GilbertNathan GilbertJun 26, 2018
Investing & Markets

Time to Get Active

Summer has officially begun, and our kids are super busy. Right after school let out, we went down to visit grandparents in Williamsburg. We went to Busch Gardens and stayed until the park closed, then got up early the next day to be at Water Country at park opening, then saw mov

Sarah YakelSarah YakelJun 19, 2018
Sea of crowd in the parade
Tax Planning

Rock the Red

Yesterday, Washington D.C. hosted its first major pro-sports team championship parade in 26 years. Not since the Redskins won the Super Bowl in 1992 have Washington fans been able to celebrate their team reaching the pinnacle of their sport. As a lifelong fan of the Capitals (and

Nathan GilbertNathan GilbertJun 13, 2018
Graduates
Planning Basics

Celebrate Good Times, C’mon…

In keeping with the song titles theme that Nathan started a month ago, this weekend was filled with graduation celebrations for many of us. Despite the gloomy rain, we enjoyed the one we attended yesterday. Pictures of the graduate from a tiny baby to a high schooler decorated th

Sarah YakelSarah YakelJun 5, 2018
Six kids posing the beach
Family & Life Events

Reunited and It Feels So Good (and so does saving for college)

Since Sarah called me out on song references in her last post, I thought I would stick with the theme. I could remember the name of the song “Reunited,” but I couldn’t remember the artists. In my defense, the song was released in 1978, and I was only one-year old. Google quickly

Nathan GilbertNathan GilbertMay 29, 2018
Estate & Legacy

Let’s Get Digital…Digital…

Nathan always references cool songs in his blogs—the only one that came to mind for this blog was Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical”. Not exactly a cool song, but I digress… Recently, I followed our usual Meridian advice to clients and started to review our own estate plan. I hadn’t

Sarah YakelSarah YakelMay 22, 2018
Balancing a pile of coins
Investing & Markets

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

“Turn and face the strange. Ch-ch-changes.” It’s hard to say exactly to what David Bowie was referring in his song Changes. Not surprisingly, I am going to use some of this great song’s lyrics and try to tie it back to the markets. As I have said in a previous post, you’re welcom

Nathan GilbertNathan GilbertMay 16, 2018
Tax Planning

A New Mom, a New Take on Mother’s Day

As a new mom, I am so looking forward to what I consider to be my first actual Mother’s Day. Even though Grace was born on April 22, and I experienced my first Mother’s Day shortly after she was born, we were all too exhausted to celebrate it. So, I can’t wait to see what […]

Nathan GilbertNathan GilbertMay 7, 2018
Investing & Markets

Are You Biased?

With your investments, I mean. There is an interesting slide from JP Morgan with two charts showing investor allocations by region. There is quite a large disconnect between a US investor’s allocation to non-US investments and the actual make-up of the global markets. As you can

Nathan GilbertNathan GilbertMay 1, 2018