This week, Nathan and I are in Hollywood, Florida attending my favorite conference ever…Inside ETFs Once a niche conference designed to help advisors use newfangled ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds….as opposed to the mutual funds of yore), this conference has grown to over 2,300 attendees coming to hear some of the

…or, at least the best in a long time!   If you have school-aged children and live on the east coast, you (like me) have likely been scrambling to figure out child care and the litany of other school-cancellation issues. As a last resort, sometimes the only option is to bring the kids into work […]

Every year, New Year resolutions stories pop up everywhere—we resolve to lose weight, quit smoking, build a budget, join a gym, eat healthy….etc.  By February, 80% of resolutions have failed according to a US News article….leading to a cold and gray February filled with guilt and anxiety. More recent studies

Recently, a friend of mine passed along an article from a local news outlet (Fauquier Magazine) from March of 1991 that featured my grandfather on the cover. I had seen the magazine and the article before, but it was a nice reminder of my “G.P.” in his younger days. He was a successful local business […]

“Reset” has been a big theme of 2019 so far—resetting involves setting back to an initial state—sometimes the baseline of zero, other times simply an adjustment after getting far away from normal. In basketball, we’ve been working on resetting—when the initial fast break doesn’t yield anything promising,

Happy New Year to you and your loved ones! I was waiting for the markets to have an uptick before posting our first blog of 2019 😊. Here’s hoping the markets stay that way this year (or till I finish writing this at least!). My family’s Christmas and New Year’s events were a lot of […]

At Christmas, we enjoy reading familiar stories and watching favorite movies as part of our annual family tradition.  Watching Will Ferrell in ELF for the millionth time marks the official start of Christmas for the Yakel clan. As humans, our brains are wired to crave stories—good, bad, heroes that rise above all

PARENTS FORCE 4-YEAR-OLD TO WEAR GAS MASK Molly and her “gas mask” Actually, little Molly is wearing a nebulizer to ease some stubborn congestion. But, you have to admit the initial headline is a little more intriguing (and misleading). It’s no secret that news outlets (no matter their left or right lean)

Yesterday was my first official coaching role for my daughter’s middle school basketball team—we were playing the first game ever in the brand new gym, so it seemed like pretty high stakes (who wants to christen the gym with the first loss??). Assistant Coach Pell and Me Thankfully, we won by a decent margin, so