If you were born in the late 70’s or early 80’s, you might remember the No Fear “lifestyle” clothing brand that was very popular in the mid 90’s and early 00’s. Personally, I found the brand and the attitude that its wearers often embodied a bit off-putting. If you still wear any of these t-shirts

Yesterday, my son Ethan celebrated his 9th birthday.  He was super excited for his cake and his gifts—most of all his new skateboard.  To Ethan, 9 is a pretty important year—it is the last year in the single digits.  He says he feels like he is really growing up… There are some milestone birthdays in

For most of us with kids, summer presents the challenge of keeping our children occupied (hopefully constructively!) until school starts again. Camps are certainly a popular option as they take up big chunks of the summer and allow kids to explore activities outside of a typical classroom setting. Our middle daughter

The financial services industry loves acronyms—as an example, I am a CFP1 that works at an RIA2 which makes me an IAR3—yeesh!   At Meridian we try to strip all of the jargon and opaque phrases from our conversations, as we want to help people truly understand their money and what it can do for them […]

As a relatively new “swim parent,” I have learned a lot about swimming and swim meets in general. For those of you experienced swim parents, you are probably doing a combination of cringing and smiling right now; cringing at all of the early morning practices and smiling at all of the great experiences for both

I write this blog post from Las Vegas—we are here for a few days to celebrate my husband’s birthday.  As a financial planner, I am not a huge gambler.  My normal life is filled with assessing odds, the lurking risks and potential rewards, so it is hard to ignore the fact that Vegas has horrible […]

Unfortunately for me and my family, I recently learned that the Professional Nitpicker does in fact exist and is apparently widely known. While I am tempted to go for the obvious joke and say that I thought that title belonged to my wife, I won’t go there. I am sure the same can be said […]

I recently heard a radio story about Fidelity Investment’s Rule of $2,000.  In an effort to simplify college planning for parents, Fidelity says that in order to determine how much you should have saved currently for your child’s college expenses, multiply your child’s current age by $2,000.  So for  my 11

It may be a bit of a stretch to work in a Blue Oyster Cult reference to the title of this blog post, but I just couldn’t help myself. You’re welcome for putting that song in your head for the rest of the day!   For some reason, it’s the song I think of when […]