It’s the start of a new school year, and you’ve discovered that your son or daughter needs their own car. But, you’re not sure if you should buy new or used, or whether buying even makes sense – your neighbor mentioned that leasing might be an attractive option. In the past, the easy answer was […]
Is Oregon’s PERS Pension Plan a Black Hole?
Recently the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) board voted to affirm the current 7.2% assumed rate of return on the fund’s investment earnings for the next two years (the 2021-2023 budget cycle). This assumption is extremely important to PERS, because investment earnings on the $77 billion fund pay for about 75% of the money […]
Kids and Money
Many of our clients have children, and it’s not unusual for the clients to ask us for tips or guidance on educating kids about personal finance, since the subject is generally not covered in school. Yet, research has shown that by age 3, kids can grasp basic money concepts. By age 7, many of their […]
The Growing Challenge of Home Affordability
For many young people across the country, the prospect of home ownership is becoming an increasingly distant dream. A recent Unison report found that it’s more costly than ever to purchase a new home, with coastal cities the worst affected. Nearly all large American cities have seen their property prices increase steadily over the past […]
Your Springwater Correspondent in South America: Currency Crisis
I am writing this from Lima, Peru. I am here for a few days before leaving for the Cordillera Blanca in the Andes, where I will hike the Huayhuash Trek. I hired a private guide, Yoselin, and toured this vast city for most of the day. We started in the Miraflores neighborhood, where my hotel […]
Did you celebrate Bobby Bonilla Day this week?
At Springwater, we’re looking forward to celebrating Independence Day this week with family and friends. As an aside, please remember to be very careful with your fireworks, and keep your pets safe and happy. Earlier this week, in our role as financial advisors, we acknowledged Bobby Bonilla Day. Who, you might ask? Bobby Bonilla is […]
Lions, and Tigers, and Inverted Yield Curves, Oh My!
With so many talking heads in the financial media discussing the fact that the ten-year US Treasury bond interest rate is now below the three-month Treasury rate, we thought we would give some context. An inverted yield curve happens when shorter-duration Treasuries provide a higher yield than longer-dated maturities. With ten-year Treasuries currently yielding just […]
Trump and Tariffs
If you’ve been following the news, you’ve undoubtedly learned that President Trump has been attempting to negotiate a new trade agreement with China. He has adopted tariffs as his primary tactic to force China to agree to terms he believes are favorable to the United States. However, China has responded in like fashion and both […]
How to Win a Nobel Prize, Part I
Are you ready for a graduate level discussion on investing, and how to build a portfolio? We promise to keep the jargon to a minimum, and to explain academic terms, if we can’t avoid using them. At Springwater, our approach to building investment portfolios for our clients is based on decades of academic research. That […]
Market Recovery … and Recession?
The first quarter of 2019 has ended and investors are breathing easier. After a bruising fourth quarter 2018 in which investors experienced double digit losses in the stock portions of their portfolios (the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 11.3%, the S&P 500 Index lost 13.5% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 17.5%), the markets bounced […]