Inside Your Wealth - June/July 2019

Summer Fun . . . . .  

As we kick off our summer season, we send our congratulations to every graduate, -- whether from kindergarten to first grade; grads off to middle school or high school; and best wishes to our high school graduates as they take their life’s journey. And for those new college graduates at every level, from college, again, whether, BA/BS, Master’s or PHDs, we salute you for your hard work, perseverance to master your educational journey. We wish you all the very best as you take on the world!

June is a month of many celebrations beyond graduation. We honor our  Veterans on D Day, as well as our beloved American  Flag on Flag Day.  We cheer on and remember our father’s on Father’s Day weekend.  We hope you enjoyed this special day with family and friends and for those, like us, who have special memories of our Dads, we thank them for being strong, wise and loving parents.

We are combining our June and July newsletters to allow for our team to take some much needed time with their families this summer. Our summer time will be devoted to integrating several of our financial technology systems to increase productivity the firm’s capacity to serve you better our clients and colleagues. Technology is both a gift and an “eternal” investment for business owners!

We are planning for a blockbuster Fall season with our Financial Fitness seminars for our Savvy Women  Community and our October Fall Savvy Women’s Summit, featuring Wendy Boglioli, Olympic Champion Swimmer, Coach, and motivational speaker. Please sign up on www.diamondgroupwealthadvisors.com or send us an email letting us know you wish to join us for another great season of inspiration, learning, and masterful tips for living your ideal lifestyle.

Happy 4th of July! 

Marilyn and Ora 

Chronicles of You and You and You…

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, and other social media websites have changed the way we communicate, learn, and behave. Each option has its proponents and its critics. It will be interesting to see what social media pundits have to say about a newly emerging trend that eventually may contribute content to or pull information from a variety of sites. It’s called life-logging. 

Researcher and life-logger Cathal Gurrin has documented his daily life for the past seven years, amassing an archive of 14 million photos, as well as weeks of video and sound samples. According to The Economist, his goal is to collect data and create a search engine that can help people better understand themselves and the reasons they behave as they do. 

Life in lotsa bytes

Collecting the data is relatively easy. Many life-loggers rely on wearable cameras (available through companies like Narrative, Looxcie, and Autographer) that snap photos every few seconds. These devices make it possible for anyone to clip a camera to his or her lapel and snap thousands of pictures every day, automatically. Judging from Mr. Gurrin’s experience, all of that digital information may require lots and lots of byes of storage. 

Is it frivolous or useful?

Is there value to creating a digital version of your life experience? Gurrin has said the data could help life-loggers better understand their actions so they can make better lifestyle decisions. Also, digital recordings could supplement fallible human memory, as well as providing a historical record for future generations. 

While there are a variety of potential uses for the data, there are some significant challenges to developing a search engine that can sort through the minutiae of recorded daily life. In addition, there may be privacy issues since other people are in every recording. 

If you are thinking about recording your daily life – or at least an event or two that could provide treasured memories for future generations – you may want to google life-logging and see what you discover.

Chicken Pot Pie: A Wintertime Favorite

Most people are familiar with fruit and custard pies, so it may surprise you to learn that meat pies were popular before sweet pies were even a glimmer in the eye of the cook who invented them! From British pasties to American chicken pot pie, savory pies are wonderful comfort foods, especially on cold winter nights. 

Ingredients:

2 teaspoon cooking oil

1 pound chicken, cut in bite-sized pieces

1 cup sliced carrots

1 cup frozen green peas

1/2 cup sliced celery

1/4 cup water

1/3 cup butter

1/3 cup chopped onion

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/4 teaspoon celery seed

1 3/4 cups chicken broth

2/3 cup milk

2 (9-inch) unbaked pie crusts 

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425 F°.

 Add oil to heated large fry pan. Cook chicken pieces over high heat until golden. Set aside. Combine carrots, peas, and celery in a medium sauce pot. Add a quarter cup of water. Bring to a boil, cover with a lid, and steam for about 5 minutes or until vegetables are brightly colored and still somewhat firm. Remove from heat, drain, and set the vegetables aside. In the same pot, over medium heat, cook onions in butter until they are soft and translucent. Stir in the flour, salt, pepper, and celery seed. Slowly add the chicken broth and milk. Simmer over medium-low heat until thick. Remove from heat and set aside. Spoon the chicken mixture into the pie crust. Pour the onion mixture over it. Cover the pie with a top crust, seal edges, and remove excess dough. Make small slits in the top crust so steam can escape. 

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until pastry is golden brown and filling is bubbly. Cool for 10 minutes before serving.

What Do You Know About Weather?

Etiquette is so demanding! Polite people are not supposed to talk about religion, politics, money, illness, sex, bodily functions, or people’s looks and possessions. So, what can you talk about? Weather is a recommended topic.  See what you know about this well-mannered subject by answering these questions! 

1. Weather is the state of the atmosphere at a specific time and place. What affects weather?
   1. Cities
   2. Mountains
   3. Air masses
   4. All of the above

2. The difference between a hurricane, a cyclone, and a typhoon is the:
   1. Temperature of the air
   2. Location of the storm
   3. Degree of solar radiation
   4. All of the above 

3. Which of the following terms refers to a type of frozen water?
   1. Rime
   2. Graupel
   3. Hail
   4. All of the above 

4. Forecasting the weather is not easy because it involves a math concept known as:
   1. Symplectic geometry
   2. Chaos theory
   3. Hilbert's Nullstellensatz
   4. Conceptualism

 Quiz Answers:

1. 1. D. All of the above affect weather.
   2. B. Location of the storm. Hurricanes occur in the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific, typhoons happen in the Northwest Pacific, and cyclones occur in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean.
   3. D. All of the above are names for frozen water.
   4. Chaos theory.

Go with Your Gut

That old phrase, ‘You are what you eat,’ has taken on a whole new meaning. Dr. Emeran Mayer, a gastroenterologist, and professor of medicine at UCLA, thinks it’s possible the bacteria in our digestive systems helps form our brain structures when we’re young and may affect our moods, behavior, and feelings when we’re older. 

His research correlates MRI scans of volunteers’ brains with the types of bacteria found in their guts. So far, the data shows the species of bacteria that dominates a person's intestinal tract may affect the connections between different regions of their brains. 

Emeran isn’t the only one studying the idea. In research on mice, other scientists have found replacing the gut bacteria of anxious mice with that of fearless mice made the anxious mice calmer and more gregarious. The opposite was true as well; bold mice became more timid when their bacterium was replaced with that of anxious mice. 

Don’t worry. People probably don’t need to trade gut microbes to improve their moods or mental health. It’s possible simply changing our diets could make a difference.  

10 Quick Tips:  Retirement

 Retirement and Financial Planning As You Build Your Career

1. Start today to save for retirement, 10% of gross pay, if possible, including any employer match within a 401(K) plan. 

2. Build or maintain your rainy day fund of 4-6 months of expenses. 

3. Review 2-3 times year, your monthly expenses, categorized by fixed and discretionary. It’s surprising how much is discretionary and sneaks up if one doesn’t watch and review spending. 

4. When you receive a raise or bonus, save at least 50% or best, 100% of this. Yes, you can and should enjoy some of your hard earned monies! There will be years that you may not be able to save at all, so save when you can. 

5. Review 2-3 times a year or as you desire, your savings and investment accounts. Make sure that the investments you hold, match your personal risk profile, whether aggressive,    moderate or conservative. 

6. We all have debt, now and again, so manage it, review it, and make plans to pay off, monthly and quarterly. Many now have school loans, beyond mortgages, car loans, etc. Keep an eye on this part of your personal balance sheet, so that you always have positive net worth! 

7. For families with children, please take time to review and ensure that you have proper insurance, in case of an unexpected event. We now must have health insurance; and parents should have life and disability insurance if possible, from an employer or held personally. There are too many stories of families who have lost a loved one, unexpectedly, and there was no financial back-up in place, putting their family in severe hardship. 

8. Additionally, ensure you have proper levels of auto and home/apartment insurance. 

9. For couples nearing retirement or planning, they should be reviewing their overall financial plan, including, current and projected lifestyle expenses.        Ensuring that their estate planning is updated and in place. 

10. For those who own/co-own a business, i.e. real estate ownership; or others, please make sure to retain experts (accounting, legal, financial etc. ) to support you as you build or maintain your business so that it thrives along with you.                                                                                     

Teaching Your Children Good Money Values

 The book The Financially Intelligent Parent: 

 8 Steps to Raising Successful, Generous, Responsible Children, by Eileen and Jon  Gallo, focuses on the idea that the way in which parents spend money sends messages to their children about their values and priorities. 

It helps you become more aware of the values communicated to children through your spending. It provides some great ideas about how to give children the messages you want them to receive. If you are  traveling down this road, here are a few ideas from the book and the Gallos’ blog:

 Become a charitable family:

Teach your children to be generous through your volunteer activities. If you do service work individually, talk about what you are doing and the people for whom you are doing it. If you can, find opportunities to volunteer as a family. Also, when you get requests for charitable donations, discuss the goals of each charity, and have your children help you decide where to give. By introducing the ideas of service and giving, you can teach your children that they have the power to make life better for others. 

Encourage self-motivation:

On their blog, the Gallos refer to the book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Its author suggests that internally motivated people are happier than those who rely on external motivations. 

As a result, the Gallos suggests that parents can help their children become happier adults by relying less on external motivators, like paying children to do chores, and more on internal motivators, like using chores as a means of helping children gain self-respect and take pride in their work. 

Develop a work ethic:

The primary work of most children is school. It is important to encourage them to ‘do their best’ as opposed to ‘be the best.’ In addition to taking responsibility for their schoolwork, children should be assigned age-appropriate chores and encouraged to take on part-time employment when they get older. A good work ethic is learned behavior, and parents are the best role models. 

Your behavior sends clear messages to your children. They learn values by seeing what you spend money on and how you treat others. It’s important to teach children that money is something they have and not something they are. Their net worth and their self-worth are entirely different things.

The above material was prepared by Peak Advisor Alliance. 1_229599