SIMPLE BUT NOT EASY - Thoughts on life, money and everything else

As parents we delight in giving gifts to our children because we love them and want to bless their lives. Our delight is doubled when we see their eyes and hearts light up with joy. Our delight is tripled when we hear from their lips words of gratitude and appreciation. Our heavenly father delights in blessing us, but his joy and our own joy at receiving his gifts, is not complete until we express our sincere thanks from the depths of our hearts. “A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other. To one person the Spirit gives the ability to give wise advice; to another the same Spirit gives a message of special knowledge. The same Spirit gives great faith to another, and to someone else the one Spirit gives the gift of healing. He gives one person the power to perform miracles, and another the ability to prophesy. He gives someone else the ability to discern whether a message is from the Spirit of God or from another spirit. Still another person is gi...

For the last 10 years, investors have not made any headway in increasing the value of their investment portfolios, in fact the last ten years (2000-2010) is now commonly being referred to as “the lost decade”. This has led many investors to become disillusioned with the stock markets and their financial advisors. The following excerpt is taken from a recent post by The American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) does a good job of explaining why this has happened. “Diversification benefits have become harder to achieve. Increased similarities in the performances of asset classes have raised risk levels and made it more difficult to achieve improved risk-adjusted returns by relying solely on asset class and sector selection skills. At issue is asset class correlation, a term that describes how close the total return of one asset class (e.g., large-cap stocks) is to that of another (e.g., commodities). A correlation of 1.0 means returns are identical, both in terms of...