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Showing posts from October, 2022

Best Financial Planning / Investment Books: "The Richest Man in Babylon" Book Review

  Hey guys. Cyril White, Certified Financial Planner, Four Financial Management, where it is my mission to help as many of you get as wealthy and as healthy as possible! I've been in the financial business,   financial planning, wealth management, investment management business, call it what you will, for going on over 25 years now. It's crazy how time flies when you’re having fun!   I'm often asked, what books can one read to improve their financial situation, to educate yourself on personal financial issues, concepts and best practices. So what I've decided to do is I'm going to put together these videos to cover many of the most popular financial planning, personal financial management and investing books, all of which I have read, and I'm going to give you my two cent on them and provide a review of these books. You can find a comprehensive list of all the books in the notes to this video. My list of popular personal financial planning and investment books w

Sustainable Investing Case Study #3

We have a client who is a family law attorney in her mid-60’s.  Susan would like to retire as soon as possible to travel, be with her grandchildren and go skiing. She has also always been very socially conscious and expressed the goal of allocating a portion of her retirement portfolio to Socially and Sustainable Responsible investments.   I worked with our portfolio management team to determine what percentage of her portfolio would be appropriate to allocate to Socially Responsible and Sustainable investment funds given her net worth, goals and risk tolerance.  We have other clients who also mandate us to invest a portion of their portfolios into these types of funds, therefore our portfolio management team was able to easily put together a diverse portfolio of several funds whose investment focus is Socially Responsible and Sustainable investments and who pass their fund performance and risk screening criteria.   Through these posts I hope disentangle the complicated web of vocabul

Sustainable Investing Case Study #2

  My initial introduction to sustainable investing was in 1997, which at the time was called “Socially Responsible Investing” .  The team that I was part of acted as the investment portfolio consultant for a religious organization.  Ever quarter we would analyze their portfolio to make sure that it excluded certain companies that were involved in the business that conflicted with their social values against weapons, war , and tobacco (but not alcohol).  The obvious companies whose products conflicted with the clients’ social values were gun/ammunition manufacturers, defense industry companies and contractors and tobacco companies. The challenge was that many of these companies unfortunately were some of the best performing investments , which detracted from the overall performance of the ir investment portfolio.  However, I greatly appreciated their focus on their beliefs versus simply generating a higher investment return.   Since 1997 , however, “Socially Responsible Invest

Sustainable Investing 101

The facts are undeniable: Retail investors’ interest in sustainable investing strategies is growing. As of 2018, the retail share of the $30.7 trillion invested in sustainable strategies worldwide was 25%, up from 12% just six years earlier. Sustainable investing is increasingly mainstream and is growing in importance to individual investors and the financial advisors who guide them( 1).   The issue of climate change has always been very important to me.  I am an avid outdoorsman and love being outside in nature.  I want to make sure that my children, their children and their future generations all are able to enjoy the benefits to our great outdoors as I did !   Through these posts I hope disentangle the complicated web of vocabulary used to describe sustainable investing and clarify the fundamental concepts buried underneath the terminology.    I describe sustainable investments as investments made with the intention of generating positive environmental, social, and governance (ES