At Monument, we’re tired of financial advisors spewing out jargon and B.S. to the public in an attempt to look smart, sell something, or over-complicate wealth management when people are simply seeking clarity.

Investors who claim their investment objective is “Growth” aren’t simply asking to increase risk in hopes of more return. What they usually want is to focus on their portfolio’s total return, which is comprised of two pieces: Price return and Income return. For example, if you bought something at $5 and sold it for $13, your price return is $8.

Women do so much…I know from firsthand experience, because I’m a woman and I feel like I do a lot, if I do say so myself! When I was in my 20s, I traveled and worked thousands of hours with a Big 5 consulting firm, got married, and bought a house. I socked money away in my 401k and that was the extent of my financial planning. When I was in my 30s, I had children and dogs and cats and did a whole different kind of work, much of it unpaid.

Positioning your investment portfolio to sustain your post-business sale lifestyle requires two seemingly contradictory goals: growth and cash flow. To be clear, cash flow is different than income. Income is usually derived from work, effort, or adding value to a business. Cash flow is generally considered to be passive, ideally from an asset that has two specific, unique characteristics: inflation protection and growth of the cash flow stream.

We find the topic of behavioral finance to be at the heart of why we exist as a firm. Investing is hard. However, when you add the complex and unpredictable nature of human beings, investing becomes harder still. After all, our own behavior determines our success more than any other factor, in every area of our lives—including our wealth. Life is complex. There are lots of moving parts and it takes a lot more than just tallying up numbers to figure it out.

Index investing works – it’s just not a standalone approach. It’s a key component in a portfolio, but not a portfolio onto itself. Index investing is a passive investing technique that attempts to match the returns of a broad market index, like the S&P 500. Indexing has stood the test of time and meets several, but not all, of the core principles to successful long-term investing.

Understanding expense ratios is important if you have invested in a fund (or ever plan to). Whether we’re talking about Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) or Mutual Funds, you can be sure of one thing: shareholders are charged an expense ratio to cover expenses of the fund. This charge is not explicitly paid by you, the shareholder, to the fund.

So, what exactly is recession proofing anyway? Recession proofing describes the practice of safeguarding your portfolio from the effects of an economic downturn. The path to implementing this practice can look different for every investor. For some, this may mean shifting to a more conservative asset allocation, while others may be forced to rethink their wealth management framework altogether.