Blog
How Do I Maximize Federal Student Financial Aid?
College is expensive. Most of us need some form of financial aid. Often the best place to start is by trying to get financial aid from the federal government. In this post we explore how to maximize the way the federal government assesses your financial need and therefore increase your eligibility for financial aid...
Ghosting Into a Roth IRA - How High Income Earners Can Still Take Advantage of Roth IRA Tax Benefits
A perfectly legal loophole for high earners who are over the income limit to still make Roth IRA contributions...
Fortis Wealth Management Weekly Insights - 1/2/16
7 interesting articles we are reading this week we thought were worth passing along to our readers...
Roth IRAs vs. Traditional IRAs - Which One is Right for Me?
Decide which type of retirement account to utilize can be a tricky endeavor. In this post we lay out some of the differences between Traditional and Roth IRAs to help readers decide which is best for them...
What is a Roth IRA?
Roth IRAs are possibly one of the best gifts Congress has ever given the retirement saver. The advantages over Traditional IRAs are significant (we will get into those in a subsequent post), but in this post let's focus on the basics of what a Roth IRA actually is and how it works...
Budget Hack: How Do I Reduce My Monthly Car Payment?
To continue our series on reducing your monthly expenses, today we examine how you can cut back your car payment significantly. The answer is a bit unconventional and may surprised you...
Budget Hack: How Do I Reduce My Cell Phone Bill?
As part of an ongoing series, we are going to go through each of the major expense categories that make up one's monthly budget and discuss ways to reduce your expenses in those categories in order to save more money and build your wealth faster! First up, is your cell phone bill...
When Should I Retire? (Part 2)
In this follow-up post we actually help you answer the question of when you should retire based on back of the napkin math that usually works pretty well as a rule of thumb...
When Should I Retire?
The point of retirement is to transition your life from one where you are working on someone else’s schedule, someone else’s calendar, someone else’s demands and requests to spending your time how you want to spend it. Does this mean you need to stop working all together though? Absolutely not. In fact we believe that work is an integral part of our purpose as human beings. But you do deserve to work on something that is more meaningful to you, on a schedule that better fits with your lifestyle....
Social Security: Should I File and Suspend?
Social Security is top of mind for many retirees and pre-retirees as it is often an integral part of a couple's income in that last third of their life. New rules passed by Congress threaten to kill an often used strategy by many to maximize retirement income.
The Habits of Eventual Millionaires
Here at Fortis, one of the components to our wealth building strategy is to increase your earnings potential. We believe that increasing your earnings potential isn't purely figuring out how to get a promotion at your job though. Increasing your earnings potential means taking the time to invest in yourself...
Cash Is Certainly Not Trash
The general belief is that holding cash in one’s portfolio is a waste as it earns nothing these days. We disagree with this, and we disagree strongly. If we are unable to find enough securities to be 100% invested, we will hold cash. Typically we hold cash equivalents whereby we own securities with little downside and some upside. Holding cash allows us to move quickly when we see opportunities...