Polaris

03/11/2024

Work is worship, and how we work reveals who we worship. Cutting corners and looking for ways to turn a profit without providing value are signs that we worship Money. Serving with excellence is a sign that we worship God.

03/07/2024

Generosity is an incredibly powerful tool in defeating poverty thinking in our lives. Generosity inherently says, "I'm capable. I have something to offer. Out of my abundance, I can make a difference in the world around me."

All of us have something to offer. If you're feeling small, as if you can't tackle what life is throwing your way, find a way to be generous, whether that's with your time, your skills, or your money. Generosity will help reconnect you with your God-given strength.

03/01/2024

A few years ago, a young financial advisor asked me what I thought about using P/E ratios to evaluate stocks. I think he was looking for a quick and simple method of doing fundamental analysis and hoping that P/E ratios were going to be the magic bullet.

They're great as a starting point, but there's a lot companies can do to manipulate earnings for tax purposes, pushing earnings back or pulling them forward to suit their needs. Furthermore, P/E ratios don't tell you anything about the health or growth prospects of the company.

Be careful about using any single metric as the one measure you use to make investing decisions. The truth is that investing is complex!

02/29/2024

I've heard a couple of different financial advisors lately misusing the term "fiduciary" with their clients. Make no mistake about it: when an advisor is in the act of selling an annuity or life insurance policy, they aren't acting as a fiduciary, and they don't have to keep your best interest in mind. They might be fiduciaries in some parts of their work, but they aren't held to that standard when they're paid by an insurance company to sell you a policy or annuity.

At Polaris, we act as fiduciaries ALL the time, and we don't sell any products that pay us commissions.

02/01/2024

https://www.polarisassetmgmt.com/post/unexpected-retirement-moving-abroad-could-be-the-answer

In an unexpected retirement, it's critical to manage uncertainty and shift our plans to account for our new situation. A move overseas can be a unique solution.

04/24/2023

Recency bias is one of the most common mistakes in investing. Recency bias is an often subconscious mistake that causes us to believe that whatever's happened recently is likely to continue. If markets have been doing well, it's easy to lose track of risk until things suddenly take a turn for the worse. And if it's been choppy or dropping, it can be tough to be open to more aggressive investments again. So many investors, even professional advisors, fall prey to this, but it's one of the reasons it's so important to develop an investment process to keep you accountable in your decision-making.

04/19/2023

One of the most common mistakes made by investors is ignoring risk. When you analyze investments, don't just look at what had the highest return! Understand the risk profile and what could go wrong with the investment you're making. Quantitative metrics like standard deviation are a good place to start, but also think qualitatively. What are the situations that could cause this investment to turn out poorly, even if they haven't happened recently enough to show up in the commonly quoted metrics?

04/18/2023

⚠️ is here, and if you filed your business taxes on time, you deserve a pat on the back.

➡️ If you think you're going to miss the deadline, check out this valuable resource to help you beat the tax crunch next time around: https://buff.ly/3MhAJjF

Hint: Pay your estimated taxes every quarter — read our blog post to learn how and why.

04/17/2023

Understanding whether or not your foreign financial holdings qualify as a PFIC is extremely important to filing US expat taxes correctly.

04/16/2023

Developing a sound investment process takes time and hard work, but don't skip it. Hard work is the only way to develop a process worth using. We say this all the time, but it's worth repeating: Investing without a process isn't investing. It's gambling.