IN THE KNOW
Monthly Newsletter
March 2022
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In this month's newsletter, we celebrate National Women's History month by having our women advisors answer questions from women within our community. Also included is an article on the topic of volatility. We are excited to introduce our new advisor associate, Sarah Bremer. This month's employee spotlight shines on the wonderful women on our team. And as usual, we are sharing relevant investment articles and videos from Dimensional. Read on to learn about all of this and more!
We are a firm that understands that managing your assets is about more than money. It is about empowering your future. At ML&R Wealth Management, we focus on you.
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We first want to congratulate our colleague Every March we have the opportunity to celebrate the amazing accomplishments of women throughout history. Women have come so far over the last century both personally and professionally.
Here are a few highlights of these accomplishments for women in today’s workforce.
- Women represent 40% of all breadwinners (this represents significant growth in the last six decades; 4 times as much)
- Women own 30% of all privately owned businesses
- According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, a more impressive statistic is that women now represent a larger proportion of management and professional roles than men (52%)
Knowing all the barriers that have been broken and that continue to break, at ML&R Wealth Management, we know that women have unique needs as it relates to their financial planning and investing. There are many hurdles women face as they plan for their future. We understand that while women are accomplishing more than ever, they are still living longer, still dealing with the wage gap, still dealing with the retirement gap, and overall tend to invest differently than men. These hurdles can create a challenging dynamic that we are experienced in navigating for our clients.
This year, we asked the women of our community to send in questions they have related to their finances. Throughout the month we answered these questions in a special blog series, “A Woman’s Guide to Investing”. We want to thank everyone for sending in their questions!
We tackled three different questions this year to help further women’s knowledge around a variety of financial planning topics that are important to all women.
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The term “unprecedented” has often been used to describe many things we’ve experienced over the last few years and was even named 2020 Word of the Year, but it shouldn’t be used to describe volatility in the stock market. While unpleasant at times, ups and downs in the stock market are a normal part of investing and shouldn’t come as a complete surprise.
Volatility can be unsettling for many investors and might naturally be stressful for some. What should investors do when stock prices become volatile? Should they try to predict the next market move when newspaper headlines call for a downturn?
Let’s first take a step back and examine why we invest in the first place. Then we can better answer these questions about how to approach volatility.
Why invest?
What is the purpose of investing? It is likely something we’re doing to help us achieve a goal. Whether it is saving for retirement, providing for a family, giving to charity, or passing on wealth to a future generation, most goals typically involve spending wealth in the future.
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Introducing New Advisor Associate Sarah Bremer
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Sarah Bremer | Advisor Associate
Advisors she supports: Carli Smith and Scott Adair
Birthday: December 23rd
Tell us about your family: My Husband, Jacob and I have a 1 yr. old daughter, Brooklyn. We live in New Braunfels and both feel very blessed to have her as our daughter and love to spend our time outdoors cooking and exploring.
Do you have pets? If so, what kind(s)/name(s)? We currently have 12 chickens and 5 goats. We enjoy the fresh eggs and happy chicken clucks.
What's your favorite indoor/outdoor activity? I most enjoy an early morning walk in the park and swimming in our beautiful rivers.
If you could visit anywhere in the world, where would you go? I would travel to Switzerland and ride the Bernina Express Train which takes you through the Swiss Alps.
What is your favorite part of working at ML&R? My favorite thing about working at ML&R is the work life balance it provides me as a mom. Mothers are typically the primary parent when a child is sick or has an appointment and is the one responsible for picking up the child after work. Working moms often need more flexibility in their schedules and ML&R provides that for me. We communicate so well as a team and are understanding and appreciate each other’s transparency and dedication to both the job and our families.
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Employee Spotlight ~ Let's Talk to the Team
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In this year's Employee Spotlight we will be asking fun questions to the entire team and sharing their answers in this section!
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Fraud Alert
We received the following fraud alert from our custodian, Fidelity. Helping our clients stay safe on the internet is important to us so we wanted to be sure to pass this information along.
The most recent fraud trend involves fraudsters calling cardholders and posing as a “Fraud Representative” to gain access to one-time passcodes and other personal information used to load card details into mobile wallets. Below is an outline of how this fraud scheme works:
How the fraud trend works:
- A client receives a phone call from what appears to be a legitimate phone number (sometimes even spoofed as a known call center number)
- The fraudster poses as a legitimate fraud analytics representative
- The fraudster states they either have sent or will be sending the end client a one-time password (OTP) and requests the client to read it back to them
- The fraudster is then able to use the OTP to provision the card number to a mobile wallet
Recommended Action
It is a best practice to never share a One Time Pin (OTP), PIN, or passwords to a caller inquiring about your account. The custodians we work with (Schwab and Fidelity) will never ask a client for their passcodes, PINs, or passwords over the phone.
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By Kenneth R. French, Director and Consultant
I have been passionate about investing since I started studying finance in 1977. The first investment class I took was dominated by the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) of Sharpe (1964) and Lintner (1965). The CAPM says every investor’s ideal portfolio is some combination of the risk-free asset and the value-weight (VW) market portfolio of all stocks, bonds, and other investible assets, and every portfolio’s expected return is a linear function of its beta, which is its sensitivity to the market return. The academic view of investing is far more complicated today.
In this essay, I focus on five concepts that capture much of what I know about investing and that drive my approach to portfolio design.
By David Booth, Executive Chairman and Founder
We’ve all been conditioned to see meme investors and Wall Street in opposition, but it seems to me that they have a lot in common. Both believe in picking stocks and think they can beat the market. In my mind, the important distinction is that Wall Street stands to make a lot of money off meme investors, simply from trading costs. For those who say apps don’t charge for trading, think about it: When was the last time Wall Street gave away anything for free?
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Subscribe to our 401(k) Plan Services Quarterly Newsletter
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Are you responsible for administering your company's 401(k) plan?
Would you like more insight and resources regarding the retirement plan services industry?
If so, please subscribe to our 401(k) Plan Services Quarterly Newsletter. You can check out the last few issues below.
See our latest Retirement Plan Services articles:
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What's Happening in Austin Next Month
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About ML&R Wealth Management:
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At ML&R Wealth Management, we take investing personally. Your ML&R Wealth Management advisor will work to develop a lasting relationship with you, keeping in touch to understand your changing goals and to provide an asset management strategy to help achieve them. Whenever you need sound financial advice, you have a direct line to a trusted advisor.
For over 25 years, we have served individuals, families, businesses, and nonprofits with wealth management services, custom retirement and 401(k) plans, and portfolio management.
We believe in accountability and transparency and operate as a fee-only advisor with fees calculated solely on assets under management.
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