The focus here is on you as an investor! What do you bring to the table in terms of investment experience and personal temperament (emotions) that impacts your investment returns and satisfaction while building your nest egg?

October is a seasonal time of the year when investment markets often decline as part of a normal process of progress over time. This is not to say that markets will correct, just that many people associate this month with volatility.

A key to investment success over time, is to train your emotions to handle the...

When their investment savings plummeted in the 2001 stock market crash, Adam and Sonya were concerned, but not panicked. Retirement was a long way out, so they had plenty of time to recover. The couple decided to try their hand at ’timing the market’ (buying and selling stocks based on expected market fluctuations) to recover their losses.

"We thought that if we stayed on top things and could chart when the market would go up and down, we could make our money back," says Adam.

Then came 2008 and another financial crisis that wiped out half of their investment assets. "We’d spent a lot of time and energy on an investment strategy that ended up being...

Recently retired Ross and Penny have an estate planning challenge. They’ve accumulated a comfortable net worth, with a good portion of it in liquid investments. They plan to leave everything to their three adult children, but they also want to help them financially right now.

The problem is that all of their children have a different relationship with money than Ross and Penny. In a nutshell, the parents are savers and the children spenders. If they give large sums of money, Ross and Penny would want their children to use the cash to improve their financial lives. Would they do that? Or would they spend it?

If they decide against giving them money today...