Articles by Allison Berger

Allison's Profile

Allison fills a primary advisor role in the Financial Symmetry team. She began her financial planning career by joining us as an intern her senior year of college at NC State. After completing her degree, she worked in an assisting advisory position while studying through the CFP coursework. She enjoys building personalized strategies to meet the unique needs of each client and providing guidance through the changes that life brings.

Link to Allison's Full Bio

http://financialsymmetry.com/our-team/allison_berger_cfp/

For the past several years, Financial Symmetry has sponsored and participated in the charity golf tournament, Golden on the Green.  The tournament, which has been an annual event held at River Ridge Golf Course for the past 10 years, benefits the Neuse River Golden Retriever Rescue.

As a new mom I am always trying to do what is best for my child.  Whatever the decision-whether to swaddle, use a pacifier, or let him cry-I frequently second-guess myself and wonder if I should be doing things differently.  At the end of the day I know that we have to do what works [...]

The tragedy in Japan continues to be the top news story and warrants international support.  While the human aspect of this crisis continues to be devastating, we can’t discount the economic impact as well.  Well respected international fund family, First Eagle Funds, was heavily allocated to Japanese investments before the tsunami hit.  To find out [...]

As you may have read or noticed on your end of year statements, small cap stocks were the top performing category for 2010.  These stocks outperformed their large cap counterparts and gave investors with small cap positions a significant boost to their portfolios.  All this excitement may have you thinking that now is a good [...]

We work hard to build wealth for our clients while fostering an honest and open stream of communication about their financial situations. As a result, it is upsetting to us when we see deceptive marketing practices to sell investment products or promote undesirable lending practices.

Many of our new clients tell us they found out about fee only financial planning by listening to talk radio or watching their favorite financial pundit on television.  Media personalities such as Suze Orman, Clark Howard, and Dave Ramsey do a great service by inspiring consumers to take control of their financial lives. We also [...]

When we start working with a new client, one of the first steps is typically consolidating the number of accounts they have outstanding.  In our experience this makes your finances easier to manage by reducing the mental accounting that needs to take place every time a financial decision is made.  While this has always made [...]

While we emphasize the importance of annual tax planning, it’s also important to not let tax avoidance override your other financial goals.  Liz Davidson, of Forbes.com, wrote a nice piece describing how people lose money when they let tax issues dominate their investment decisions. The article does a great job of examining why payments [...]

If you invest in your employer sponsored retirement plan you have probably heard of Target-Date funds.  These funds are characterized as investments that change the allocation of stocks, bonds, and cash according to your specified retirement date.  In theory, these funds should progressively reduce risk exposure as the target date approaches.  However, there are no [...]

When selecting mutual funds to use in our client’s accounts we use various quantitative and qualitative factors to evaluate if we believe a fund can add value.  Morningstar is the most widely used source of mutual fund data and analysis, so we rely on their data for a significant portion of our research.  One thing [...]