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Dennis writing

Dennis Morton

Lessons From Behind the Plate

As pitchers and catchers report for spring training, I am reminded of my career as a third-string catcher and the lessons learned along the way. The call came on a Spring Saturday afternoon when I was 13 years old. I had tried out for my first travel baseball team and the coach of the Harford […]

Is it time for a check up?

This is about wellness, health, and yes, money. Have you ever gone a long time without looking at your account balances? Ever held off on checking in with your advisor because you were afraid your financial plan was off-track? Does anxiety about financial headlines keep you from learning more about money and investing? I have […]

What I Learned in 2023

Dear Reader, Looking forward, I am an optimist. Looking back, I am a historian. It’s what I am in the present that has helped me become a better investor: Unemotional. For investors, the last four years have been historic…and exhausting. We had the fastest recession, fastest recovery, fastest inflation, and the fastest interest rates. Not […]

Tragic Optimism in Times of Change

Dear Reader, The first dramatic pivot of my career happened in the summer before my senior year of college, in the rain, staring at a military tank. I was at Ft. Lewis, WA attending a four-week-long ROTC training with a thousand other cadets. It was branch orientation day, where all the branches of the Army […]

My First Sabbatical

Dear Reader, For over a month, my wife Gina, and our four kids (17, 13, 9, and 7) recently hiked and toured our way through the villages and mountains of Europe. There are surprisingly few options for crews as large as ours so we Airbnb’d our way through Germany, Slovenia, and Italy. This was a […]

Financial Advisor Influence and Optimism

The best prediction that I ever made was not a prediction at all. It was more of an observation. In the summer of 2019, I wrote about The Good Old Days and presented this idea: What if these are the days you will look back on and say “Remember when…?” As it turned out, compared […]

Financial Decision Making and Sudden Wealth

With the recent Powerball jackpot win of over $2 billion, it is fascinating to think of just how complicated it could be to become that wealthy that quickly. In this interview in The Atlantic, a wealth advisor who specializes in sudden wealth talks about the “lottery curse” and how we weren’t meant to do nothing […]

Setting Effective Financial Goals

In the business world, top companies kick off their “Q4” by gathering together their leadership teams to assess what’s gone right this year, what’s gone wrong, and what steps they can take to finish the year with strong forward momentum. My partner, Katie Brown, and I do the same thing with an off-site meeting to reflect […]

Narrowing The Field of Personal Finances

In today’s world, developing expertise in our personal finances doesn’t mean trying to become experts in every market-related data point. That will only add to our confusion. No, the expertise we seek is about how changes in the world around us affect our unique decisions about money. “How wonderful that we have met with a […]