At Aptus, we believe simple beats complex almost every darn time. Find a job you love [or at least don’t hate], spend less than you make, save for rainy days and retirement, and invest simply and wisely. Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy. When we present this concept to clients, we often caveat it by saying we can’t really help them find a job. There are limits to the scope of our work, right? Well, we’re not a staffing firm but we do have some thoughts on finding a job you love.

Arkansas Business published an interesting, well-written story on the FIRE (Financial Independence/Retire Early) movement. There are many great points in the article, but the most important notion is to spend less than we make, pay down debt and save for retirement. Building net worth can liberate us from dead-end jobs and lead to financial freedom.

Tim and Sarah Catherine debate the merits of the FIRE movement (Financial Independence/Retire Early). Is it sparking a generation to save more, or is it setting the bar unrealistically high? And what are ICE and WARM?

Aptus partner Tim Quillin’s op-ed highlights the ongoing regulatory efforts to force brokers to act in their clients’ best interests. “…this is probably not an issue that will be solved by government intervention. Folks, we need to assume that many of the people who give financial advice are not always looking out for us. In the financial world, we need a healthy level of cynicism. If you have the right personality and disposition, you're better off managing your own money.”

Our dream is to help create great employer retirement plans. It's how we can reach ordinary folks who would never otherwise get a financial advisor who is truly only interested in what’s best for them and getting them to save more money. We imagine a world where people get to retire. With dignity. On their own terms.

Whether you develop a financial plan on your own or work with Aptus, it’s important to consider the multitude of contingencies in your life and how to best address each. A coordinated approach to risk will not only provide peace of mind but should also help reduce your spending on expensive insurance and increase your ability to save for retirement.

Aptus founder Sarah-Catherine Phillips Gutierrez's op-ed highlights a critical issue in financial wellness. We think the biggest barrier to saving for retirement is buying too much house. The payments and repairs crowd out the ability to save. The problem is that current rules of thumb encourage people to aspire to unaffordable homes

As we highlight in our Hierarchy of Financial Needs, your retirement outcome is more likely to be determined by your savings rate than it is to be driven by clever stock picking or crafty asset allocation decisions. The first step in investing, then, is to determine how much you can save. The next step is following a tax efficient waterfall. The last, and probably the easiest, step in investing is buying an appropriate mix of stocks, bonds and others assets.

At Aptus, we believe that financial success, happiness and freedom hinges on spending less money than you make (see Our Cash Flow System Makes Budgeting [Relatively] Cool). A good cash flow plan should help you determine the best balance of spending on important things like education and travel while saving enough for an emergency fund, paying off debt and building up retirement savings. Our recommended cash flow system is a relatively foolproof method of regulating and optimizing spending, but the devil's in the implementation.

Aptus founder Sarah Catherine Gutierrez collaborated on a paper recently published in the Journal of Graduate Medical Education. The title is “What Should I Do With My Student Loans?” The paper provides an excellent overview of the options available to physicians with educational debt.