Blog | Willow Creek Wealth Management

The Clock is Ticking Toward New Tax Laws in 2013

December 3, 2012 Mark Keating

Tax laws are likely to change in 2013, and now is the time to take advantage of some of the most advantageous estate tax benefits you may see in your lifetime. This assumes that you have a carefully conceived estate plan which allows you to decide how your assets should be handled when you die or […]

Bruce Dzieza on the ABC Nightly News

November 21, 2012 Bruce Dzieza

Bruce Dzieza appeared on the November 21, 2012 airing of the ABC Nightly News. Please click the link below to view the news piece. http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/politics&id=8894778 […]

How to Maximize Social Security Benefits for Your Retirement

September 17, 2012 Teresa Mitchell

Originally published in the North Bay Business Journal. The average American spends 45 years or 90,000 hours working. She typically spends about half that time — 20 years or more — retired. Yet planning for retirement is often overlooked or put off until it’s too late to adequately prepare. How ready for retirement are you? […]

Investment Genius of a 5th Century Greek Slave

August 14, 2012 Mark Keating

Originally published in North Bay Business Journal Welcome to our new monthly column about building wealth, managing money and smart investing. The column is authored by the partners of Willow Creek Financial Services, Sebastopol, one of the leading wealth management companies in California. As financial planners and investment advisors, we study market trends and research, […]

Biggest Money Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

July 5, 2012 Heather Belli

Building wealth, retiring comfortably, enjoying financial security. Isn’t this the dream? Yet the reason many people never reach their goals is a combination of the seven biggest money mistakes we see in our practice. Bad Move No. 1: Investing from the heart, not the head Better Move: A well thought-out financial plan, and the discipline […]

North Bay Business Journal Interviews Willow Creek Wealth

May 29, 2012 Willow Creek Wealth Management

A Long-Term Approach is the Key to Successful Investing For the May 21 edition, the North Bay Business Journal interviewed Jason Gittins, Senior Wealth Advisor and Managing Partner with Willow Creek Wealth, about how investors can manage their concerns about the economy, stock market volatility, and personal financial planning. Below is Jason’s excerpt from the […]

The Goldman Sachs Confession: “Client-Last” Culture

March 19, 2012 Willow Creek Wealth Management

Goldman Sachs – A Portrait of a “Client-Last” Culture Clearly the magnitude of this insider’s “outing” makes it a great news story. But what motivated us to make a blog posting about something that is already widely perceived as the norm by industry professionals, is the shock it must be to millions of Americans who […]

Hidden Rays of Hope in the Gloomy Summer of 2011

October 4, 2011 Heather Belli

By any reasonable measure, the past three months have been among the most aggravating quarters on record for the investment markets. The debt ceiling debate, constant dithering in Europe over whether or not Eurozone members should be allowed to default on their sovereign debt, partisan bickering, the downgrade of U.S. government debt, continued unemployment, and […]

The Nudge that Roared: The Real Story on Quantitative Easing

June 28, 2011 Jason Gittins

The Real Story on Quantitative Easing Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s recent press conference made it clear that the Fed was ending, on schedule, a widely-publicized initiative known as QE2, more formally referred to as the second round of quantitative easing by the U.S. Central Bank. Some of you may have read dire headlines telling us […]

Future Shock: Behavioral Science Turns Spenders into Savers

May 3, 2011 Heather Belli

How Behavioral Science is Turning Spenders into Savers Jason Zweig has written a really interesting article on why it is so difficult for people to set aside money for the long-term future. Stanford and other university economists, neuroscientists and psychologists are working on innovative ways to address this problem. One fascinating experiment creates an avatar […]