• 4 large potatoes
• 2 tbsp butter (plus extra for basting)
• 1 tbsp oil (olive or vegetable)
• 2 cloves garlic, smashed
• 2 sprigs fresh thyme
• 1 sprig fresh rosemary
• 1 cup broth (chicken or vegetable)
• Salt and pepper, to taste

 Preheat oven to 425°F (220°C).

 Prep the Potatoes:

• Slice the potatoes on both sides to create a flat top and bottom.
• Use a round cookie cutter to punch out "puck"-shaped pieces.
• Use a peeler to refine the edges for an even shape.
• Place potato pucks in a bowl of water to prevent browning.

 Sear the Potatoes:

• Heat a skillet over medium heat and melt butter + oil.
• Dry the potatoes thoroughly, then add them to the skillet.
• Brown for about 5 minutes, flipping and adjusting as needed for even coloring.

 Season & Flip:

• Once golden brown on the bottom, season with salt & pepper.
• Flip to the other side and brown for another 5 minutes.

 Baste with Flavor:

• Add more butter, garlic, thyme, and rosemary to the pan.
• Use a spoon to baste the potatoes with the infused butter.
• Continue cooking for another 5 minutes or until evenly golden brown.

 Bake to Perfection:

• Pour in 1 cup of broth and transfer the skillet to the oven.
• Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the potatoes are fork-tender.
• The broth should mostly evaporate; use any remaining liquid to spoon over the potatoes.

 Final Touches:

• Season with additional salt, pepper, thyme, and a final brush of butter from the pan.

How To Video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm96nr5NoMA

Food for Thought: Prime & Provisions Steakhouse - https://www.primeandprovisions.com/

Edge Financial Advisors

Krisstina shares how a near-death experience forever changed her view of money and inspired her to share her experiences & knowledge with other entrepreneurs. She also explains how others can shift their money mindset to create a more positive life overall, rather than just financially, primarily through the concept of knowing your numbers. All of your numbers.

Ed’s Food for Thought:

Honey Garlic Meatballs

Prep: 5 Min. | Cook: 2 Hours

Servings: 10

Ingredients:

1/2 cup ketchup

1/3 cup honey

1/4 cup brown sugar

2-3 tablespoons soy sauce

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 (32-ounce) bag frozen fully cooked meatballs (about 50)

Garlic salt & pepper, to taste

For serving: Cooked rice, sliced green onions, sesame seeds

Slow Cooker Instructions:

In a medium bowl or the base of a slow cooker, combine the ketchup, honey, brown sugar, soy sauce & garlic. Add meatballs and stir until coated in sauce. Add a pinch of garlic salt and pepper on top if desired.

Cook on high 2-3 hours or low 3-4 hours. Turn the slow cooker to warm until ready to serve. Season to taste.

Enjoy as an appetizer or serve over rice and top with green onions for a main dish.

Stove top instructions:

1) Combine sauce ingredients in a large pot over medium-low heat.

2) Once combined, stir in the meatballs. Bring to a light simmer and cook for 10-15 minutes, or until heated.

 As a small business owner or self-employed individual, managing your daily operations alone can be a burden. You may have thought about retirement and saved a bit, but with retirement just five to fifteen years away, you might worry that you've reinvested too much in your business and haven't saved enough. The Defined Benefit Plan is designed for high-income earners like you to help catch up on retirement savings and secure your financial future. Tune in to learn how this plan how this plan works and the intricacies of managing it!

Ed’s Food for thought:

Chocolate sauce recipe

·         2 tablespoon butter

·         1/2 bar unsweetened chocolate 

o    Baker’s - for the regular version

o    Ghirardelli Premium - for the decadent version

·         1 cup granulated sugar

·         2/3 cup of carnation evaporated milk

1 - Bring water to a boil and then lower it some to medium. 

2 - Put butter and chocolate on top of the double broiler. On the bottom of the double broiler, put half to one inch of water.

3 - Set the top of the double broiler on top of boiling water. Stir chocolate and butter until it's liquid

4 - Stir sugar into the liquid. Once it gets too thick, slowly stir a little bit of the Carnation milk into the liquid. Then stir more sugar in until it gets too thick. Repeat the process with the Carnation milk until both ingredients are in.

5 - Once it's all in and liquid continue to stir until it thickens.

Parissa explains what a DAF is along with the pros & cons, common strategies, and when a Donor Advised Fund makes sense for you. You will learn how to take advantage of additional benefits when it comes to Charitable Giving and how you can use these strategies to put yourself in a better position going forward.

Join us as we delve deeper into the world of structured notes and explore how they can be leveraged to generate income, protect your portfolio, and achieve your financial goals, whether you’re in the accumulation phase or transitioning into retirement.

Growing your portfolio while managing risk is essential throughout your financial life. We introduce structured growth notes as an alternative investment that can help you achieve this goal:

Provides downside protection to safeguard your portfolio during market downturns

Offers additional growth potential to help your portfolio keep pace with inflation and achieve your long-term financial objectives

Structured growth notes can be used to grow and stabilize your investment portfolio over time

Join us as we delve deeper into the world of structured notes and explore how they can be leveraged to generate income, protect your portfolio, and achieve your financial goals, whether you’re in the accumulation phase or transitioning into retirement.

As you transition into retirement, generating a steady income stream from your portfolio becomes crucial. We discuss an alternative investment called structured income notes that offer several advantages:

Provides a stable income stream to support your retirement lifestyle

Offers downside market protection, reducing the impact of market volatility on your portfolio

Many of our clients use structured income notes to add stability and increase yield in their portfolios

Finny explains how insurance companies have changed their policies since COVID, the most important things to look for in a home or auto policy, what is NOT covered by these types of policies, and real-life examples of Umbrella liability insurance. You will learn how to put yourself in a better position when it comes to property & casualty insurance, as well as to make informed decisions that align with your unique situation.

Bruce provides guidance on what Long Term Care insurance is, who can benefit from it, and when to start looking for a policy. You will come away with a well-rounded understanding of long-term care insurance and actionable insights on making informed decisions that align with your financial plan.

In this episode, they explore everything from the costly mistake of overpaying taxes, discussing how this can occur and the impact it can have on your financial health, to the importance of having proper insurance coverage, highlighting the potential consequences of insufficient protection and how to ensure you’re adequately covered.

Whether you’re looking to save, invest, or simply gain a better understanding of your financial habits, this episode is packed with valuable lessons and advice. Tune in now and equip yourself with the knowledge and mindset to avoid common financial mistakes and thrive in your financial journey.

Join Ed and James as they break down the five pillars of financial planning, offering insights, anecdotes, and practical tips to help you navigate the often daunting world of personal finance.

Whether you’re an experienced investor or just starting to dip your toes into the realm of financial planning, this episode will provide you with valuable takeaways that can empower you to make informed decisions about your money. Tune in, buckle up, and get ready to embark on a journey towards thriving financially, with Ed and James as your trusty guides!

One of our clients who recently implemented the plan said “Instead of writing a check for $40,000, I am now receiving a refund.” That’s right, money back from the IRS. If you qualify, this strategy could mean tens of thousands of dollars back every year!

So, how can we communicate with our children about money in a way that we can feel confident about? In Episode 17 “Talking With Your Kids About Money” we’ll give you a playbook to help teach your kids about this important topic. Take a listen!

7 Step Playbook

Explain your own monetary values to your children. Set the stage on what you want them to value. Some questions to reflect on: Why did we work hard to acquire wealth? What sacrifices did we make along the way and were they worth it? Now that we’ve attained it, what is it for? What responsibilities does it impose on us? Most fundamentally, where are we going together in life as a family and how will we know when we’ve gotten there? How do we stay on our path?

Teach your children how to earn money. Children learn better when they earn it versus are given it.

Explain how taxes work. Give an example they can relate to.

Teach Savings vs. Spending. Explain the benefits of each. We need balance here.

With what they do save, explain the power of investing. Talk about how time is their biggest asset.

Give them the power to decide what to do with their money. But ask them why. Remember, all about their behaviors. Create buy-in.

Set them up with a financial expert once they are older. A third-party perspective from someone who thinks like you do often creates additional motivation around the same concepts you are teaching because frankly, they are not you.

In our latest podcast episode, we bring in our market experts to discuss the risks currently facing the bond market and what we’re telling our clients to do with the bonds they hold in their portfolios.

Join us today as we help provide some education and language around the financial pillars that deserve some TLC in your life and who to seek out if you determine that you need an extra hand.

Join us for our second episode on this topic where we dive into the different Money Mind combinations and how they impact your decision-making as an individual and a family. We talk through the common shortfalls that many have experienced with opposing Money Minds and what you can do today to be mindful and proactive.

How you answer that question reveals your instinctive, gut reaction when it comes to decision-making around money and the true nature of your relationship with it. Understanding this is the key to a moving constructively towards a healthy financial wellbeing. Better yet, if you have a partner and or a family, understanding their instinctive behavior around money will provide insight and direction on how you can positively approach your decisions around money as a team.

The more complex our financial lives can get, the more we desperately require some tools to help us wrap our minds and hands around preparing for our financial future. In this podcast, we discuss the incredibly important and often avoided area of our financial life, preparing your estate. Virtually no one is comfortable thinking about the future with you no longer a part of it, but it is so vital to step out of that discomfort to ensure you take the burden off of your loved ones when the time comes.

Creating a list of New Year’s resolutions, during this year especially, feels like a worn out & cliché concept that paralyzes many of us. We feel pressure to accomplish new goals in the new year while simultaneously lacking motivation to accomplish them. For many of us, financial goals often fall first victim to this mental hurdle. If you find yourself dodging your finances – sit back, don’t stress, and join us in our podcast while we share a simple but powerful financial checklist to help start your year off right.

Before the year is over, make sure you look at your finances to see if there are opportunities to save money in both the short and long term. We’re not talking about stashing more money away, we’re talking about saving more money on your taxes. Join us in this podcast to take home tax savings strategies for 2020 and even carry some with you for future years to come.

Here’s what we cover:

1. Gifting – both charitable giving and transfers to your loved ones. There are some benefits here if done right, and a bonus rule for 2020 only!

2. Protecting more of your money from future taxes, today.

3. Taking advantage of any losses you might have. Yes, you may be able to benefit from losses.

4. How to know if you should itemize your taxes next year and what to do now.

• Minimize taxes in retirement

• Know if you have the right insurance

• Take care of your loved ones upon passing

In episode two of our three part retirement series, we talk through all the facets of financial preparation that go into this long awaited transition. It’s finally time to turn away from your paycheck and turn on your faucet of income – we like to think of it like chess. There are a lot of moving pieces with tiered levels of importance that in order to win the game, must work cohesively together. In this case, the game is not running out of income.

If you’re reading this in the future, don’t click away just yet. Though the going rates may look much different when you’re reading this than they did in November of 2020, the foundational knowledge we cover in this podcast may help you or someone you know in better understanding the home financing and refinancing process. Here are our main takeaways:

It’s not all about preparing financially, it’s about adapting mentally and giving yourself the proper time and planning to make a healthy adjustment. In this series, we share some valuable insight we’ve learned and provide guidance to help you navigate through each phase. If you or anyone you know is approaching that retirement phase, this is a must listen.

It is quite apparent that the political climate in the U.S. is incredibly polarized right now. That makes it difficult to answer these questions using economic forecasts, cable news, or current market conditions. As such, we have attempted to use historical data from past elections to help our listeners find some insight as to how to potentially navigate this one.

Our Chief Investment Officer, John Smith, joins us today to shed some light on the current state of the markets along with possible market movements resulting from the 2020 election.

For families with children, sometimes one parent will decide to stay at home to raise the children. And for those who are single, one income has always been a fact of life.

Going from two incomes to one almost always forces a reassessment of wants and needs.

In this episode, Ed and James offer some practical help on how to make the transition to one income. It’s not always easy, but with a modicum of discipline, moving from two incomes to one is possible, while still saving for the future.

Now it’s back up, but inevitably, the stock market will go down again. How should you as an investor think about a down market?

And what should you do, if anything, when it happens again?

In this episode, Ed and James offer four sound investment tips when the market is down. One of those ideas is a concept called “tax loss harvesting.” Click on the link below to listen to the episode.

Tax loss harvesting is not for every situation when the market drops, and you need to talk to your advisor or accountant first, but at times, the idea can help an investor take a loss now and offset taxes on both gains from investments and from income.

That’s one of only four tips in this episode. Listen now and let us know what you think!

In this episode, Ed and James talk openly about the challenges facing every investor during this time in human history. They offer some stories about those who did it right – and those who let their emotions get the best of them. This is a practical episode to help you stay true to your financial plan.

Their approach is simple to understand, and Ed and James, both advisors with Edge Financial Advisors, tell stories to illustrate their ideas.

You also don’t want to miss “Ed’s Food for Thought,” a regular feature at the end of every episode. If you like wings, you won’t want to miss Ed’s recommendation for the best wing joint in Chicago area.