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The fiscal cliff represents a combination of government spending cuts (especially in the military through sequestration) and tax hikes set to take effect in January. Congress brings the nation to this point after their inability to forge a deficit reduction deal over the summer of 2011.

Done. After countless hours of campaigning and millions of dollars spent running ads, Barak Obama will remain the 44th President of the United States of America. It was a hard fought battle but the campaign did what it was supposed to do: show Americans two differing views of the future. Citizens went to the polls in mass force yesterday letting their voice be heard.

Here are the tabulated results of our Fourth Annual Client Survey. Thank you for your business and thank you for your feedback on the survey, if you were able to complete it. Our client base totals 111 and our response rate was 38% (average response rate for the typical survey is 40%).

The typical demographics of a survey respondent:

The Wall Street Journal and SmartMoney recently published articles about “virtual assets” which can sometimes be forgotten about in estate plans. Estate planning is the process of organizing, managing, and disposing of assets for someone in the event of their incapacitation or death.

Most people don’t just stumble upon success, they have a vision and find a way to make it a reality. This simple truth may be applied when thinking about investments. There is a natural curiosity to know the “secrets” of a successful investor, but the better thing to understand is how success became theirs.

A client of ours came across a story by the Wall Street Journal on how to create your own pension and asked for our comments. Knowing we have more than a few Wall Street Journal readers as clients, we would like to publish our reply on the subject, longevity insurance, for all to read.

Think the sovereign debt crisis today is new? History tends to repeat itself as evidenced by the European debt crisis of the 1920s. The Wall Street Journal ran an interesting piece on March 14, 2012 about defaults and government debt to prove we’ve seen government defaults before.

And you thought 2011 was tough?" So went the headlines in December as media and market pundits, reflecting on a miserable year, saw no respite for investors in 2012. But markets have a funny way of confounding expectations.

He is no longer with us, and the world is poorer for it.

The past year reminded investors that they should hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and be thankful when reality does not match their fears. Investors entered 2011 with hopes that the world economy would continue recovering from a long and painful deleveraging process.