Seaborn Financial, LLC

08/19/2025

Alright, here's one that I know folks are going to yell at me for (though maybe not publicly): on selling your (concentrated) stock. Fire away!

At Seaborn, we see a lot of folks come in with high concentrations of a single stock, generally from ESPP's, RSU's, ISO's, or other employee benefits that come in the form of employer stock shares. They look at the immediate past performance, see that the e.g. 20% annualized gain has far outpaced ev...

08/05/2025

"What do I do with my prior home?" It's a big question, and worth pondering with your head as well as your gut.

(To those of you who now have the song stuck in your head -- you're welcome!)Alright -- you've decided to upgrade/downgrade/relocate to a new home, and your financial situation is such that you don't have to sell your current home to do so. So: once you've moved, should you sell your old home, or sh...

12/26/2023

Here's another potentially-dangerous-but-useful financial planning framework.

Last time I wrote, I talked about when month-to-month cash flow doesn't matter -- which may sound like dangerous personal finance heresy on the surface, but has a lot of merit when you dig deeper. So while we're preaching heresy, let's throw another little gr***de: "you should save what you don't sp...

10/03/2023

If you read this, read it carefully! I've been reticent to post this, because I want to make sure it doesn't harm more than it helps...

If someone handed you a lightsaber, what would be your first thought? (Probably something along the lines of "This is SO @ #!$%^*& COOL!") But if you're smart -- and if you're reading this blog, I'm betting you are -- the thought immediately following that would be, "Damn...if I'm not careful, I'll c...

09/13/2023

For those of you who are thinking of doing something clever with your fixed-income assets, given the current yield curves: think twice. (Warning: nerdity ahead.)

While the interest rate hike has been a bummer for the stock market, bond prices, and home buyers, it's been pretty awesome for savers. That said, short-term savings have higher interest rates than intermediate- and long-term bonds, which is unusual, and raises some interesting questions -- question...

08/09/2023

Next time the market takes a dip, don't panic. It happens.

Yes, you heard right -- assuming that you have a diversified portfolio that matches your risk tolerance and risk capacity, your portfolio returns are random! (Well, in a manner of speaking -- and a very useful one at that.) Now this may sound distressing, but it's actually a good thing for your peac...

04/04/2023

I'm a little bit ashamed that in my many years of writing these, I haven't written one on RSU's. Well, better late than never!

03/16/2023

In case my take is helpful.

This post is a modified version of an email that we sent to Seaborn clients earlier this week. I swear – I leave for a convention for one week, and three banks fail. This is why I can’t have nice things. In all seriousness: I know a lot of you are worried, and/or wondering if you should be worri...

03/14/2023

A lot of the questions we get boil down to this one. So -- let's cut to the chase!

There's a lot that goes into financial planning: cash flow projections, Monte Carlo simulations, portfolio design, cash flow management strategies, etc. However, at the end of it all, it seems that most of it boils down to this: how much should I save/invest/pay down/spend, and how exactly do I go a...

02/28/2023

Yeah, it's a mouthful. Think of it as one way of thinking about "how much money will my portfolio make?"

OK, full disclosure: I'm a little twitchy around the phrase "passive income". It's like a slightly more socially acceptable form of "get rich quick", but with the same underlying idea: if you just find and implement the right scheme, you can be set for life, money just rolling in every month, withou...

02/07/2023

It gets a bit philosophical towards the end, but it's worth pondering what it really means to be a "weirdo".

Let's finish up our discussion on the Freakonomics podcast episode on economists and personal finance, shall we? In part 1 and part 2 , we covered a wide range of topics, from consumption smoothing to dividend investing to debt snowballs; now, let's wrap things up with a couple of thoughts on housin...