It's December

Merry Christmas to all, and Happy Holidays!

Here in New Berlin, we were quite fortunate in that we side-stepped the worst of the ice storms of the past week. My friends, clients and colleagues just a little further west from here haven't faired as well, although I believe everyone came through without too much inconvenience or damage. Our hearts go out to you, as we have experienced the power outages and feelings of utter helplessness that a major ice storm can bring about. We are reminded to be truly thankful that we have our families, our homes, and our livelihoods.

As we round out this year, I wanted to take a moment to thank each and every one of you for your business over the past year. 2007 was a very good year for Blankenship Financial Planning - our best yet. Also, thanks to all of you who have passed my name along to your family and friends. As I've always said, the people who I have helped to be successful are the only "advertisement" I need. I sincerely thank you all for the privilege of knowing you and for the opportunity to work with you.

In this month's newsletter, I thought it might be useful to review the reasoning behind diversification. It's always helpful to me (and hopefully to you!) to go back and reconsider the very foundations of what we believe. Since diversification is one of the most important pillars of sound investment philosophy, we'll review it this month.