• Columnists

Michael P. Egan, CFP®, partner, Egan, Berger & Weiner, LLC

COLUMN = RETIREMENT

A founding partner of Egan, Berger & Weiner, LLC Michael Egan has 24 years of experience in the financial services industry. He has been a mutual fund analyst, and an accountant and financial planner.

A graduate of George Washington University with a degree in Finance, Egan hosted a weekly radio show on financial planning in the Washington market. He has also been a presenter on retirement planning for Fairfax County Public School’s Adult and Community Education. Egan is an active member of the Financial Planning Association.

The son of Irish immigrants, Egan grew up in Connecticut, and moved to Northern Virginia in 1990. He remains an avid New England sports fan, and roots passionately for the Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics and UCONN Huskies.

To contact Egan, send him an email at megan@ebwllc.com. For more information about Egan, Berger & Weiner, LLC, visit www.ebwfinancialnews.com.

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.”

– Albert Einstein

The music is all around us. All you have to do is listen.”

– August Rush

If you do not tell the truth about yourself
, you cannot tell it about other people.”

– Virginia Woolf

The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.”

– Bruce Lee

Change is a math formula. Change happens when the cost of the status quo is greater than the risk of change.”

– Alan Webber, author, "Rules of Thumb"

When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.”

– Audre Lorde

Do not say, ‘why were the former days better than these,’ for it is not from wisdom that you ask this.”

– Ecclesiastes, 7:10

To find what you seek in the road of life, leave no stone unturned.”

– Edward Bulwer Lytton

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”

– Charles R. Swindoll

Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost.”

– Robert H. Schuller

Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.”

– Jack Kerouac

A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.”

– Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.”

– Bob Dylan

The great use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.”

– William James

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’”

– Brian Tracy

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

– Martin Luther King Jr.

I’ve come to confirm that one’s title, even that of president, says little about how well one’s life has been led. No matter how much you’ve done, or how successful you’ve been, there’s always more to do, to learn, and to achieve.”

– Barack Obama

There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”

– JFK

The person who makes a success of living is the one who see his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication.”

– Cecil B. DeMille

If it isn’t good, let it die. If it doesn’t die, make it good.”

– Ajahn Chah

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”

– William Shakespeare

Who cares if my glass is half empty or half full; I still have something to drink.”

– Optimism rules

‎No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.”

– Charles Dickens

Find somebody to be successful for. Raise their hopes. Think of their needs.”

– Barack Obama

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

I may not be able to change what takes place, but I can always choose to change my thinking.”

– Michelle Sedas

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

– Joseph Campbell

Our deepest wishes are whispers of our authentic selves. We must learn to respect them. We must learn to listen.”

– Sarah Ban Breathnach

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”

– Groucho Marx

The quality of your life is directly related to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with.”

– Tony Robbins

Running that first shop taught me business is not financial science; it’s about trading.”

– Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

The mind is everything. What you think, you become.”

– Buddha

The world I believed in, back in my most innocent, uninformed, childish mind—is real.”

– Martha Beck

Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.”

– Arthur Rubinstein

When you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‘em, ‘Certainly I can!’ Then get busy and find out how to do it.”

– Theodore Roosevelt

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”

– Magical

I was taught at a very young age that you can do whatever you want to, but you have to make it happen — not just talk about it.”

– Kathleen Jo Ryan

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams go, life is a barren field frozen with snow.”

– Langston Hughes

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

– Dalai Lama

Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.”

– Helen Keller

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”

– Henry Miller

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.”

– President Calvin Coolidge

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”

– Mark Twain

Never never never never give up.”

– Winston Churchill

Don’t follow, lead. Don’t copy, create. Don’t start, finish. Don’t sit still, move. Don’t fit in, stand out. Don’t sit quietly, speak up. (Not all the time, sure, but more often.)”

– Seth Godin

There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way.”

– Christopher Morley

We are all of us born with a letter inside us, and that only if we are true to ourselves, may we be allowed to read it before we die.”

– Douglas Coupland

Do one thing every day that scares you.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

The only dream worth having is to live while you’re alive and die only when you’re dead.”

– Arundhati Roy

But all the while I was alone, the past was close behind, I seen a lot of women, but she never escaped my mind, and I just grew, tangled up in blue.”

– Bob Dylan