WARNING: The following column may be considered triggering to Notre Dame fans. If you or someone you love has experienced being overly sensitive about the Irish in the past, this column may not be for you. 

I have a very unique job, or should I say I have very unique jobs.

N. Bruce Howe Jr., who actively served the Winona Lake Fire Department and the Kosciusko County Firemen’s Association for 65 years, was honored in December 2003 with Indiana’s highest civilian award, the Sagamore of the Wabash.

The NFL’s launch of the 2025 season was a success. It had something for everyone.

As you may have read in the Times-Union earlier this week, Alderfer Bergen & Co. has officially merged with Beacon Pointe Advisors. You’ll start to see the new name on our signs and materials, but before you worry about any changes, let us tell you what this really means, and more importantly, what isn’t changing.

I would like to abolish the AP Poll for the first five weeks of the college football season. 

I recently received a great honor, that was also one of my greatest challenges.

Winona Lake is tied to a bit of World War I history through Camp Winona, a military camp that helped the war effort by training truck drivers and mechanics.

Well, the big box networks helped college football finally get it right.

With Labor Day behind us, and kids back in school, it is safe to say that summer is over. This time of year is a good time to start thinking about getting your finances back on track.

Guess who’s back, back again. Connor’s back. Tell your friends. 

We lost a good friend in Kosciusko County recently. 

Social media is work for me.

The widowed daughter of a once socially-prominent pioneer Warsaw family was found murdered in her modest Winona Lake home at 1102 E. College Ave. on Feb. 6, 1963, according reports in local media. The brutally stabbed and bludgeoned body of Mrs. Louise White Bolinger, 56, an employee of the bindery department of the nearby Free Methodist Publishing House since 1956, was discovered in the single-car garage by a fellow employee, Albert Wilson. She was clad in pajamas and housecoat.

This week there seemed to be some consternation about Warsaw boys’ basketball season ticket offering changes resulting in premature consternation.

Sometimes in financial planning we must think about the unthinkable, our own mortality. No one likes to think about their own death, so estate planning is often put off in favor of more pleasant financial tasks.

There are different approaches to life.

A week from this morning, big network broadcasts of college football, big time college football particularly, launch with the noon (Eastern Daylight time) kickoff featuring a number one vs. number two showdown: the Texas Longhorns will bring the third generation of football’s Royal Family (Arch Manning) to Ohio Stadium to take on the second-ranked Buckeyes.

High school football season is underway, and the NFL isn’t far behind. This is my favorite time to be a football fan. The reason is that as a Bears fan, this is when the season still holds promise.

Last evening, Aug. 17, on my birthday, my wife and I had the opportunity to take a trip down memory lane and sing at the “Campfire and Sunday School Chorus Hymnsing” at Grace Retirement Village. Bill Schaffer, Richard Dick, Terry White, Sharon White and Howard Mayes led us down a trail of choruses as the audience sang out, many of us not even needing the words on the screen.

We have officially shoved off from the pier on the excursion that is the 2025-2026 sports year.

NORTH MANCHESTER – Ronald J. Shockey II, 61, North Manchester, died Aug. 13, 2025.

From the middle 1940s to the early 1950s, Rev. Paul Hartford, dubbed “The Flying Preacher” or “The Flying Parson” by news media, operated a flying school out of Winona Lake’s Garfield Hotel to train potential aviator missionaries in the use of single-engine aircraft.

Two topics this morning illustrate some parallels on my mind.

One of the aims of this column, and of the Smart Money Management radio show, is to take the mystery out of investing and financial planning. Today, however, we are going to talk about myths that are widely regarded as truth.