OK, Your Survival Guy’s RAGE Gauge is in, so let’s dig into this. From my boat shoes and hiking boots perspective, I can tell you money is being spent. Spent on family vacations and once-in-a-lifetime trips.

Young and old are out having fun, from the anchorage outside Fort Adams at the Newport Folk Festival to the trails in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and at the near-impossible to secure tables at restaurants in Boston.

Talk about a storm of mixed signals, especially when you hear from some corners that the economy isn’t doing great. Well, someone’s opening their wallets.

What Your Survival Guy is seeing is IRAs, brokerage accounts, and such being tapped to fund memories with the kids and grandkids, and gifts being made to help reduce the size of the estate.

It’s an asset winddown of sorts so the family can experience it all together. We’ll see how this goes when there is a real market winddown. I’m guessing the spigot of gifting assets will slow, but the money will continue to move.

Newport is teeming with families getting in the last bite of summer vacation. At our cabin in New Hampshire, the trails were busy. On a Monday in Boston visiting our kids, having dinner on the rooftop of the Newbury Hotel (the old Ritz) at Contessa, there wasn’t an empty table in the place. This was a Monday in the heart of the summer when everyone’s supposed to be on the Cape, the Vineyard, or Nantucket.

My advice? Don’t overlook the safety of U.S. Treasuries. Don’t forget the importance of asset allocation. And don’t spend more than what your portfolio can handle. Times may be good for assets, but that doesn’t mean they last forever. My RAGE Gauge is signaling you to take precaution.

Originally posted on Your Survival Guy.