5 Tips for Financial Fitness

With spring and summer fast approaching, bikini-body goals move into of the forefront of our minds, and financial fitness sometimes takes a backseat. Just as people can commit to a health and fitness plan for their physical bodies, your wallet sometimes needs a trim around the waistline. It’s easy to know what is healthy or unhealthy for our bodies—eat your veggies and minimize sugar, exercise a little every day, but don’t overdo it—but it’s not so easy to know what’s healthy for ...Read More

Picking a Trustee

Whether you are selecting a Trustee for a trust that is currently established or for a trust that will spring to life upon a certain event such as your death, you have many choices when it comes to selecting a Trustee. You can choose an individual such as a friend or family member to be the trustee or you can choose a corporate trustee. Every situation is different and there are no easy template answers. Below is a PDF of a blog written by a corporate trustee that does a good job listing the ...Read More

2017 & QUARTER 4 MARKET REVIEW

Happy 2018 and I hope your year is off to a great start! I wanted to provide you with our thoughts on the current investing environment, go over the impact of the tax cuts and how it may affect portfolios over time, and go over a few thoughts going into 2018. Here’s what you will find in this post:

Tax Considerations for End of Year

Tax Planning for Year End 2017

Although nothing is certain, Congress appears to be getting closer to enacting significant federal tax law changes that would take effect for 2018.  Based on what we know today, the standard deduction amounts will be doubled from current levels and personal exemptions will be eliminated.  For those that itemize versus using the standard deduction, the deduction limits will be lowered for mortgage interest and taxes.  It appears mortgage interest will ...Read More

What will healthcare cost during retirement?

Two of the biggest future cost retirees will face is the rising cost of healthcare plus the cost associated with providing long term care which are not typically covered by Medicare. These two unknown cost must be addressed in a typical retirement plan. Today Americans spend approximately 3 trillion dollars on health care and these cost have risen at a much faster rate than the overall rate of inflation. Add to this the uncertainty of health care legislation and the fact that ...Read More

2017 Q3 MARKET REVIEW AND MORE UPDATES

Section I:  Portfolio Performance

What a year! In addition to this newsletter please know that your quarterly portfolio reviews have been uploaded to your client portal as of 10-13-2017. To date almost every major asset class is positive and some asset types, like emerging markets, are up over 25% year to date. While we can’t expect to get double-digit returns every year that doesn’t mean asset prices must come tumbling down either. The attachment below shows the ...Read More

Getting What You Don’t Pay For

October 2017

Costs matter. Whether you’re buying a car or selecting an investment strategy, the costs you expect to pay are likely to be an important factor in making any major financial decision.

People rely on a lot of different information about costs to help inform these decisions. When you buy a car, for example, the sticker price tells you approximately how much you can expect to pay for the car itself. But the sticker price is only one part of the overall cost ...Read More

Lessons for the Next Crisis

October 2017

It will soon be the 10-year anniversary of when, in early October 2007, the S&P 500 Index hit what was its highest point before losing more than half its value over the next year and a half during the global financial crisis.

Over the coming weeks and months, as other anniversaries of major crisis-related events pass (for example, 10 years since the bank run on Northern Rock or 10 years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers), there will likely be a ...Read More

FINANCIAL SOLUTIONS

Should You Refinance Your House Now?

Here is my financial tip of the month!  Make sure you check mortgage rates to see if you should be REFINANCING now!  Rates fell precipitously last year and then popped up.  Now they are giving you another chance to lock in these low rates before the economy rebounds.  A few weeks ago the Wall Street Journal noted that 1 in 4 homeowners could benefit from refinancing.  Since that article was published the Fed ...Read More

More on Cellphone Spam Calls

Following up on my earlier comments about blocking spam calls to mobile phones, one reader says:

“I use  ...Read More