Planning For Unexpected Costs Before You Retire

Your retirement planning needs to incorporate more than just investments. Your open heart and your relatives can combine to threaten your retirement savings – savings you soon may need. Learn the true cost to your future before you write that well-intentioned check. If you’re close to joining the other side of 50, you have probably noticed already that patterns are …

Fatherly Advice: 6 Timeless Financial Tips Our Fathers Taught Us

Although many things have changed in the financial world over the past 20 years, some nuggets of financial advice are timeless. Here are a few tips that have remained constant for several generations. Always Spend Less Than You Make Wealth creation is not about how much you earn. It is about how much you save.1 Spending more than you make …

QCDs: Donating and Gift Giving Through Your IRA

A qualified charitable distribution, or QCD, allows you to distribute funds from your IRA to an eligible charity (a 501(c)(3) organization) as long as you’re 70 1/2 years of age or older. Since the gift will go directly to the charity, you can exclude the dollar amount of the gift from your taxable income up to $100,000 each year. However, …

High Inflation – How Long Will It Last?

In March 2022, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), the most common measure of inflation, rose at an annual rate of 8.5%, the highest level since December 1981.1 It’s not surprising that a Gallup poll at the end of March found that one out of six Americans considers inflation to be the most important problem facing the …

Tax-Advantaged 529 Accounts: What families need to consider

According to the College Board, the most recently published figures of the average annual cost of tuition and fees at a public university for a school year was $9,970 for in-state students and $25,620 for out-of-state students. The average cost of a private university was much higher at $34,740. Thankfully, much like tax-advantaged accounts designed to help us save for …

Navigating Market Volatility–or Not

Market volatility could spook even the most seasoned investor. If a precipitous week or two in the market has you ready to sell, you may want to reconsider your risk tolerance and asset allocation. Attempting to time the market by selling during a drop could often mean missing the prime point of re-entry—selling low and buying high or selling low …

6 Mental Health Tips for Investors

Investing is stressful. It takes sound mental decisions to weather the ups and downs that come with the markets and investing in general. Whether you are managing your financial portfolio or making investments on the side, staying mentally healthy may assist with good decision-making. Below are a few simple mental health tips to help investors remain centered. 1. Visualize the Results …

How To Measure Your Portfolio in Uncertain Times

Making sure your investments help you work towards your true life goals Too often during uncertain times, we inadvertently compare ourselves to the people around us – and that may lead us to make financial mistakes. In his book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, Dan Ariely remarks, “We don’t have an internal value meter that tells …