Social Security Benefits Are Increasing. How Will It Affect Your Taxes?
Inflation has been hitting everyone’s wallets all year long. With the cost of everything from fuel to pasta going up, a 40-year high in the cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) for social security sounds like a good thing. But is that all there is to it? The answer is complicated. For those already retired or considering retiring […]
Surveying Alternative Investment Options
Investing can take many forms, and an investment plan often changes throughout your financial journey. But one of the core principles of building a portfolio remains, regardless of your investment strategy’s time horizon, risk profile, or goal. Diversification can help smooth out investment returns over time by allocating assets that react differently to the same […]
Your Guide to Year-End Charitable Giving
Whatever your reason for giving this year, it’s important to know how your charitable contributions can impact your financial plan. In fact, being strategic and intentional with your charitable contributions can create tax benefits for both you and your chosen charity. Here’s how. Research Charitable Organizations Maximize the impact your monetary donation can have by […]
Investment Strategy: The Impact of Inflation
You can’t read about investment for very long without hearing about inflation. The concept may be a little difficult to understand, but at its most basic, it comes down to the following: prices rise over time, causing your money to lose some purchasing power. If you could buy a car in 1980 for $5,500 and […]
SECURE Act 2.0: An Overview
In the final days of 2022, Congress passed a new set of retirement rules designed to make it easier to contribute to retirement plans and access those funds earmarked for retirement. The law is called SECURE 2.0, and it’s a follow-up to the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act, passed in 2019. […]
Recession, Recovery, or Both?
The markets are starting to feel like Groundhog Day. Almost every month, it’s a cadence of employment numbers, CPI, Fed, — market reacts. With inflation starting to trend down, even if only slightly, optimism has been making a comeback. That means moving our analogy to another charming rodent. It seems like the Fed is playing […]
Does the 4% Rule Hold Up?
One of the biggest challenges of planning for retirement is figuring out how much you can spend during your golden years. Retirement income planning requires careful preparation, and budgeting. A popular retirement income planning guideline is the 4% rule, which suggests that you live off 4% of your total investments during the first year of […]
March Madness in Banking
The monthly Fed/CPI/Employment headline-market movement industrial complex was rudely shouldered aside in the last week by a much bigger and faster-moving story. While the fallout from bank failures will take a while to unravel, and the impact on markets will likely be ongoing, the bigger picture wraps right back to the Federal Reserve. But first, […]
April Market Commentary All’s Well That Ends Well? Not So Fast…
March Recap and April Outlook Equity markets, using the S&P 500 index return as a proxy, at first glance appear to have shrugged off the mid-month drama of multiple domestic, regional bank failures and the forced sale of a massive Swiss bank. Attention was temporarily diverted from the economy’s star attractions, CPI and the Fed, […]
Financial Capability Beyond April
April is Financial Capability Month, an initiative that started in 2004 as “Financial Literacy” and has evolved over the last 20 years. The rebrand reflects a trend of taking a more active approach to finances and a focus on having more control over decision-making as you move through your financial journey. As you become […]
