“Significant life events such as changing jobs, having children, getting married or divorced, illness, or death can and often do change a person’s financial goals. These events don’t always necessitate changes to a client’s portfolio, but they do prompt a discussion about their impact on the financial plan.”
Congratulations! You have four years of tuition, room and board stashed away in your 529 plan, and your child hasn’t even graduated from high school yet. Now you can breathe easily, right? Well … maybe, maybe not.
Like every parent, you want your children to become happy, self-sufficient adults.
The call came out of the blue that afternoon, with terror and tears coming through from my mother. “Your father says we don’t have money to spend and I need to return everything I bought for the last two weeks!” Sigh. This was not an unusual call.
What you can do now to avoid tax planning mistakes in the future.
Let’s face it: There is nothing fun about income taxes. They can be even more unpleasant when you have to cut a fat check to Uncle Sam in April because of a life or work event or change that occurred in the prior calendar year. Perhaps this situation was something you could have planned and prepared for in advance to soften the blow?
As financial planners we are often asked, “Will I be OK in retirement?” Before we even look at a client’s assets and expenses to answer that question, we ask them one ourselves, “What do you want your retirement to look like?”
You and your new spouse have just celebrated what will be one of the most special days of your lives – your wedding. You return home together after the celebration and walk in the door to find a not-so-romantic surprise awaiting you – your first bill as a married couple. Now what?
The silver generation, as they’re often called, faces a unique set of challenges in today’s fast-paced, ever-changing, tech-driven world. With the sudden proliferation of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the challenges have become even greater.
Globally, electric car sales have been increasing.
Growing up, I was fortunate to have had a financial role model in my mom. From the time I was very young, she taught me how important it is for a woman to take control of her finances. In the evenings, when we headed to bed, I remember watching my mother retreat to the den, where she stayed up late to organize files, pay bills, and try to make sense of the piles of documents that financial and insurance companies kept sending her. And, while my mother’s salary never matched my father’s, she believed it was important to work outside the home and always made sure she earned an income of her own.
