Tax Rules When Selling Your Home
How the gains from the sale of a primary residence are taxed has changed in recent years. If you have recently sold your home, or are considering doing so, you may want to be aware of these [...]
Tax Deductions You Won’t Believe
While Americans are entitled to take every legitimate deduction to manage their taxes, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) places limits on your creativity. Here are some examples of deductions from the IRS that were permitted and some [...]
Systematic Withdrawals in Retirement
Many of us grew up with the concept that making regular, periodic contributions to our retirement account was a sound investment strategy. The idea was that, in a fluctuating market, regularly investing a set amount would enable [...]
Stop Wasting Money
Benjamin Franklin once said, “a penny saved is a penny earned.”¹ The modern upgrade to that observation might be that $100 not spent is more like $143.² One way to find the money to meet your spending [...]
Spotting Credit Trouble
American households with credit card balances carry an average debt of $16,425.¹ The wise use of credit is a critical skill in today’s world. Used unwisely, credit can rapidly turn from a useful tool to a crippling [...]
Perspectives: Summer 2019 Edition
Perspectives: Summer 2019 Edition Welcome Summer! Now that spring cleaning is behind us, we head into the warmer months which happen to be some of the busiest and most exciting times of the year. In our newsletter, [...]
Social Security: Two Benefit Strategies Eliminated
With the passage of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, two strategies to potentially maximize Social Security benefit payments were eliminated. An Overview Prior to the budget’s passage, married couples had two strategies to help maximize their [...]
Social Security: The Elephant in the Room
For most Americans, Social Security has represented nothing more than some unavoidable payroll deduction with the positively cryptic initials of “FICA” and “OASDI” (Federal Insurance Contributions Act and Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance). It hinted at [...]
Revising Estate Strategy Assumptions
When the rules of the game change, tactics should follow in response to the new landscape. While estate tax exemptions have ridden an uncertain roller coaster in recent years, the rules appear to be stabilizing with the [...]
Retirement Income and the Traditional Portfolio
Taking withdrawals from a traditional portfolio exposes fixed-income investors to “sequence of returns” danger. In other words, experiencing negative returns early in retirement can deplete your portfolio more quickly than you planned and potentially undermine the sustainability [...]