13 Feb 2023

New Rules Could Mean New Strategies

I’d like to meet the person in Washington who comes up with the silly names for laws just for the purpose of creating a catchy acronym. Case in point is the newest iteration of the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement, better known as the Secure 2.0 Act. The Act has a number of provisions that raise financial planning issues for a lot of people. For example, were you… Read More

7 Nov 2022

We Planned For This

Since this bear market started, I’ve concluded several articles by saying that we’ve planned for this. When I say this, I don’t mean that we predicted what would happen this year or why – we didn’t. I mean that we’ve planned for this in two ways. First, we knew that the returns this year were possible, and second, we’ve included bad returns in our financial planning models to estimate the… Read More

3 May 2021

Biden’s Tax Proposal

President Joe Biden outlined his tax proposals in his address to Congress on April 28th and issued an 18-page fact sheet, which can be found by clicking here. There are many proposals, but here are some of the items of note for individual investors: The top tax bracket would increase to 39.6 percent from 37.0 percent. In 2021, the top bracket began at $523,601 for single individuals and $628,301 for… Read More

4 May 2020

6 Things To Do (plus one bonus) If You’ve Finished Netflix

I’m a big fan of projects and of staying busy. Just ask my husband  – he’ll  tell you I have lists for lists (including a never-ending “honey-do” section for him). With spending more time at home these days, my project list is booming. I generally stay busy as a working mom with two young boys but this quarantine has forced me to reevaluate my lists. Some things (like homeschooling) were… Read More

15 Apr 2019

Why Hire a Financial Advisor?

Over the years, most of the Daily Insights that I’ve written are about investing, financial planning or, less frequently, economics. I don’t think I’ve ever written about the people hire financial advisors – mostly, because I can’t come up with much of an answer other than a generic statement about ‘peace of mind’ or describe why my most recent client hired me. Now, though, I’ll have a better answer, thanks… Read More

25 Feb 2019

When Warren Buffett Speaks, I Listen

Every year, the investors and the financial media eagerly await Warren Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders, and this year was no exception. I didn’t start reading them until four or five years ago, although I once read book that reorganized his letters by topic rather than chronology.  Each year, I like to think that I’ll go back and read his letters, which can be found here, on Berkshire’s hilariously antiquated website – but I… Read More

10 Sep 2018

How Much Will Retirement Cost? The WSJ May be Wrong

One of my favorite writers and thinkers is a behavioral economist named Dan Ariely. I heard him speak at a conference years ago, read his first book Predictably Irrational and am about half way through his most recent book, Dollars and Sense. It may be a little hard to tell from the photo, but if you look closely, you can see that his face is disfigured from a third-degree burn… Read More

6 Feb 2018

Market Summary: Extended Analysis

The S&P 500 lost more than four percent, the largest single day loss for the index since August, 2011.  The losses started out modestly through lunchtime, but accelerated sharply in the early afternoon. At one point, as seen in the Bloomberg screenshot below, the S&P 500 spiked higher, but then lost back everything that was earned in the final hour or so of trading. Although we don’t know exactly what… Read More

16 Jan 2018

New Tax Law, New Tax Strategies

One of the key elements of the new tax law is that it nearly doubles the standard deduction from $12,700 to $24,000 for joint filers (for simplicity, I’m not addressing individuals or heads of households, although the same concepts apply). Historically, about 70 percent of people used the standard deduction and that number is expected to jump to 90 percent under the new law. For the 20 percent that will… Read More

20 Nov 2017

The Bucket Approach

In my mind, the word ‘bucket’ should be banned from the investment industry because it brings to mind the ‘bucket shops’ where unlicensed hacks in boiler rooms cajole unwitting investors into pump and dump schemes. Despite my view about this word in this industry, it seems to be what we as a group have settled on for a particular retirement planning strategy (I’m not a fan of smart beta either,… Read More