May 15, 2020 By: John Zeltmann In the midst of a market downturn like we've seen over the past couple of months, and with the daily bombardment of bad economic news, it's easy to think the downtrend will continue. Looking at one's retirement plan over several months rather than several years, it's easy to feel despair, especially during times like...
March 31, 2020 In late March 2020, Congress passed a $2 trillion stimulus package called the CARES Act - the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act 1. The primary features of the Act include boosts to unemployment insurance payouts as well as some changes to retirement accounts that should help ease the financial burdens currently faced by many Americans...
March 31, 2020 Whose life hasn’t been dramatically altered over the past month? We’ve seen entire industries decimated. Careers upended. Lives lost. Common daily occurrences transformed. Normal, everyday behaviors are now deemed risky. The term social distancing has been added to the lexicon. How easy it is to go on and on. I’m awestruck by the fact that here in...
February 15, 2020 Over the past few years, a lot has been written about the transfer of inter-generational wealth. The premise is that the Baby Boomers – or even the parents of the Baby Boomers – have amassed significant sums of money that they will not spend during their lifetime. Thus, these mini-fortunes will presumably pass on to their heirs...
February 15, 2020 By: John Zeltmann Recently I received a very helpful email from Social Security, filled with tips on how to avoid scams related to my Social Security account. Everything in the email seemed legit: "If you get a suspicious call from Social Security, hang up and report it!" (A helpful link was even provided so I could easily...
February 15, 2020 In this instance, the word “sky” refers to the stock market, and all that happens when markets fall. As we haven’t had a so-called bear market (i.e., a loss in value of more than 20%) in more than ten years – though we came within a whisker in the fourth quarter of 2018 – there are undoubtedly...
December 31, 2019 While shopping recently, I was asked by a cashier how much she would owe in taxes on an IRA she liquidated. It was an interesting question on many levels. Aside from the fact that I don’t even know her last name (nor does she know mine, though she knows I do something with ‘money’ for a living)...
December 31, 2019 Based on the daily news, it seems that there are aren’t enough warnings when it comes to financial crimes against the elderly. While some of the scams seem so obvious (Did you ever knowingly enter a lottery in Nigeria?), we react differently when we’re in the moment. You’re distracted, the phone rings, you hear the word ‘police,’...
December 31, 2019 As clients know, we use several mutual funds offered by Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) when we build investment portfolios. Their passively managed funds are based on extensive research, that claims to identify certain company-specific attributes that lead to better performance over extended periods. This article 1 by DFA, ‘Key Questions for the Long-Term Investor,’ seeks to answer...
By John Zeltmann December 24, 2019 Congress recently passed one of the most significant pieces of retirement planning legislation in a decade: The Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act ("the SECURE Act"). The new law changes how we plan for our clients' financial lives, so we thought it would be helpful to summarize the key implications. Some highlights...