I’ve committed my career to helping people plan for retirement. During the planning phase, I help individuals imagine their ideal retirement scenario and then create a comprehensive financial plan that makes that imagined scenario a retirement. But the thing about life is that it rarely—if ever—goes as planned. Over the past two years, I have…
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Optimism And Pessimism Require The Same Amount Of Energy. Choose Wisely It’s the time of year when I traditionally write an article about goal setting and how to make this year your best year ever financially. The news headlines tell me that I should be writing an article about recession and how to protect your…
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Parents are masterful at assessing the potential consequences associated with giving a gift. Gifting your child a baseball bat increases the likelihood of a broken window, gifting a child a drum set decreases the possibility of a quiet night at home, and gifting a puppy means, well, now you have a puppy to care for…
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Taking a loan against your 401k plan may feel like a safe option in situations of financial need. A loan against your 401k is not a traditional loan in the sense that there is no lender (they are your assets) and the loan is not measured against your credit score. Those two benefits do not…
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If you have been asked to serve as an executor of an estate or, worse, were surprised with the honor of being an executor, here are five things to consider before taking on the responsibility that has been asked of you. 1. Your Own Financial Knowledge. As executor, in addition to making potentially emotionally charged…
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Financial Planning In Times Of Uncertainty In 2020, the word unprecedented was thrown around like confetti. It found its way into everything. Two years later, a different kind of ‘un’ rules our world—uncertainty. Big questions loom in the minds of a lot of investors and the answers have implications on their financial plans and their…
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If you and your spouse have come to the conclusion that divorce is your only path forward there are some practical steps that you can take to make sure that the assets that are now held together are legally retained by the right individuals. Build a Team of Professionals Divorce is an emotional topic, there…
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Cue David Bowie’s 1972 hit song, Changes. You are probably familiar with the opening lyric of the chorus; “Ch-ch-ch-changes.” You may not be familiar with the rest of the lyrics and that’s perfectly fine because they don’t make a lot of sense and they are in no way relevant to the topic of the IRS…
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Do you remember the choose your own adventure books we read as kids? In the stories, the protagonist would face a choice and you as the reader would make that decision for them and read on to see how it affected the outcome. Does the knight battle the dragon or flee to safety? Your decision…
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Miss Mary Mack Mack Mack. All dressed in black black black. With silver buttons buttons buttons All down her back back back. If you finished this rhyme in your head then you probably spent a lot of your childhood recesses like me, in the double Dutch line. These little rhymes served an important purpose in…
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