These estate planning tools may also help in exit planning. Discover a pair of underappreciated exit planning vehicles. Charitable remainder unit trusts (CRUTs) and charitable remainder annuity trusts (CRATs) are commonly seen as estate planning tools. What frequently goes unseen is their value in exit planning for business owners. Does it look like you will [...]
Corporations are transferring pension liabilities to third parties. Where does this leave retirees? A new phrase has made its way into the contemporary financial jargon: derisking. Anyone with assets in an old-school pension plan should know what that phrase signifies. The derisking trend began in 2012. In that year, Ford Motor Co. made a controversial [...]
Developing a better budgeting process may be the biggest step toward that goal. Where does your money go? If you find yourself asking that question from time to time, it may relate to cash flow within your household. Having a cash flow management system may be instrumental in restoring some financial control. It is harder [...]
Developing a better budgeting process may be the biggest step toward that goal. Where does your money go? If you find yourself asking that question from time to time, it may relate to cash flow within your household. Having a cash flow management system may be instrumental in restoring some financial control. It is harder [...]
A “not-to-do” list for the new year & years to follow. How are your money habits? Are you getting ahead financially, or does it feel like you are running in place? It may come down to behavior. Some financial behaviors promote wealth creation, while others lead to frustration. Certainly other factors come into play when [...]
It may seem like a tall order, but it can be accomplished. Plan to put yourself steps ahead of your peers. If you have a young, growing family, no doubt your to-do list is pretty long on any given day. Beyond today, you are probably working on another kind of to-do list for the long [...]
The clock is ticking ... is opportunity knocking? If you hurry, you might realize some nice tax breaks before 2014 runs out. Once again, Congress has acted at the eleventh hour to bring back some expired tax perks. H.R. 5771, the Tax Increase Prevention Act, was passed and signed into law by President Obama on [...]
How long will it last? Who wins & loses from it? On the New York Mercantile Exchange, a barrel of light sweet crude is currently worth well under $60. Prices have dropped more than 25% in a month and almost 45% year-over-year. What is behind this freefall? How long will prices keep dropping, and who [...]
Remember that the major indices don’t represent the entirety of Wall Street. The S&P 500 is up about 10% YTD, why aren’t I? If your investments are lagging the broad benchmark, you may be asking that very question. The short answer is that the S&P is not the overall market (and vice versa). Each year, [...]
Here's a brief excerpt from the full research report from LPL Research: Since the wind-down of the Great Recession in early 2009, the latest economic expansion has certainly delivered the goods and rewarded investors’ mailboxes with six consecutive calendar years of positive gains for stocks. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night” has kept a [...]
