Sandwich Generation: Watch Out for These Costly Financial Pitfalls
The sandwich generation is generally defined as middle-aged individuals aged 40 to 60 (Generation X) sandwiched between aging parents, adult children, and grandchildren. Because members of the sandwich generation have been in the workforce for a while,...
The Founding Fathers’ Guide to Financial Independence
“A penny saved is a penny earned.” This nugget of financial wisdom from Benjamin Franklin, shared in the late 1700s, remains as relevant today as it was then. Despite living in a different era, our...
6 Tips for Small Business Owners to Promote Workplace Wellness
Work is stressful at times, and anxiety and stress among your employees may lead to performance issues and an overall lower productivity rate. By promoting wellness in the workplace, you may reduce employee burnout and...
Homeownership: What It Could Mean for Your Estate Plan
There is one thing that we will most likely all do one day: regardless of your status in society, position at work, or whether you are tall or short, you may pass down assets to...
Stocks Benefit From Solid Fundamental Foundation
April showers brought May flowers as markets placed greater importance on economic growth and corporate profits than the “higher for longer” interest rate messages from the Federal Reserve (Fed). In fact, the S&P 500 ended...
4 Tips for How to Set Up a 529 Plan to Benefit Your Business
529 education savings plans allow families to put away money for their children’s education without paying taxes on the earnings, as long as the withdrawals are used for qualified educational expenses and fall within the...
Tax Planning for Small Businesses
For small business owners, tax planning is crucial. Without proper planning, you may find a large portion of your hard-earned profits and savings eaten up by taxes that may not have been so high if...
The Importance of Choosing the Right Life Insurance Policy for Your Retirement Years
Life insurance has its benefits, and choosing a manageable life insurance policy is a critical step in your retirement planning. It can help your family cover end-of-life expenses, funeral and burial costs, and pay for...
Social Security Simplified: Common Questions and Answers
Most American workers who earn wage income and pay Social Security taxes via withholding receive Social Security benefits at some point in retirement. While the Social Security Administration has tried to make the process easier...
Why Your Credit Score Matters in Retirement
Regardless of the stage of life, your credit score is an essential component of your financial health when you’re in retirement. A consistently strong credit score can pave the way for greater confidence, easy loan...
Managing Your Money: Top Financial Habits for Women Entrepreneurs
Today, there are an estimated 12.3 million women-owned businesses. To give that some context, approximately 43% of entrepreneurs worldwide are women. A study conducted by Fidelity Investments showed that women are often less prepared for...
Pearls of Wisdom: Wealth Preservation for High-Net-Worth Women
Wealth preservation is essential for high-net-worth (HNW) individuals, but it warrants a gender-specific focus, too. Particularly for HNW women, understanding the complexities of wealth preservation is crucial. Whether due to inheritance, accomplishment in the corporate...
How to Help Your Children with Their Debt
Parenthood is full of highs and lows. If you have children, you probably know firsthand what it feels like to be in debt. Because you know how debt feels and you love your children, you...
Caring For Your Family Members While Preparing For Retirement
The newest generation of upcoming retirees is facing a more unique and prominent dilemma than past generations have experienced: caring for family members at the same time they’re preparing for retirement. There are plenty of...
Retiring Early As a Couple: A Financial Love Story
Retiring early as a couple is a goal shared by many, and if planned comprehensively, it may provide opportunities for travel, passion projects, and more quality time together. Retiring simultaneously can bring many benefits, such...
How to Estimate Your Quarterly Taxes as a Small Business Owner
For profitable small businesses, paying quarterly estimated taxes is part of the tax process to potentially avoid penalties at the end of your fiscal year. The quarterly taxes for a business are the estimated taxes...
Key Financial Wellness Metrics for Near-Retirement Individuals
As one approaches retirement, monitoring your financial situation by understanding your net worth and assessing the assets and resources needed to maintain a comfortable lifestyle throughout retirement is vital. This article explores eight key financial...
8 Financial Wellness Tips to Help Manage Generational Wealth
Asset management and financial wellness can help develop long-term confidence when wealth transfers from generation to generation. Understanding and implementing financial wellness techniques is essential for effectively sharing wealth with the next generations.
Financial Wellness Checklist for Small Business Owners
Financial wellness is easier to work toward when a business owner understands their economic outlook and has set financial goals to take them through the next 5 to 10 years.2 Striving toward financial wellness is...
Creating Financial Resolutions as a Couple
It’s a new year and the time of year when you want to make resolutions about your personal life, business life, and finances. It is the perfect time for couples to get together and set...
Year-End Tax Planning Considerations for Capital Gains
As the end of the year approaches, investors need to focus on tax-related considerations, particularly regarding capital gains. Year-end tax planning can help investors manage their overall tax liability while seeking to manage investments for...
Year-End Planning Considerations for Business Owners
The end of the year can be a chaotic time for business owners. It is a time to compile data, review the numbers, evaluate strengths and weaknesses, and determine growth opportunities for the future. A...
A Look at Tax Planning for Retirement
After years of saving and planning for their golden years, many people nearing retirement fail to consider the tax burden they may face on income they receive after they stop working. While you will likely...
Year-End Planning for Retirees
As we approach the last quarter of each year, it is a good time to plan for the next one. Year-end planning is especially important for existing retirees and those hoping to retire in the...
Year-end Tax Planning for High-Net-Worth Individuals
As the year’s end approaches, High-Net-Worth Individuals (HNWIs) must prepare for one of the most critical monetary tasks: year-end tax planning. Due to the nature of their holdings and dynamic financial situation, HNWIs often grapple...
Tax Planning for the Self-Employed
What is it? According to the IRS, you are self-employed if you carry on a trade or business as a sole proprietor, as an independent contractor, as a member of a partnership, or if you...
A Guide to Social Security for Seniors
Whether you’re nearing retirement age, have a significant disability or are struggling to meet your basic needs, you may be entitled to Social Security. This federal program includes several different components that can provide valuable financial...
What Should Women Entrepreneurs Know About Small Business Grants?
One of the biggest challenges for any new business involves maintaining liquidity and consistent cash flow. Many entrepreneurs take only a minimal salary—if any at all—during the first few years their business operates, choosing instead...
Making Decisions About Medicare
As you near age 65, you may start to think about Medicare. How do you sort through your coverage options? When (and how) do you enroll? And what if you have other health insurance? Here...
High Net-Worth Individuals: Are You Missing Opportunities in Your Financial Planning?
High Net-Worth executives and those that have been self-employed, can experience common problems in their financial planning journey. Often, they have missed opportunities in their financial planning because they haven’t planned adequately for their retirement...
Women and Estate Planning Basics
When it comes to estate planning, women have unique concerns. The fact is that women live an average of 5.0 years longer than men.* That’s important because it means that there’s a greater chance that...
Family Wealth Transfer Planning: Keeping It In the Family Through Generational Giving
You have worked hard for years and accumulated wealth. You earned this money through your job, investing, and saving, and you want to preserve it for yourself and to take care of the family you...
Ten Things You Must Know About Medicare
Heading into your retirement years brings a slew of new topics to grapple with, and one of the most maddening may be Medicare. Figuring out when to enroll, what to enroll in and what coverage...
Women and Money: Taking Control of Your Finances
As a woman, you have financial needs that are unique to your situation in life. Perhaps you would like to buy your first home. Maybe you need to start saving for your child’s college education....
Acquaint Grown Children with Your Financial Affairs
As your children get older, it may be beneficial to share financial, medical, and estate planning information with them. Awareness of this information, and knowing where to locate documents, can help your children take appropriate...
The Sandwich Generation – Caring for Parents and Children Simultaneously
As the population continues to age, the “sandwich generation” is caught in the middle, supporting both their parents and their children, whether financially, physically, or emotionally
Why Business Owners Need Financial Planning
Regardless of the income a business generates, the ages of the owners, or how many employees it has, a business financial plan can help plan for future and unexpected events.
3 Tips for Preserving Wealth in Your Golden Years
After spending so much of your life saving for retirement, it can be challenging to transition from depositing funds to withdrawing them. With some careful planning and ongoing maintenance, you can maintain your lifestyle and...
Money Mistakes that Young Professionals Make
As you enter the workforce and start to earn a regular income, it’s easy to get carried away with newfound financial freedom. However, this can often lead to costly money mistakes that can have long-lasting...
Aging Parents and Money
Your parents’ ability to manage their own finances may decline as they age and helping them with money matters is a sensitive issue you should approach carefully. Here are some tips to help you navigate...
Unused 529 Plan Funds: 5 Spending Options to Consider
Sometimes, 529 plans have unused funds after the beneficiary graduates or decides to discontinue their education. Whatever the reason for having unused 529 plan funds, here are five spending options to consider
Money Milestones: 4 Financial Goals for Older Individuals
Striving for financial betterment should not end when you hit retirement. You should continue to work toward new financial goals every year or every decade to manage the freedom you worked so hard to achieve.
Four Things Women Need to Know about Social Security
Ever since a legal secretary named Ida May Fuller received the first retirement benefit check in 1940, women have been counting on Social Security to provide much-needed retirement income. Social Security provides other important benefits...
Retiring as a Small-Business Owner: What to Know Before You Go
The thought of retiring may be intimidating for anyone—but if you own your own business, handing your “baby” to new owners might be enough to stop you in your tracks. What might you do to...
Five Ways SECURE 2.0 Changes the Required Minimum Distribution Rules
The SECURE Act 2.0 legislation has changed the landscape when it comes to RMDs (required minimum distributions) – but what does this actually mean for those planning for retirement? Find out on our blog.
When Changing Jobs, Rollovers May Offer Benefits
Changing jobs often can have many benefits, but it also has one potential downside — retirement accounts that are spread across different companies.
Thinking About Working in Retirement? Here’s What to Consider
Social Security income planning is complicated. It isn’t just a matter of when to collect Social Security retirement benefits and how your monthly payment may be impacted by working. It’s also about tapping other available...
Women’s Financial Empowerment: The Challenge of Financial Wellness
March is #WomensHistoryMonth, a month-long celebration of female empowerment. In this blog we discuss some specific steps that women of all ages and all stages of life may take to manage their financial future.
Saving Tips for Younger Adults
Today, younger adults face a variety of challenges in their pursuit of financial independence. Here are five financial tips to help you manage your personal finances and prepare for your future.
Healthcare in Retirement
Healthcare in retirement is available from many sources – government programs, supplemental health insurance, military benefits, retirement communities, and nursing homes. Depending on your needs, you may use a number of these resources in retirement.
Entrepreneurship and Financial Risk: What You Need to Know
Entrepreneurs tend to be natural risk-takers but this doesn’t mean committing to uncompensated risk. On our blog, we discuss some financial risks an entrepreneur may face and how they may be mitigated
Women – Moving Forward Financially After the Loss of a Spouse
Becoming a widow at any age can be one of the most difficult challenges a woman faces. Not only is there the emotional loss of a spouse, but also the task of handling everything —...
Tax Prep Checklist: Everything You Need to Be Ready for Tax Season
It’s never too early to get started on tax preparation, so why not start today? Check out our article on everything you’ll need to be ready for tax season.
What You Need to Know About the SECURE Act 2.0
With the signing of the Omnibus Appropriations package into law, both employees and employers can take advantage of more than 90 new provisions aimed at creating opportunities to create or modify workplace retirement plans and...
Trusts and Year-End Planning: A Checklist
The end of the year is a great time to review your trust document, update information, buy or sell assets or even cancel your trust if you choose. Here is a checklist to help you...
5 Year-End Tax Planning Questions to Ask Your Financial Professional
There are many tax planning moves you can make before December 31 to reduce your owed taxes, but how do you know which ones are available to you? Here are five year-end tax planning questions...
How Financial Planning Can Help Prepare for LTC Costs
With the cost of long-term care (LTC) increasing year over year, considering how the costs of long-term LTC will impact your financial plan is essential. Here are three tips that may help make the cost...
Now Might Be a Good Time for a Roth Conversion
One silver lining in the current bear market is that this could be a good time to convert assets from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA.
Resources for Women-Owned Small Businesses
There are many professional organizations that understand the challenges that women-owned small businesses face and offer resources to help provide assistance.
Advanced Estate Planning Concepts for Women
So if you are married, you’ll also probably have the last word about the final disposition of all of the assets you’ve accumulated during your marriage. You’ll want to consider whether these concepts and strategies...
Teaching Your Teen about Money
Your teen is becoming more independent, but still needs plenty of advice from you. With more money to spend and more opportunities to spend it, your teen can easily get into financial trouble. So before...
Tips for Women Who Are Living in the Sandwich Generation
The day-to-day demands of caring for an aging parent and children can put a tremendous strain — both emotional and financial — on the primary caregiver.
Planning for Marriage – Financial Tips for Women
As you are planning for marriage, it’s important to consider how this big life event will impact your finances. Careful planning can increase the likelihood that you’ll have financial success as you enter this new...
The Joys and Financial Challenges of Parenthood
As your children grow from infancy to adulthood, you try to protect them. You want to make sure that they are financially secure, but meeting expenses can be challenging.
4 Costly 529 Plan Mistakes To Avoid
For many parents, 529 college savings accounts may be a way to invest for your child’s future while perhaps saving money on taxes in some states. However, these 529 accounts have some challenges that may...
Grow Old with Me – Live (Almost) Tax-Free
While the income of older Americans may be freer from encumbrances of children or work- related expenses, the expenses of daily living must still be planned for cautiously. Income must be managed appropriately so that...
A Beginner’s Guide to Investing After Retirement
You may be retired and considering investing some of your retirement nest egg. Depending on your situation, it is crucial that investing in the stock market, bond market, or other investments does not jeopardize your...
Wealth-Transfer Taxes Can Take a Toll on Small Businesses
Under the current estate tax laws, there are several steps a business owner can take to help prevent his or her business from being liquidated to raise cash to help pay estate taxes.
3 Moments in Life Where You Should Consider Consulting a Financial Professional
We discuss three common situations in life when it’s a good idea to consult a financial professional.
What Role Does Social Security Play in Your Retirement Income Strategy?
As you near retirement, it’s likely you’ll have many questions about Social Security. How much will your retirement benefit be? When should you apply? Will earnings from a part-time job affect your benefit?
Tax Planning and Financial Planning Go Hand in Hand
With tax season coming to an end, it’s the ideal time to use this year’s tax return to help update your financial plan. If you’re in the group of one in four Americans who do...
3 Estate Planning Tips for Small-Business Owners
Having a solid estate and succession plan in place may be crucial to your business’s long-term success. If you are incapable of making business decisions, or if you unexpectedly pass away without an estate plan,...
Working During Retirement
Planning on working during retirement? If so, you’re not alone. An increasing number of employees nearing retirement plan to work at least some period of time during their retirement years.
America’s Changing Vision of Retirement
Retirement planning is a primary reason for long-term saving, and when people think about retirement, finances are often the focus. However, it is important to also look at the nonfinancial aspects of transitioning from the...
What You Should Know About Contributing to an IRA at Every Age
A traditional IRA offers a great way to shield income from taxation while boosting your retirement accounts. Meanwhile, a Roth IRA can let you pay tomorrow’s taxes today.
RMD Roundup: A Few Key Reminders About Required Minimum Distributions
With the holidays here, now is the time to get into the giving spirit and help to change others’ lives for the better. Whether you are looking to make a difference in a specific person’s...
Solo Opportunities: One-Person 401(k)s
If you are a small business owner with no employees, the one-person 401(k) may offer a suitable combination of benefits that can help you save more for retirement.
Understanding the Estate Planning Process
A well-structured estate plan can be invaluable. Through it you can control the distribution of your assets and possessions, as well as name guardians for your children or plan care for other dependents.
Financial Considerations for Working Parents
Though working parents make up one of the largest demographic groups in the country, they face many challenges—from the cost of childcare to inconvenient scheduling issues.
How To Financially Prepare for a Disaster
By taking some steps toward disaster preparedness, you may gain some security that helps you set these worries aside.