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Generational Financial Planning Within The Kiddie Tax Limits

Jun 21 2017

The kiddie tax (or “Tax for Certain Children Who Have Unearned Income” as the IRS calls it) is a set of tax laws which force unearned income over a small amount to be taxed at the higher tax rate of the parents. For 2017, the kiddie tax limits allows $1,050 to be received without being taxed and the next $1,050 to be taxed at the child’s rate, while any unearned income in excess of $2,100 is taxed at the parent’s top marginal rate.

This tax can cause the children of wealthy parents to lose any preferential treatment of qualified dividend …

Are your monthly statements helpful?

Jun 20 2017

You may receive portfolio performance reports every three months or so—a form of transparency that financial planning professionals introduced at a time when the typical brokerage statement was impossible to decipher. It might surprise you to know that most professionals think there is actually little value to any quarterly performance information, other than to reassure you that you actually do own a diversified portfolio of investments. It’s very difficult to know if you’re staying abreast of the market, and for most of us, that’s not really relevant anyway.

Why?

The only way to know if your investments are “beating the …

Give Your Investments Time to Grow

Jun 20 2017

You may have heard talk of ‘helicopter parents,’ to refer to parents who won’t give their children space to grow because they are constantly hovering over them and perhaps even trying to do school assignments for them. Well, as Fee-Only financial advisor Margaret R. McDowell explains in “Don’t hover over your investments,’” you may be a ‘helicopter’ investor if you are not giving your investments time and space to grow.

As McDowell explains, all of out technological advances may be hurting our investment portfolio if we use the computer and phone apps to continuously check on our investments…

Financial Planning Lessons from the Founding Fathers

Jun 13 2017

Money Lessons of America’s Founding Fathers offers the kind of financial information about our country’s early leaders that may have been missing from your history textbook. Whether you can relate to the Founding Fathers or not, you can learn from their financial planning practices (or lack thereof).

Alexander Hamilton is all the rage these days because of the hit musical about his life. It is true that he may not have been given the credit he deserved for the creativity he showed in building our nation’s financial structure but it is also true that he did better for the country …

Morgan Stanley Is A Terrible Choice

Jun 13 2017

Recently Mason Braswell wrote an article entitled “Morgan Stanley Purges Vanguard Mutual Funds” which opens,

Morgan Stanley is slamming the door on selling Vanguard Group mutual funds, the latest attempt by a big brokerage firm to retaliate against the low-cost fund giant for refusing to pay for access to its salesforce.

The article goes on to say that Morgan Stanley requires other mutual fund companies to pay $250,000 to $850,000 annually for “shelf space.” This pay-to-play model of selecting a customer’s mutual fund options is so obviously not in the client’s best interest as to make it remarkable …

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