2019 | FIGuide

Financial Planning is Savvy, Not Scary

Oct 29 2019

Halloween is a good time to think about what really scares you and the ways you mask or hide behind old habits to avoid facing your financial fears. Maybe you just ignore bills as they arrive. Perhaps you avoid checking your bank balance, credit score, or investment portfolio because you aren’t sure you can handle what you might see. You might be someone that keeps using a credit card to the very limit, thinking that you will manage to pay it off somehow in the future.

Saving is savvy. People who manage to save money do so because they …

Smart Ways To Handle A Highly Appreciated Investment

Oct 27 2019

Let’s say you’re the lucky owner of a highly appreciated investment (stock, mutual fund) you’ve held for at least a year. What’s the best way to sell it? Or should you donate it? Here are several choices facing an early investor in Apple shares that I’ll call “Meg.”

Apple shares are valued at 246 per share. If Meg purchased the shares at 10, her gain is 236 dollars per share. If she owns 1,000 shares, that’s $236,000 of gains on $246,000 of proceeds. Her options include: 1) selling the shares outright and paying long-term capital gains, 2) gifting the shares …

Noise

Oct 25 2019

Every day we are bombarded with information. It can be difficult to wade through this sea of data and pick out the material that means anything to us. Of course, it doesn’t help that the existence of 24-hour news channels, social media outlets, and the scuttlebutt around the water cooler make it difficult to avoid.

So how do we filter all the noise and get only the information we really need? I’ll offer a few suggestions that have worked for me. Perhaps they can help you.

Turn off the news. This was one of the biggest mood lifters and time …

Which Women Face the Greatest Financial Risk in Retirement?

Oct 22 2019

Forbes.com discussed the surprising results of research from The Center for Retirement Research as reported by Prudential Financial:

“Women in their 50s who are at the most financial risk in retirement are those who are married and in two-income households.“

The research still found risk for women who were married in households with one income and those who had never been married but those who were married with two incomes had a higher percentage of risk.

The assumption is that a woman is better off if her household is earning more but that is not necessarily so. People …

Why your taxes went up

Oct 16 2019

Many of us are still pondering why we didn’t benefit from the alleged tax cut and worrying about what will happen this year, again. After all, tax brackets went down 3-4% for the first 4 tax brackets. But (and this continues this year) your taxable income most likely went up. Don’t expect that to improve for 2019. At a recent conference I attended, this was much discussed. Why?

You live in a blue state. Clever how that worked, huh? Because in many blue states and urban areas, your property taxes on a middle-class home probably exceeded the $10K cap. Add …

Archive - 2019