Category: financial planning retirement
The Graduates’ Trillion Dollar Problem
Over the past few decades, student debt has transformed from a tool for accessing higher education to a significant obstacle preventing young people from accumulating wealth and saving towards retirement. According to a February 2017 report published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York,...
An Asset Manager Embraces Financial Planning
I have been investing other people’s money for over 36 years. As most of my clients are either saving for retirement or living off of their retirement savings and/or trust accounts, my overriding goal has been to build durable, income-producing portfolios that will enable my clients to live off of...
Primer on Individual Taxes
Tax planning to minimize tax liability and maximize after-tax returns starts with an understanding of Form 1040, the tax return filed annually by individual taxpayers. My goal in this article is to give the reader a “primer” on Form 1040 and the key considerations that will impact your tax...
How Much Do I Need for Retirement?
Legg Mason posed the question “how much do you need for retirement?” to a group of “mass affluent” investors (aged 40 – 75 with more than $200,000 in investable assets). Those surveyed said they would need at least $2.5 million to maintain their current standard of living. According to the...
Self-Funding A College Education
Funding a child’s or grandchild’s education is a high-priority savings goal for many families. This article will answer a few important questions:
Rising Equity Glidepath in Retirement
Conventional wisdom in the investment advisory world has typically been that retirees should gradually reduce their equity exposure during retirement. One popular rule of thumb is that equity allocations should be annually rebalanced based on a formula of 100 less the retiree’s age. For example, a...
The Gen-X 401(k) Millionaire
Generation X—those born between 1965 and 1978—is known as the “401(k) generation.” They entered the workforce about the time that 401(k) plans were being introduced, and started their own retirement savings earlier than prior generations (the average age to start saving for retirement was 27). They...
Advice to My Children
In our last newsletter, I wrote about the investment advice that I learned from my father. In this issue, I will pass on the investment advice that I would like to share with my three children in the hope that it might also benefit the children and grandchildren of some of our Fiduciary Group...
Coming Of Age During The Great Recession
The financial crisis and associated market volatility has caused a lot of people to lose confidence in the stock market. No group appears to have been more scarred by 2008, however, than the Millennials—the 21-36 year olds who “came of age” as investors over the last 10+ years. This chart tracks...