I love making resolutions. I make them at New Year’s, at mid-year, and in the Fall when we’re headed into the end of the year. Even if you’re not the type to make resolutions, here are three I hope you’ll consider: Move – Whether you hit the gym, run in the neighborhood, walk in the […]
Most people who live someplace even moderately interesting are likely to say they hate tourists. Tourists can be slow, plodding, don’t know where they are going. They drive too slowly and walk erratically. They gawk, mouths agape, and point at things. That they do these things is exactly why I love them. This past week […]
Five Things to Do Before You Move in Together TALK! Talk about your financial expectations in the relationship. Talk about how you are going to handle money. Who will pay for what? Will you split expenses fifty-fifty? Or according to how much each earns? Have you shared complete financial information? Or do you want to keep […]
Part of what a good financial advisor does is help you respond to changes in our economic environment. Sometimes that includes managing your money when markets are behaving badly. No advisor has a crystal ball, and financial markets will go up and down. When they go down, what can you do about it? You can […]
Once I was in a Starbucks with my friend Marie. We were both working at the coffee giant, in the Finance department, and using our employee discount for lattes. The people-watching was free. Marie grew up in Seattle and knew who-was-who in town. While we were talking she nodded to someone leaving the store carrying two […]
Colleague and sketch guy extraordinaire, Carl Richards, has a new book called The One-Page Financial Plan. My work is all about organizing, simplifying, and getting clarity around what really matters for you, and a one-page plan sounded awesome. As I often do, I test-drove this process myself and here’s what my One-Page Plan looks like: […]
SPOILER ALERT: This post contains several spoilers for AMC’s Mad Men series finale. For several nights last week I was catching up with the rest of you on the trials and travails of Mad Men in time for the series finale. For years I avoided watching the Emmy-award winning show: Who wanted to relive the […]
For those of you with income higher than the limits to contribute directly to a Roth IRA, you can still achieve tax-free savings through a “back door” Roth strategy: contributing first to a Traditional (non-deductible) IRA, followed by conversion to Roth. This “Contribute-then-Convert” strategy provides a tax efficient way to tax-diversify your accounts provided that […]
The uncertainty of future income tax rates makes planning for taxes more critical. Effective IRA planning is one way to achieve tax diversification to manage this uncertainty. As noted in Part 1 of this series, you may be limited in your ability to contribute directly to a Roth IRA. But you can use a “back door” […]
We never know what the future will hold, but it is clearly possible that tax rates in future years could be higher than those we have today. Between new taxes and higher rates, and the elimination of certain deductions, planning for tax diversification has become critical. Effective IRA planning is one way to achieve this. In Part […]