Jun 2025
Two tax management strategies that use your investments to reduce taxes are tax loss harvesting and Roth conversions. High net worth investors (Accredited Investors) may also want to explore Investment Gains harvesting as a tax management technique. This is particularly effective if during your transition into retirement you are temporarily in a lower tax bracket. […]
read more...May 2025
Broadly speaking most people are primarily in a working mode or a retired mode. During work years they (hopefully) save (“asset accumulation”) and in retirement they use their investments to create retirement income (“asset withdrawal”). Before retiring, their main source of income was work. After retiring, their main cash flow (“income”) will come from Social […]
read more...Apr 2025
Except for U.S. Equities, the widely followed asset classes* were up in Q1 2025. The notable positive performance was from Non-US stocks (Up 7%) and commodities (Up 8.9%). This underlines the importance of having sensibly diversified portfolios for the long term. Of course, the first week of April upended all these trends as financial markets […]
read more...Mar 2025
So many savvy people have concluded that it is wasteful to spend their life carefully tending to their investments and retirement nest egg, only to have their wishes and desires mishandled when they pass on. Their solution: Estate planning. Here are some thoughts to get you prepared for a meeting with your potential attorney. And, […]
read more...Jan 2025
The widely followed asset classes* were up in 2024, despite a lackluster Q4. 2024 was strong for stock markets and exceptionally strong for the Broad US markets (SP500), for a second year in a row. So… what should investors expect from their Equity investments in 2025? How will markets react to the new president […]
read more...Dec 2024
The worst investment and tax planning ideas for 2024 will be those you get in 2025! It’s too late to do much about them. As Ben Franklin quipped “Its better to strike a straight blow with a crooked stick than spend time trying to straighten it out first”. So here is a baker’s dozen checklist […]
read more...Nov 2024
Many believe that Medicare covers all healthcare expenses. It does not. And, health care expenses are significant enough that they warrant special attention as people transition into retirement. First, health care expenses are a large dollar amount. Second, they may come as a surprise because many people are not used to paying for health care […]
read more...Oct 2024
All widely followed asset classes (Cash, bonds, equities, real estate, and commodities) were up in Q3 as well as year to date. 2024 has been a strong stock market year to date, prompting questions like: “Will this outperformance of stocks last?” Or, “is the market set for a crash?” and similar sentiments. Clearly, people have […]
read more...Jul 2024
The investment markets continued to make gains in Q2. Four of the five asset classes we follow were higher in Q2. In Q2 the Dow Jones index hit 40,000 for the first time. It’s also noteworthy that the Dow is not heavily weighted by the “magnificent seven” and technology stocks. The media headlines focused on […]
read more...Jun 2024
Over the years, our investment portfolios can become needlessly complicated. But, they need not be – we believe that streamlined portfolios can be highly effective. And, there is little evidence to show that complicated portfolios perform consistently better than a streamlined portfolio. Streamlined portfolios have fewer “moving parts” which also allows investors to: • See […]
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