Spring is just around the corner, so our minds turn to cleaning up and getting ready for new growth. Moreover, tax documents are arriving daily, bringing a fresh focus to simplifying our financial lives. Here are a few ideas to make your financial life better this year, by cleaning up credit cards, bank, retirement, and …
Investing in 2021: Will the Market Be Up, Down, or Sideways?
Stock valuations are high by historical standards. At the start of every year, experts come out in force to predict the direction of the stock market in the coming year. For most investors, the best strategy is to have an investment strategy that matches your personal situation and stick with it. This is easier said …
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Tax Planning: Asset Location Basics
Federal and State Income Taxes are often the largest expense for a household. Therefore, we recommend paying regular attention to tactics that will minimize each year’s taxes, as well as strategies to minimize lifetime taxes. The rules about these accounts, and therefore the strategies to use them, are many and varied. In today’s post we …
Real Estate: Should I Own a Home to Rent Out?
Image credit: decoist.com Whenever the market has a good run, as it has lately, people start thinking it may be overvalued and ripe for a fall. Thoughts turn next to other forms of investments, such as real estate or more esoteric alternatives like options, oil or other natural resources, or precious metals. Real estate is …
On Human Nature and the Challenge of Accumulating Wealth – part 6 of a series
Why do so many people experience problems in managing their finances? As Tolstoy famously wrote in his novel Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. And so it is with our financial lives. Any one aspect of a family’s finances that is not working well can …
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Simplicity – part 5 of a series
At the beginning of the series, I wrote that most of us give little thought to where we are going in life and how we will get there. We let others around us set our goals for us, because that is how life starts out in childhood. With the coming of adulthood, we are supposedly …