Super-fast blog today! If you are looking to generate regular payments out of your portfolio and find yourself in a quandary of what securities to sell, try this: Turn off the dividend/interest reinvestment feature in your mutual funds. Those distributions will go to cash and can build up your liquid position without selling shares. Caution: …
Retirement in America is not for wimps. For most people, gone are the days when you hang up your tools one day and then go home to a steady pension for the rest of your life. Nowadays, we must consider Social Security claiming strategies, required minimum distributions rules, ever shifting tax brackets, and changing…
Yep, your investments are down and so are your spirits. Those looking for a silver lining may be talking about tax loss harvesting. What does that even mean? Warning, if your money is all in retirement accounts (IRAs, Roth IRAs, 401(k)s, 403(b)s, this concept doesn’t apply. Tax loss harvesting is only for accounts where capital…
Ugh, September is one of those months with FIVE Thursdays. That’s a lot of blogs to write so I’m taking a breather this week and re-running a Blog from July 2022 about risk tolerance and stock market drops. The financial services industry has for years been collectively handwringing about how to measure clients’ real…
Those of us who work in personal finance sometimes forget that our jargon is not fully understood by others. Just like when my son’s teachers explain his test scores using a ton of alphabet soup assuming I can put this information into some sort of parenting use, when really, I don’t get it at all.…
Do you feel like the financial services industry is plotting to sell you yet a new way to invest your money? Do you wonder if investment companies are constantly looking for a way to make themselves seem smarter than you and justify charging you fees? You are right! Enter the idea of Direct Indexing. …
Welcome back to my WTF (What the Finance) series! Are you experiencing FOMO because all your friends are talking about investing in Qualified Opportunity Zones at parties and you aren’t in the action? Probably not. But, if you want to be the smarty pants friend at the hoe down, here is a very basic…
This blog is a repeat of the topic of a Back Door IRA. The reason I bring it up again is that Mega-Back Door Roth IRAs have been in the news a lot lately. I’ll discuss those next week but thought we should all be on the same page of what the Not-Mega (aka Regular)…
“Regret theory suggests investors who sell at the wrong time and miss out on gains experience regret that affects their judgment, leading to subsequent market-timing mistakes,” says Sarah Newcomb, behavioral economist for research firm Morningstar and author of the book “Loaded: Money, Psychology, and How to Get Ahead Without Leaving Your Values Behind.” Reading…
As an Upholder (me), Questioners (people I may be married to) can drive me bonkers. My attitude toward tasks and decisions is, “Get the information from an expert (maybe two) and do it already.” I don’t tend to ask why, if it can be done better. I just want to cross tasks off my list…
