Blog
Blog
The Week Ahead – December 9, 2019: Best States for Low Taxes: 50 States Ranked for Taxes, 2019
No two states are alike when it comes to taxes. They all have their own rules, rates and special tax breaks. As a result, your overall state and local tax burden in one state can be thousands of dollars more (or less) than in another.
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The Week Ahead – December 2, 2019: How to Get Tax Savings on Charitable Contributions
Qualified charitable distributions from an IRA provide individuals over 70½ with a way to receive income tax savings on charitable gifts—even if they decide to take the newly increased standard deduction.
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The Week Ahead – November 25, 2019: How to Keep Health Care Costs Under Control in Retirement
If you’ve been covered by a generous employer group health plan, you may be in for a rude awakening when you retire. Here are some tricks for keeping health care costs under control after you retire.
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Yes, Social Security Income Is Taxable – But Yours Doesn’t Have To Be
As you move toward retirement, you can’t be content just to accumulate assets. You need to develop a retirement income plan that can help guide you when it comes time to turn savings into sustainable retirement income.
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The Week Ahead – November 18, 2019: Cracking the Nest Egg: When Accumulation Becomes Distribution
It’s a big transition when you leave the workforce to live off your savings, requiring an attitude adjustment in both you and your advisor.
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Debbie Brings Back Some “Shocking” News from the Goldman Sachs Asset Management Professional Investment Forum
Last week I had the good fortune to spend several days at the Goldman Sachs Headquarters in NYC on a Due Diligence trip. We started the first day by listening to John Tousley, their Global Head of Advisor Solutions, who reminded us that Trump has issued 11,500 tweets since being in office, but thankfully the market mostly ignores the tweets, except when connected with trade. According to Goldman, we are vulnerable to a recession, but a recession is not inevitable. To put a fine point on it, Goldman believes that we are vulnerable to shocks, which could cause a recession....read the full article
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The Week Ahead – November 11, 2019: Debbie Delivers Keynote Speech
Last week Debbie was in Minnesota presenting the keynote address “How to Thrive During the Consumer Revolution” to over 1,200 Thrivent Financial Advisors.
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The Week Ahead – November 4, 2019: Sometimes Paying the IRA Penalty Makes Sense
Paying the penalty may be worth it if the end result increases your assets. A case of a couple saving for retirement shows that a penalty is a small price to pay in building a bigger nest egg.
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5 Things We Learned from our Client Advisory Board
For almost 10 years now, we have held an annual Client Advisory Board Luncheon where we get direct feedback from our clients. We invite our clients into our office to review everything we do, from marketing, communications and the services we offer. The goal is to determine from our client’s perspective what should we keep doing, what we should stop doing, and what we could improve. We know that we could never understand the client’s perception of the things we do. The Client Advisory Board allows us to get answers to questions that are rarely asked. Last week, we had...read the full article
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The Week Ahead – October 28, 2019: When to Apply for Social Security Benefits
With the demise of guaranteed pensions, and in light of the risks you face in managing your own retirement assets, maximizing Social Security becomes a critical part of retirement planning.
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