In talking with clients about the benefits their employer provides during the open enrollment season, one often overlooked benefit if clients have dependents is the Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account (FSA).
Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are not only a savvy investment option but also offer numerous benefits, especially for high-net-worth families. An HSA is a tax-advantaged savings account designed for individuals with high-deductible health plans (HDHPs) to help cover out-of-pocket medical expenses. While the utility of HSAs is universal, they hold advantages for high-net-worth families and have steadily grown in popularity since their inception.
Earlier this year, I explained two principles you can follow to obtain the most happiness from your spending https://www.highlandplanning.com/learning-center-1/how-money-can-buy-happiness-part-1. In today’s article, I will cover three more concepts that can help bring more joy in your life with your spending. Below are the five principles outlined in the book Happy Money.
In a previous article titled “The Estate Planning Essentials”, I identified the documents needed for a comprehensive estate plan. Although this can be a morbid topic most want to avoid thinking about, reviewing the documents not only ensures your financial legacy is passed in accordance with your wishes as smoothly as possible but guides your agent to ensure your medical and financial wishes are addressed. So, how often should you review your estate planning documents?
It's January 1, 2018, and you just won the lottery for $5,000,000.
You are sitting in our office, discussing your plans for the money, and you decide it's a good idea to invest the proceeds for the long term.
You decide on a portfolio of 25% US Bonds, 60% US Stocks, and 15% International Stocks.
After feeling pretty good about your lottery winnings and the investment decisions you made, you leave our office and treat yourself to a meal.
The fascinating interplay between human decision-making and financial outcomes has long intrigued behavioral economics and psychology scholars. However, research has expanded this inquiry beyond human subjects, delving into the behavior of our primate cousins, specifically Capuchin monkeys. Situated on an island off the coast of Puerto Rico, researchers conducted an experiment seeking insights into economic behaviors, risk psychology, and the recurrence of financial crises in our societies, shedding light on the parallels between monkey behavior and human decision-making processes.
In personal finance, the attraction of cash equivalents for long-term goals has persisted as a seemingly safe and stable investment strategy. Cash equivalents, including savings accounts, money market funds, certificates of deposit (CDs), and Treasury bills, are often viewed as low-risk options that offer liquidity and "preservation of capital." However, the belief that investing primarily in cash equivalents can secure one's financial future in the long term is a myth that should be challenged.
As the April 15th tax filing deadline rapidly approaches, so does the 2023 Roth IRA contribution deadline. Roth IRAs are among the most efficient yet under-utilized retirement saving strategies. By saving after-tax money in a retirement account, individuals can enjoy tax-free investment growth and distributions in retirement.
I'm reading Daniel Kahneman's book Thinking, Fast and Slow. Kahneman is the 2002 Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and economist known for his work in behavioral economics. One section of the book discusses how investing can resemble gambling when individuals overestimate their ability to predict market movements, a phenomenon deeply connected to Daniel Kahneman's concepts of the "Illusion of Skill" and "Illusion of Validity." These cognitive biases describe the human tendency to overvalue our ability to make accurate predictions or decisions in situations where chance plays a significant role or the information is unreliable.
Sarah, a savvy pharmaceutical executive, has accumulated Non-Qualified Stock Options (NQSOs) and Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) as part of her compensation package. Sarah had always been meticulous with her finances and records of her stock option grants, exercise dates, and the fair market values at the time of exercise. As her stock compensation vested over the years, she knew proper tax reporting was crucial to avoid any IRS headaches.
In contrast to the first half of 2023, the second half has had volatile, lackluster returns for some of the stock market and pharmaceutical stocks. Market fluctuations can significantly impact wealth creation, especially when navigating stock compensation.
Some investors have asked if stocks make sense in a world where short-term US Treasuries yield north of 5.5%. 1 While a notable relationship exists between high short-term interest rates and stock market returns, it's important to understand that correlation does not imply causation. Here's a breakdown of the dynamics:
Financial markets are complex and unpredictable. Valuation metrics, such as price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios, enterprise value-to-EBITDA, and the price-to-book (P/B) ratio, have traditionally been seen as indicators of a stock's intrinsic worth and, by some, predictors of future returns. However, the belief that valuations can reliably forecast future markets deserves a deeper investigation into why they may not serve as a crystal ball for investors.
A Restricted Stock Unit (RSU) is a form of compensation that some companies use to reward their employees. RSUs represent a promise to give an employee a certain number of shares of company stock at a future date, typically once certain conditions are met, such as a specified vesting period or performance goals. RSUs are a common form of equity-based compensation used in publicly traded and private companies.
Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are not only a savvy investment option but also offer numerous benefits, especially for high-net-worth families. An HSA is a tax-advantaged savings account designed for individuals with high-deductible health plans (HDHPs) to help cover out-of-pocket medical expenses. While the utility of HSAs is universal, they hold advantages for high-net-worth families and have steadily grown in popularity since their inception.
Earlier this year, I explained two principles you can follow to obtain the most happiness from your spending https://www.highlandplanning.com/learning-center-1/how-money-can-buy-happiness-part-1. In today’s article, I will cover three more concepts that can help bring more joy in your life with your spending. Below are the five principles outlined in the book Happy Money.
The S&P 500 index rose 16.9% on a total return basis over the first half of of 2023. If you factor in July, the index is up over 20%. After a challenging year for investors in 2022, when the index lost almost 20%, it’s hard to complain about this year’s progress. With the S&P nearly doubling the long-term average annual return in 2023, it’s easy to say the market is healthy and all companies are doing well, right?
The "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" (TCJA) of 2017 brought a significant shift in the taxation landscape for individuals and businesses. One of the changes was the $10,000 cap on deductions for state and local taxes (SALT). This limit impacted the tax strategy of many high-tax states, pushing them to find ways to mitigate the impact of this cap on their taxpayers.
One of the most fundamental principles of investing is diversification. Diversification does not overload your portfolio into any investment but instead spreads the risk across different areas. Ideally, your portfolio is invested in several diverse types of investments, but as you'll see below, there is more to diversification than buying stocks, bonds, or funds.
April 30th marked the 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web being introduced to the public for the first time. Tim Berners-Lee was a 37-year-old researcher at CERN, a physics lab in Switzerland when he created the first website and launched it on the Web as we know it today. 1.8 billion websites later, Lee's invention has revolutionized the way human beings interact and learn on a global scale.
