Financial Planning, Financial Tips, Goal Planning
AnnaMarie Mock, CFP®
Q3 Crunch Time: Keep Your Financial Goals from ...

As we close out the third quarter of the year, it's a natural time to pause and take stock of your progress toward your financial goals. By this point in the year, nine months of progress, challenges, and decisions have shaped where you stand today. With three months ahead, there's time to fine-tune your approach, close gaps, and position yourself to finish the year strong.

Q3 Crunch Time: Keep Your Financial Goals from Derailing
Financial Planning, Financial Tips, Retirement Planning, Savings
Edward Leach
Employer Retirement Plan Check-up

As we approach the year's final quarter, it’s the perfect time for a retirement plan check-up. Even if you set your 401(k) contributions months ago, life has a way of shifting the numbers — salary increases, bonuses, or payroll changes can all affect how much you are actually putting away.

Employer Retirement Plan Check-up
Financial Planning, Financial Tips
Reed C. Fraasa, CFP®, AIF®, RLP®
Money Flowing Out? Your January Financial Reset ...

As we embark on a new year, there's no better time to take control of your financial future by thoroughly reviewing your cash flow. If having a vision and establishing goals is the touchstone for a financial plan, this essential financial practice sets the foundation for achieving your goals and ensuring long-term financial stability.

Money Flowing Out? Your January Financial Reset Starts Now
Divorce Planning, Newly Independent Women
Joseph Goldy, CFP®, CDFA®
Understanding the CDFA® Designation: Your ...

Anyone who has gone through a divorce knows how emotionally challenging and financially complex it can be. While attorneys handle the legal aspects, a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst® focuses specifically on the financial implications of divorce. This specialized designation equips professionals with the expertise to guide clients through the intricate financial aspects of divorce proceedings, ensuring better outcomes for their financial future.

Understanding the CDFA® Designation: Your Financial Ally During Divorce
Pharmaceutical Professionals, Stock Options, Financial Planning
AnnaMarie Mock, CFP®
Science Meets Finance: How The Scientific ...

Anna Marie Mock, a fee-only certified financial planner at Highland Financial Advisors, discusses the dynamic interplay between art and science in financial planning. Drawing inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci's philosophy that "everything connects to everything else," she emphasizes that financial planning is an art involving subjective goal-setting and a science-driven by objective analysis tools. In this video, Anna explains how the scientific method can be applied to financial planning, using equity compensation as a concrete example. 

Science Meets Finance: How The Scientific Method is Applied in Financial Planning | Ep. 6
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Tips to Save More Money: All Those Little Things Add Up

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Tips to Save More Money: All Those Little Things Add Up

There are many self-proclaimed financial experts who like to stand up on their soap boxes and disparage ordinary people for how they spend their hard-earned money. The most commonly referred to “waste of money” is your morning coffee. There is even a website that will calculate how much you would accumulate if you didn’t buy your morning coffee and instead invested it. Suze Orman and Kevin O’Leary are two financial experts who refuse to pay for a cup of coffee because they think it’s like throwing money away.

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Understanding Employer Health Insurance Plan Options

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Understanding Employer Health Insurance Plan Options

Open enrollment is a short period of time, usually occurring once per year, when you can add or drop your health insurance, or make changes to other coverages. Open enrollment ranges from a couple weeks to a couple months prior to year-end usually in November to December.  This allows employers to provide a comprehensive overview of benefits offered, which allows you to make well informed changes to your benefit elections. Benefits may vary from very limited to comprehensive lists that range from medical insurance, life insurance, and other ancillary benefits like legal services and pet insurance.

The Estate Planning Essentials

The Estate Planning Essentials

As a financial planner, I like to be as prepared as possible for the unknowns in life. This allows me to have peace-of-mind knowing that major issues have already been addressed. As life evolves, no one can be certain about the future, but one aspect you can control is your legacy through a comprehensive estate plan. A comprehensive estate plan can be comprised of a variety of documents, but the base estate plan should include a last will and testament, durable power of attorney, and medical power of attorney and directive. These documents guide your appointed agent(s) to ensure your medical and financial wishes are taken care of and your financial legacy passes in accordance with the guidelines laid out as smoothly as possible. Having an estate plan in place prior to a life changing event, cognitive issues, or death can help ensure that the decisions made by the individual are honored.

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Is Inflation Good or Bad?

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Is Inflation Good or Bad?

Inflation has been a popular topic of late.

In his press conference to announce the Fed’s decision to cut interest rates following its July meeting, Fed Chair Powell cited “muted inflation pressures” as justification for action.

However, retaliatory tariffs between the U.S. and China have raised concerns this could spark inflationary pressures as consumers are forced to pay higher prices.

What Does Fed Independence Mean?

What Does Fed Independence Mean?

When Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, it established the Federal Reserve System with the initial objective of supporting a fragile banking system. In the over 100 years since it was first established, the responsibilities of the Federal Reserve System (or the Fed for short) have expanded to include several broader responsibilities, such as fostering a sound banking system and a healthy economy. One thing that hasn’t changed is the Fed is an independent government agency that is accountable to the public and Congress to act as the Central Bank of the United States.

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Student Income Won’t Hurt Their Financial Aid

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Student Income Won’t Hurt Their Financial Aid

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) collects demographic, income, and asset information from student applicants and their families. This information is used to calculate a student’s eligibility to receive any financial aid for college expenses based on the Expected Family Contribution (EFC). The EFC is calculated according to a formula that is established by the federal government and is a measure of a family’s financial strength. Schools consider the EFC as one of several factors to determine the amount, if any, a student may be awarded for that school year. Simply put, students are eligible to receive need-based student aid if the sum of their EFC and other estimated financial assistance is less than the total cost of attendance.

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Are Your Kids Protected?: Health Insurance for Children Attending College

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Are Your Kids Protected?: Health Insurance for Children Attending College

With the fall semester fast approaching, there are many last-minute decisions and preparations being made for the next wave of freshman students. However, one decision that may have fallen to the wayside is health insurance for the incoming student. An important question to ask is “will my child be covered under my medical insurance once they go off to college?”

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Don’t Fall for These Common Financial Scams

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Don’t Fall for These Common Financial Scams

Everyone, young and old alike, can be a target for fraud. In 2018, the Federal Trade Commission collected 1.4 million fraud reports. People reported losing a whopping $1.48 billion to fraud in 2018, which is an increase of 38% from 2017.  Of people that included their age in reports, those aged 20-29 reported the loss of money in 43% of reports compared to 15% for those aged 70-79. However, the loss amount reported was nearly twice as high for ages 70-79.

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Lessons From a "Jeopardy!" Champion

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Lessons From a "Jeopardy!" Champion

It’s not every day a “Jeopardy!” contestant becomes a household name and makes one of the longest running television game shows must watch TV. But that’s exactly what happened during James Holzhauer’s 32-game winning streak. Throughout Holzhauer’s dominant run, it seemed to be only a matter of time before he became the highest-winning contestant in “Jeopardy!” history, a record held by Ken Jennings. Jennings amassed a total of $2,520,700 over his 74-game winning streak in 2004. However, Holzhauer was defeated in his 33rd game, coming just $58,484 shy of Jennings’ record.

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It’s Been a While Since We Had a Recession

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It’s Been a While Since We Had a Recession

The U.S. economy is on the verge of breaking the record for the longest stretch of economic expansion in U.S. history. Since the U.S. economy hit bottom in June 2009 following the Great Recession, it has been on a slow and steady recovery that has it on the brink of surpassing the expansion from March 1991 to March 2001 as the longest in U.S. history.

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Is The American Dream Dead?

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Is The American Dream Dead?

The American Dream consists of baseball, warm apple pies, and homeownership. As I near the end of my mid-twenties, many of my peers are trying to realize the American Dream of purchasing their perfect starter home. Over the years, my cohorts have casually been looking to find the deal of the century in a move-in-ready starter home at a low price. But even the starter homes that require major renovations and improvements have come with lofty price tags.

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Trade is the Word

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Trade is the Word

For the past 18 months, two hot button issues for investors have been the Fed and trade negotiations between the U.S. and China. These two issues were the catalysts for two market corrections in 2018, the latter of which nearly approached bear market territory. However, for the first five months of this year fears of a Fed misstep were alleviated and reported positive progress towards a trade deal between the U.S. and China spurred markets to new all-time highs.

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How Can I Participate in a Initial Public Offering: Don’t Get IPO FOMO

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How Can I Participate in a Initial Public Offering: Don’t Get IPO FOMO

On Friday, Uber went public in the what is the biggest initial public offering (IPO) so far this year. Earlier this month, Beyond Meat went public with less hype and saw its price skyrocket 163% in its first trading day, making it the best-performing first-day IPO in nearly two-decades. Beyond Meat is a producer of plant-based meat substitutes founded in 2009. The company’s Beyond Burger is sold at Whole Foods and restaurants chains around the country.

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Dimensional Funds: Dimensions of Higher Expected Returns

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Dimensional Funds: Dimensions of Higher Expected Returns

At HIGHLAND, one of the cornerstones of our investment approach is that securities offering higher expected returns share particular attributes, which we refer to as the dimensions of higher expected returns (or dimensions for short). These dimensions are based on economic theory, backed by Nobel Prize winning academic research, and supported by decades of real-world historical data. Dimensional Fund Advisors is an investment management firm with a long history of applying academic research to practical investing and is one of our preferred investment managers. Dimensional Fund Advisors defines a dimension as a return difference between two assets or portfolios “that is sensible, empirically robust in the data, and cost-effective to capture in well-diversified portfolios.”

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The Resulting Fallacy: Good Outcomes Aren't Always the Results of Good Decisions

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The Resulting Fallacy: Good Outcomes Aren't Always the Results of Good Decisions

When Tiger Woods won the 2019 Masters earlier this month, it capped off one of the greatest comebacks in golf history, if not one of the best comebacks in the history of all sports. Woods’s last Masters tournament victory came in 2005 and his last major tournament win was back in 2008. In this 11-year span between major wins, Woods faced a very public divorce, was arrested for driving under the influence, and battled a number of injuries. With his latest Masters win, Woods has 15 major tournament wins and is now three behind Jack Nicklaus for most of all time.

 

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Changes to the AMT as a Result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017

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Changes to the AMT as a Result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017

The changes made to the tax code by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 are now being felt full fledge, and despite early fears, some filers have been pleasantly surprised by their tax returns for 2018. Historically, one of the more loathsome tax rules over the years was the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) which disproportionately impacted earners in the Northeast and West Coast where wages and cost of living are higher.  In 2018, the rules around AMT have changed increasing the amount of income you must earn to be impacted by the tax.

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Tax Planning: There’s More Than Meets the Eye

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Tax Planning: There’s More Than Meets the Eye

Nobody likes paying taxes. Even though taxes are necessary to keep our schools open, communities safe, roads clean, and governments running, it’s not a fulfilling experience to see a percentage of your hard-earned income or investment gains vanish into thin air. With that being said, there’s no way of escaping taxes (without risking legal repercussions, of course), but that doesn’t mean there aren’t things we can do throughout the year to reduce the amount of taxes you ultimately end up paying.

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