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?
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.
A Roth conversion is a financial maneuver where you convert funds from a traditional Individual Retirement Account (IRA) or 401(k) into a Roth IRA. This process involves paying taxes on the converted amount, as traditional IRA/401(k) contributions are typically made with pre-tax dollars, and Roth IRA contributions are made with after-tax dollars.
As the year draws to a close, it's the perfect time to look at your finances and implement year-end tax planning strategies. With careful planning, you can optimize your tax situation, reduce your tax liability, and save more money for the future. In this article, we'll explore various tax planning strategies that individuals and families can consider to maximize their financial situation before the year-end.
I recently read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about how anyone with a low-rate mortgage may not realize the actual value of their asset. In the current world of 7%-8% mortgage rates, anybody with a sub-4% mortgage rate owns a precious asset. Viewing a loan that needs to be repaid as an asset is counterintuitive. But any loan from a bank at 3.5% when rates on Treasury Bills and CDs are at 5% has significant value. By the Journal author's estimate, some $1 trillion in value has passed from banks and bondholders to homeowners.
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.
If you are a reader of the Wall Street Journal, you may have seen three articles in the past nine months that addressed the issue of a significant shortage of accountants. According to the most recent data from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the number of US students graduating with either a bachelor’s or master’s degree in accounting dropped 7.4% during the 2021–22 academic year from the year before, the largest one-year decline since at least 1994–95.
Is there a divorce season?
According to a study by associate sociology professor Julie Brines and doctoral candidate Brian Serafini of the University of Washington, the answer is yes, and they boiled it down into a simple formula...
Student loan payments resumed on October 1st after over three years of forbearance. More than 30 million people are returning with existing loans, and 13 million new borrowers and recent graduates are entering the system for the first time since the Covid-related forbearance. Regardless of whether everything is appropriately structured for the first federal loan payment, you should still review your student loans to ensure everything is in order and understand your new payment.
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.
We only have 24 hours daily to do all life's necessities like work, sleep, and personal care. According to a 2022 US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) survey, an average day has about 5 hours of leisure time. I'm unsure what the BLS counts towards 'leisure,' but I think it may be overstated. Nonetheless, the takeaway is our time is limited.
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.
