There are weeks where not much happens…and then there are the first few weeks of July 2024! In addition to all that is happening in the world and political arena around us, the markets have had their fair share of excitement in recent weeks. Let’s take a quick look at what’s happened, what is coming […]

A client asked a great question this week about an often-overlooked strategy to utilize tax-deferred IRA funds to make donations directly to charity. Let’s take a closer look at this strategy and determine when it may make sense for you to consider it as well. What is a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD)? A QCD is […]

The year is half-over. It’s a perfect time to schedule a time to complete a mid-year financial review. Here are five things you may wish to add to your agenda! 1.) Spending and savings plan – If you took my advice at the outset of the year, you have a rough plan in place in […]

I talked with a client recently about dividend reinvestment. The question came up as he placed a trade and was prompted to elect whether to reinvest dividends. It’s a great topic to understand so let’s look at it more closely What are dividends? Dividends are a sum of money paid out by a company to […]

If you have read any of my posts over the past two years, you are familiar with at least one part of the Federal Reserve Bank’s dual mandate – price stability (said another way, combat inflation). We have spent many a Fridays dissecting the latest inflation data and debating when (or if) prices would start […]

In working with a client this week on an inherited account, the topic of step-up in cost basis arose. This is an important item to understand when someone passes away (and you inherit their assets) so I thought it was worth covering it herein. What is cost basis? As a reminder, cost basis is the […]

I recently worked on a financial planning project for clients who were quickly approaching their retirement years. The ultimate goal of the exercise was to determine the estimate of annual spending their portfolio can support in retirement. As you can imagine, this calculation relies on many assumptions concerning items such as asset class returns, asset […]

As the first half of 2024 comes to a close, I keep hearing this cheer in my head as the letter K is once serving as the perfect depiction of the current market dynamics. Loyal readers may remember references to the letter K during the COVID years (I know, let’s not revisit those years right?!) […]

I talked with clients this week regarding their savings plan for the year. The question of timing came up – ie: when should they deploy cash they now have on hand into their various accounts. Let’s look at the items we discussed Roth IRAs One of the accounts my clients are able to fund in […]

To say the first (almost) six months of 2024 have been an interesting time in the markets would be an immense understatement. Virtually everything that has transpired (zero rate cuts, 15%+ return in S&P 500, 10-year interest rate well above 4%, massive concentration in returns among large cap tech stocks, etc) was NOT the consensus […]