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 […]

This past week, Wednesday June 12th was a big news day for markets. It doesn’t happen often that a monthly inflation report (Consumer Price Index) and a Federal Reserve Rate announcement happen on the same day, but that is in fact what occurred this week. The result? Happy markets and happy investors. Let’s start with […]

Welcome to June! With the advent of a new month comes another round of economic data. A few key data points were released this week which are discussed below. Let’s start our June lap around the data track! Please note the main events for the month (May’s jobs data and Consumer Price Index) will be […]

We’ve talked about the term Safe Harbor before (in regards to estimated tax payments – you can revisit that post here). This week, a client reached out regarding another type of Safe Harbor. She said her friend had brought up the concept of Safe Harbor retirement plans and she wondered not only what they were […]

While meeting with a client this week, we were discussing cash balances and potential uses. One topic that came up was the pre-payment on debt instrument (in her case, a mortgage). Let’s take a closer look at things to consider when evaluating debt prepayment Basics of Consumer Debt Debt serves a useful purpose for many […]

Hope you had a nice holiday weekend! If you’re like me, you may be shocked at how quickly this shortened week flew by! Market participants likely feel the same way as it was a relatively light week in terms of market-moving news and economic data releases. I thought we’d take advantage of that break and […]