Blog
From Rick's Point of View…
Ideas from the industry or emerging trends, Rick offers his Point of View and behind-the-scenes insights on the financial services industry. Glad to have you reading along.
Understanding Charitable Remainder Trusts
A Charitable Remainder Trust (CRT) allows individuals to make a charitable gift while retaining an income stream for themselves or other beneficiaries. An individual (known as the grantor) transfers assets, such as cash or property,...
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Picking a Financial Professional in the New Year
Many financially successful people are comparison shoppers. If you’re one, you may pore over ratings in consumer magazines, read websites for reviews and compare scores of products before you buy even everyday products like...
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How Our Financial Wellness Impacts Us
Financial wellness studies over the past few years indicate that investors desire financial wellness. The recent pandemic, economic and inflationary conditions, changes in work-life balance, and more responsibility for financial...
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A Year-End Wealth Checklist
If the end of the year has you in planning mode, you’re not alone—starting a new year may be a great opportunity for a review and renewal. What steps might you take for next year? Review Asset AllocationsMost...
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A Path to Setting and Reaching Your 2023 Goals
Setting goals for a new year can feel overwhelming. We all know that resolutions don’t last, but we also feel the energy that comes with a new year of possibilities. Here’s a clearer path for setting and reaching your...
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A Look at Tax Planning for Retirement
After years of saving and planning for their golden years, many people nearing retirement fail to consider the tax burden they may face on income they receive after they stop working. While you will likely see a reduction in the amount...
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5 Do’s and Don'ts for Charitable Giving During the Holidays
The fourth quarter holidays are often seen as one of the prime times to take out your checkbook — not only do many charities put in extra efforts helping others this time of year, but donating is also a smart financial move....
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5 Year-End Tax Planning Questions to Ask Your Financial Professional
The average U.S. income tax rate stands at just over 13%—and if you're like many taxpayers, you're always looking for new tips and tricks to help reduce this percentage.1There are a number of different tax planning moves you can...
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An Extra Helping of Helpful Budgeting Tips for Black Friday
Black Friday is sometimes the largest shopping holiday of the entire year. Millions of people typically shop in stores or online on Black Friday to score the top deals on must-have holiday gifts. While it may be easy to become...
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Invest In These 4 Common Sense Investing Rules
From fluctuating gas prices to market volatility to inflation fears, it may be tough to tune out the noise when trying to gauge how your investments perform. And if you are like most investors, you try to resist the...
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Five Questions to Ask As You Consider Retiring
You might be thinking about retiring, but how do you know when you are really ready for it, mentally and financially? For decades, the normal retirement age was 65. This was when you became eligible for Social Security and Medicare....
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5 Year-End Tax Planning Questions to Ask Your Financial Professional
The average U.S. income tax rate stands at just over 13%—and if you're like many taxpayers, you're always looking for new tips and tricks to help reduce this percentage.1There are a number of different tax planning moves you can...
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5 Key Steps To Help Women Strengthen Their Business and Their Retirement
As a female entrepreneur, you may face different challenges than your male counterparts. For example, women were disproportionately affected by the COVID pandemic. 1 They also tend to earn less than their male peers—largely in...
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High Net-Worth Individuals: Are You Missing Opportunities in Your Financial Planning?
High Net-Worth executives and those that have been self-employed, can experience common problems in their financial planning journey. Often, they have missed opportunities in their financial planning because they haven’t planned...
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Inflation Reduction Act: What You Should Know
The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law on August 16, 2022, includes health-care and energy-related provisions, a new corporate alternative minimum tax, and an excise tax on certain corporate stock buybacks. Additional funding is...
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A Fall Financial Checklist
For many, autumn is the best time of year. The return of cool breezes, comforting foods, and pumpkins can be invigorating. It’s also a bookmark of sorts, especially for your finances—a perfect time to take stock of your...
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Hire Your Children and Help Them Save
Hiring your teenage children to work in your business can give them valuable employment experience and teach them to handle responsibility. Plus, if you can persuade them to deposit at least part of the money they earn into a Roth...
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Business Continuity and Long-Term Care Considerations
As a business owner, you know the importance of planning for your company’s future. To this end, you may have taken steps to learn about buy–sell agreements and the role that life insurance and disability income insurance...
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Critical Business Strategies for Entrepreneurs Preparing for Retirement
When you work for an employer, saving for retirement can be as simple as signing up for a 401(k) plan and making regular contributions, but when you own your own business, preparing for retirement can be more challenging. While pouring...
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Business Forum: Keeping Your Business High and Dry
Most businesses thrive on the ingenuity and dynamism of a few key people. In order to retain their best employees, business owners often devise attractive benefit packages that make it harder for the competition to lure away key...
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Using Charitable Trusts to Transfer Business Assets
What are charitable remainder and charitable lead trusts?Charitable remainder and charitable lead trusts are special types of trusts into which you transfer assets, retain either a present or future economic benefit for yourself or...
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Investing in Your Family: Creating a Family Business Succession Plan
No matter how successful your family business is today, at some point in the future, its ownership may need to change hands. Without a business succession plan, this transition can be fraught with hurt feelings, internal strife and...
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Options for Financing Your Business
Using many years of experience and industry know-how to establish a business is a goal held by many would-be entrepreneurs. In fact, finding a location, formulating a business plan, and hanging the “Open” sign might be one...
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Talking to Angels—How to Attract Private Investors
Raising money to start or build a business is one of the toughest challenges you are likely to face as an entrepreneur. Having a great concept is not enough: you also have to persuade banks and other investors that your business has a...
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The Principles of Financial Literacy
Financial literacy refers to the skills and knowledge that allow an individual to make informed and effective decisions through their understanding of finances. Financial literacy starts by building a basic understanding of 'money...
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Charting Your Future: Small Business Lessons from Good to Great
The best-selling book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap. . .and Others Don’t, offers surprising insights into the success of “great” companies that consistently and significantly beat average market...
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Staying on Track with Your Retirement Investments
Investing for your retirement isn't about getting rich quick. More often, it's about having a game plan that you can live with over a long time. You wouldn't expect to be able to play the piano without learning the basics and...
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8 Reasons Small Businesses Should Hire Veterans
Hiring employees is sometimes a difficult task. You may need to find employees who fit the business culture and have the skills to get the job done. The good news for small businesses looking for employees with various skills and a...
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Back to Basics - Diversification and Asset Allocation
When investing, particularly for long-term goals, there are two concepts you will likely hear about over and over again — diversification and asset allocation.Diversification helps limit exposure to loss in any one investment or...
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Some Things Investors Need to Know About Booms and Busts
Economies and markets are cyclical. They may include periods of wealth creation and times of bursting bubbles that bankrupt companies in a major downturn."Boom and bust" cycles may last anywhere from a few months to a few years or...
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Retirement Planning Does Not Stop in Retirement
If you’re retired, there’s good news in that you’ll probably live longer and perhaps better than your parents and grandparents did. The bad news: You’ll live a longer and perhaps more expensive life, too.You...
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Lessons from the Great Recession of 2007 – 2009
After the Great Recession from 2007 to 2009 hit, far too many Americans found themselves without any savings to get through the hardships of unemployment, falling house prices, dwindling 401(k)s and increased financial anxieties....
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3 Tips for Staying Calm While Navigating a Volatile Market
When market volatility takes investors on a wild ride, fear and panic are common responses to this stock market roller coaster. Acknowledging these emotions may be a good first step, but acting upon them could result in impulsive,...
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Financial Freedom vs. Financial Independence: Key Differences and How to Work Towards Both
Working towards financial independence can often be a lifelong process. But for many, financial freedom may come far sooner—and include some fun along the way. What are the differences between financial independence and financial...
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Should You Invest All at Once or Over Time?
The market skyrockets one day, plunges the next. Is this the wobbling before the crash? Should you invest now? If so, how? Everything at once? That’s tempting, but not always wise.A common question investors ask their financial...
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6 Retirement Tips for Surviving the Sandwich Generation Squeeze
Adults caring for aging parents and children simultaneously have now become known as the "sandwich generation." While each generation comes with its own array of financial challenges, the sandwich generation often feels...
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Keeping It Simple: The Benefits of Simplifying Your Investment Strategies
When it comes to investing, having fewer investments might help streamline your portfolio to manage stress better. Here are some benefits of a simple portfolio and some ways to help you create one.The Benefits of SimplicityUnless you...
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High Inflation: How Long Will It Last?
In March 2022, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), the most common measure of inflation, rose at an annual rate of 8.5%, the highest level since December 1981.1 It's not surprising that a Gallup poll at the...
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Bull Market Hangs by a Thread
The bull market that began in March of 2020 came dangerously close to an end. From March 23, 2020 through January 3, 2022, the S&P 500 Index gained 114% (excluding dividends). From that January 3 closing high through the recent low on...
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Five Lessons To Remember During Bear Markets
The real value of a bear market may be that it gives investors, who are temporarily frozen within its grip, the opportunity to learn or relearn important lessons regarding risk and diversification.For savvy investors, a bear market...
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Invest in Your Financial Education During Financial Literacy Month
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Health Is Wealth: How Improving Your Physical Health May Benefit Your Finances
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Executive Compensation: Equity Compensation for Corporate Executives
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Tax Prep Checklist: Everything You Need to Be Ready for Tax Season
Regardless of whether you prepare your taxes yourself or use a professional's services, it's a good idea to gather the information and documentation you need well in advance of your actual tax filing date. Below, we've listed some key...
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2022 Contribution Limits
Preparing for retirement just got a little more financial wiggle room. This week, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced new contribution limits for 2022.Staying put for 2022 are traditional Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs)...
Read MoreThe Impact of a Life: "What’s Your Legacy?"
Many people think of “their legacy” as what happens after they die. I prefer to think of legacy as the summation of all the good you do in your life, and that you don't necessarily need to be remembered to have an amazing...
Read MoreWealth Management's Conflicted Question…
What is fiduciary advice? The Financial Planner Profession is one of relationship building, first and foremost. To serve and deeply care about the client and their family is our top priority. Our congrats to Tobias Salinger and the...
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What in the World Are NFTs?
Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, have been the recipient of the latest buzz. NFTs are digital files attached to blockchain codes. If you know anything about digital currencies, you’re probably aware that these blockchain codes are...
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How to Choose a New Firm and Why it is Critical to a Fiduciary Duty
A little over a year ago I made a change in firms. It was one of the most difficult professional decisions of my life and one that had become unmistakably necessary. As I grew increasingly aware that I was running a business and that...
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On Working (and not working) with Friends & Family
In my professional dealings I often come across people who are working with friends and family as their advisor. They may have taken them on as to help them launch their career, or because of the closeness of their relationship. These...
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