Following the When Roth is Wrong post, readers responded with various questions and, sometimes, with a different form of the same question. We address several of those questions below since they're good questions and may be helpful for other readers. Q: If we end up leaving the retirement accounts to our children, doesn’t that make [...]
Hats off if you’re maximizing your 401k deferrals and reaching the federal employee contribution limit each calendar year: $19,000 in 2019 if you’re age 49 or younger or $25,000 in 2019 if you’re age 50 or over. Note: these limits have increased to $19,500 and $26,000 respectively for the tax year 2021. Additional congratulations if you’re [...]
The House of Representatives passed a bill on May 23rd known as the SECURE Act (Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019) which would initiate the biggest changes to retirement accounts in over a decade. The bill had bipartisan support, passing with a vote of 417-3. It now heads to the Senate [...]
Last week’s Astute Angle post explained some fallacies related to mortgage borrowing and how the free pass treatment of home mortgages as "good debt" leads to poor financial decision-making. In response to that post, I received a few questions related to the "good debt" label of student loans that prompted another debt-centric post. Three of [...]
An estimated 20 million Americans do not have access to Medicare, Medicaid, or employer provided insurance and will be left to purchase their own health insurance in 2019. If you’re among that 20 million, the news is relatively good. In most states, premiums next year will be relatively flat (or even down in some states), [...]
The financial services industry has invented and promoted many ways to rip off people. Fake bank accounts, excessive and unauthorized account churning, non-traded REITs, cross-selling high fee products, pump and dump stock schemes, egregious variable annuity sales, and probably another financial abuse strategy exposed in the business section of this morning’s newspaper. In fairness, there [...]
The following paraphrases a conversation that I have had many times before with friends and clients. It is obviously never the same dialogue but the underlying advice is the same - that you should generally not own your favorite investment or can't-miss stock idea in a traditional IRA. Me: Did you buy this stock because [...]
Last week, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal signed House Bill 769, expanding a Georgia tax credit that supports rural hospital organizations across Georgia. We explained the value of the rural hospital tax credit in this 2017 Astute Angle post but the recently expanded tax credit under HB 769 combined with provisions of the Tax Cuts and [...]
What do Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Tyler, Stevie Nicks, Billy Crystal, and my father all have in common? At least two things. They will, God willing, all celebrate their 70 1/2 birthdays in 2018 and join the ranks of approximately 25 million others in the United States over this age (assuming, of course, that they all [...]
On June 26, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered one of the most important speeches of his presidency at the foot of the recently-built Berlin Wall. During this speech, viewed as a turning point in the Cold War, Kennedy spoke the now famous words, "Ich bin ein Berliner." His intent was to express solidarity with [...]
