I specialize in helping single women make sense of their money and their taxes. So I was very interested when Fidelity* recently came out with a study exploring the financial planning and investing habits of single women - they surveyed 1,503 women who never married, are divorced or widowed as well as single men and married men and women. Kathleen Murphy, president of personal investing at Fidelity said of the study ".....it's critical that women be actively involved and invested in the financial choices that can enable them to live the lives they deserve." There are a lot of …
Tune Out the Noise and Prosper
This month I feature a wonderful 2 minute video "Tuning out the Noise" by Dimensional- a mutual fund company I use. As Warren Buffett says: "The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient." If you invested $10,000 in the S&P 500 twenty years ago in March of 1998, held and reinvested dividends, you would have $36,244 in March of 2018. This despite two significant intervening market meltdowns. Even my oldest clients likely have a 20+ year time horizon. Heck, one of my clients in her mid-70's works out like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and can …
Standard Deduction or Itemized- Which is better for YOU in 2018?
Tax reform is here and 2018 brings many changes to the tax code. One of the major changes is a near doubling of the standard deduction. What is a standard deduction? Every taxpayer gets to deduct from income a certain amount of money which lowers their tax bill. Taxpayers can subtract a flat "standard" deduction, OR "itemized" deductions. Examples of itemized deductions in 2017 include medical expenses (subject to a 7.5% of income threshold), state income taxes, real estate taxes, auto excise taxes, mortgage interest, charitable contributions and certain miscellaneous …
