When I work with clients on retirement planning I have a lot of questions about numbers. How much have you saved so far? How much more will you save? How much do you spend now, how might that change in retirement? How much will your social security benefit be? How much will your health insurance cost? On and on and on, numbers galore! But what about the non-numerical questions? They are also important. How will you fill your time for the first 6-12 months after you retire? How about after that? How will you keep your mind sharp? What's going to get you out of bed in the morning? (Besides the cat) For some people, the answer to these questions is a job, even …
Capture those Dollars – Avoid the Vortex of Spending!
In recent months several of my clients have happily experienced an increase in cash flow. The reasons include: Paying off a student loan Paying off a mortgage Decreased daycare costs due to a child starting school Stopping monthly allowance to an adult child who graduated and got a job (yay!) In each of these cases cash flow went up because of a decrease in a regular expense. Cash flow can also go up from an increase in income such as a raise or a bonus. Clients who have been with me a while know my standard response to an increase in cash flow: "Capture those dollars!" What do I mean by that? If you do not intentionally capture increased cash flow dollars, …
Cash and the Single Woman – What does the Survey Say?
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 interesting things in this study. I could write a bunch of newsletters about it. In fact, maybe I …
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 do one-armed planks.She's invested for the long term. And you should be too. Save. Invest. Repeat. The …
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 deductions (subject to a 2% of income threshold). Taxpayers subtract whichever is LARGER, a standard …
