If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If you are in or near retirement, it is a safe bet that you would like more yield from your investments rather than less. That truth sometimes leads liars, scammers, and fraudsters to pitch any number of too-good-to-be-true “investment ...
Tax Changes Around the Home
How the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act impacted three popular deductions. Three recent tax law changes impact homeowners and home-based businesses. They may affect your federal income taxes this year. The SALT deduction now has a $10,000 yearly limit. You can now only deduct up to $10,000 of some ...
The Flattening of the Yield Curve
Why are investors and economists getting nervous about Treasury yields? What is the yield curve, and why is the financial media writing about it? Here is a brief explanation, starting with a clarification. A yield curve is really an X-Y graph projecting expected rates of return for ...
The A, B, C, & D of Medicare
Breaking down the basics & what each part covers. Whether your 65th birthday is on the horizon or decades away, you should understand the parts of Medicare – what they cover and where they come from. Parts A & B: Original Medicare. America created a national health insurance program ...
Set Goals as You Save & Invest
Turn your intent into a commitment. Goals give you focus. To find and establish your investing and saving goals, first ask yourself what you want to accomplish. Do you want to build an emergency fund? Build college savings for your child? Have a large retirement fund by age 60? Once you have a ...
Adjusting Your Portfolio as You Age
As you approach retirement, it may be time to pay more attention to investment risk. If you are an experienced investor, you have probably fine-tuned your portfolio through the years in response to market cycles or in pursuit of a better return. As you approach or enter retirement, is another ...
Tax Deductions Gone in 2018
What standbys did tax reforms eliminate? Are the days of itemizing over? Not quite, but now that H.R. 1 (popularly called the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act) is the law, all kinds of itemized federal tax deductions have vanished. Early drafts of H.R. 1 left only two itemized deductions in the ...