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If you are still doing your taxes once a year, you are losing out on a valuable opportunity to reduce your burden. A smart approach is to do a test run mid-year so that you can take advantage of strategies while there is time for them to make an impact before you submit your actual return. Here are some possible tax-saving ideas that are worth knowing more about, should they apply to you.

If you are a first time homebuyer this year, you will definitely want to look into the tax break that is Read More…

Sam wants to work but he is worried that he would lose his Social Security Disability Income Benefits (SSDI) which provide him with money each month to live on as well as allowing him to receive Medicare benefits for his health care.

Like many others, when Sam applied for SSDI he was denied benefits but was successful in the appeal process to obtain benefits retroactively.  Sam has been doing pretty good and would love to get back into Read More…

Sometimes I think that show “Flip This House” is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the American public.  What really disturbs me the most that people actually take these things to heart and then apply them to their own life.  As a real estate appraiser I see people putting their heart and soul into upgrading or remodeling their house and then being devastated when they don’t make double their money back when it Read More…

Overeating isn’t the only cause of acid indigestion during this start of the holiday season. The other reason is that investors are examining their year-end statements and seeing the dramatic decline in value in just the past twelve months. This is especially true of those with IRAs and it raises many questions. Should they change the asset allocations? Continue to make contributions? What about switching to a Roth IRA?

Read More…

WELCOME WALL STREET JOURNAL READERS!

Chances are pretty good that if you stay healthy eat right and take care of yourself you’ll get to live a long healthy life. The Trusted Expert in our network want to remind you that with longevity comes an added responsibility to do things today to help you financially and emotionally prepare for that long life. This type of planning helps assure yourself that the rest of your life will be filled Read More…

What does health reform mean to you?

With President Obama and Congress looking to make major changes to the health care system, most people are wondering if and how these changes will affect them.

Given that approximately 60% of all personal bankruptcies are due to medical bills, it makes sense to be Read More…

The use of “Indexed annuities” as an Investment vehicle have grown significantly over the last 9 months primarily due to their  ability of providing the annuitant an opportunity to participate in a portion of the growth of the stock or Bond Market , while issuing an Ironclad guarantee against the loss of any principal when held to maturity.

However the one drawback to this type of investment has been its lack of liquidity and loss of control over Read More…

Many of my widowed and divorced clients have gone on to remarry later in life (maybe even for a third time). It’s wonderful that they’ve found happiness, but from an estate planning point of view, it can be a real challenge to make sure that love does conquer all. Given their later stages, re-marrieds come to the altar with an array of entanglements- children, grandchildren, property, businesses, assets, health Read More…

Many individuals establish trusts as part of their overall estate plan.  There are many valid reasons for establishing a trust such as asset protection, estate tax savings, and providing for incapacity.  

However there are many reasons for avoiding a trust, if possible, if the assets involved are not significant.

There are significant compliance costs for administering and maintaining a long-term trust which can run into the tens of thousands of dollars or more after the creator of the trust passes away.

In addition, many trustees are exposed to significant liability if the trustees do not keep up-to-date with Read More…

403(b) UPDATE: The IRS recently announced that they had come up with a prototype of a 403(b) plan that will make it easier for plan administrators to comply with the IRS regulations governing these retirement plans. The prototype is intended to assure employers who adopt it that they will be in compliance with the Read More…

As a result of many peoples failure to plan for many common life occurrences i.e. retirement , a long term illness or death many of these already unpleasant situations can turn into a full blown crisis.

We all know well in advance that wed like to retire somewhere around our 60s to 70s but the unfortunate truth is that unless we plan for this contingency far in advance we wont be able to retire in the manner wed like to. Fact is that 95% of those reaching age 65 economically wont be able to retire and that was even before our most recent economic downturn. That number will now of course increase significantly with not Read More…

In light of the recent headlines in Virginia and Alabama about their section 529 prepaid education plans not being able to give investors a guaranteed return to cover tuition costs, many questions about their viability as an ongoing program are going unanswered. Sadly, it does not appear that any assurances are forthcoming from even from the highest levels of state government. This is due to the fact that the states Read More…

After the Bernie Madoff scandal broke, the real million dollar question was, how could anyone be so gullible to turn over their entire life savings to a man who they knew so little about? Naturally hindsight is 20/20, but the more important question is, in these tough times, how many of us are letting our guard down and setting ourselves up to be victimized, too?

According to the North American Securities Administrations Association, in just the first five months of 2009 alone, there has been a twenty percent jump in the number of investment scams offering outsized Read More…

Many investors have rightfully asked  Is this the beginning of a bull market rally or just a bounce from the devastation weve sufferred over the last 9 months.  Do we first have to retest the November 08 lows or did the March 09 lows already do that?
  
Theres perhaps nothing worse for ones confidence whether youre an investor or an advisor to have lost
20, 30 ,even 40% of your investments  or more over the last year and then to get back into the market only to have it trick you again with a new bear market correction.
 
So what can we do to protect ourselves and the money we have left from further losses.  Some people say Read More…

How you view this recent economic fallout has more to do with age than people suspect. My younger clients, even those dealing with job losses and high mortgage and tuition payments, have confidence in a market rebound. Though they are distressed about the big dent in their portfolios, time is on their side. It is my older, retired clients, who are struggling, not just because they may live on fixed incomes or fear outliving their money. This generation has ridden one of the longest financial waves in our country’s Read More…