Monthly Newsletters

Help Improve Your Financial Plan This Year with These One-time Adjustments

It’s no secret that many people do not keep their New Year’s resolutions. Every year around this time, gym memberships go up and personal planners fly off the shelves. A few weeks later, the planner gets left on the train and the gym, well, it’s just so far out of the way! New Year’s resolutions have a whopping shelf life of about a month, and only 20% or so make it further.

Monthly Newsletters

Giving to Charity for the Holidays, Even Though It’s 2020

Chances are, between basting the turkey and watching the football during the holidays, you’ll find yourself giving to the causes and organizations you believe in. In the U.S., 30% of the year’s charitable giving is done in December, and 10% of the annual giving is just in those last three days of the year!

Monthly Newsletters

Your Year-End Tax Checklist, Plus a Few Extras for 2020

A lot of us have been in the attic lately, putting away the ghosts and skeletons from Halloween and dusting off the holiday decorations. While you’re up there, can you find your year-end tax checklist?

Monthly Newsletters

How Financial Scams Work, and How to Keep Yourself Safe No Matter Your Level of Wealth

In the late 1920s, an enterprising Bostonian started selling subdivisions in the sunny ‘burbs of Florida. Promising orange trees in the backyard and rolling waves out the front door, he sold plots – sometimes 23 an acre! – near bustling towns like Nettie. Unfortunately, the entrepreneur’s name was Charles Ponzi, and Nettie, like his other locales, was a work of lucrative fiction.

Monthly Newsletters

How to Invest Creatively in Your Fall Vacation this Year

Sneaking away during the lull between peak times – “the shoulder season” – is popular with savvy travelers for reduced crowds, milder weather and usually great deals on travel packages.

Monthly Newsletters

Comparing Traditional Mortgages and Variable-Rate Mortgages in the COVID-19 Economy

Do you know what it was like to buy a house in 1982? You pulled up your Trans Am to the bank where the picture of President Regan hung on the lobby wall and got your checkbook out of your jean jacket. Then you signed up for a 30-year mortgage with a 17% interest rate!

Monthly Newsletters

Paying Off Debt: As You Work Toward Debt Freedom, is the Snowball or Avalanche Method Right for You?

Debt consolidation and repayment takes up a lot of America’s bandwidth. You can’t watch TV, especially daytime TV, without seeing at least one advertisement promising you freedom from debt – call now! These gimmicks are hit-and-usually-miss, but the sheer ubiquity of this conversation tells us it’s on everyone’s mind.

Monthly Newsletters

How to Put the Hard Financial Lessons of Quarantine to Work for You

Wait – gas cost how much?! This is a question we may ask our parents or hear from our kids with some incredulity. This intergenerational conversation has a humorous side: gas was a quarter a gallon – how? You must have filled up everyday!

Monthly Newsletters

How to Use a 529 Plan to Help 2020 Grads Celebrate-In-Place During Coronavirus Quarantine

Warmer weather comes with a few traditions: well-kept lawns, baseball stadium lights, open windows. And every year in May and June you’ll see the balloons on stop signs and borrowed folding tables in the open garage, proud parents snapping pictures. The graduation party is a universal rite of passage.

Monthly Newsletters

The Tough Get Strategic – Financial Strategies for a Market Downturn

When the going gets tough, the tough get strategic. Headlines you read at breakfast might be contradicted by lunch, and the ups and downs of the market could give anyone vertigo. But now is not the time to panic – now is the time to take a deep breath and strategize.