Financial Planning Insights

  • How does the “Big Beautiful Bill” affect tax strategy and estate planning?

    Financial Planning Insights Congress recently passed the President’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” a comprehensive tax law that introduces significant changes for individuals, business owners, and investors. While many taxpayers will benefit from reduced taxes and new deductions, several provisions include income-based limits and marriage penalties that can reduce their effectiveness.  Most of the changes are extensions…

  • Drivers of Equity Returns Likely to Shift Going Forward

    Financial Planning Insights Predicting stock market returns is famously difficult, with so many variables – many beyond anyone’s control – combining in unpredictable ways to humble even the most knowledgeable experts at times. Bonds, to those with even a passing knowledge of how their math works, seem easier to analyze with confidence given their more…

  • Week Summary 9/23/22 – All Eyes on Me… (Jerome Powell)

    Financial Planning Insights The Federal Reserve met yesterday and raised the overnight Fed Funds target rate by 75bps to 3.00% – 3.25%, matching the market consensus. That part was no surprise… but the forecast for future Fed Funds rates was more hawkish than market expectations, and that put pressure on both front-end Treasuries and equities.…

  • Starting to feel like DeJa Vu?

    Financial Planning Insights Quick warning – there are a lot of charts in this blog. I think they are well worth looking at though. I have seen a few articles comparing the rally since the March 2020 lows to the rally in 2009, and the two do look similar. Today, we are going to look…

  • Top Ten

    Financial Planning Insights Top Ten Things Everyone Should Plan On The list I have prepared is based upon my life experience and not meant to be the “be all end all” of life’s decisions. It is meant to be a partial guideline that if one follows these basic principles, they will find that life’s other…

  • Holistic Approach Makes a Difference

    Financial Planning Insights In the tax preparation process, we will often find missed opportunities. Most people look to their investment adviser for returns on their money. This is an important quality, but sometimes tax avoidance can help one retain gains that they might have otherwise lost to taxes. Recently a couple took a large distribution…