Our San Francisco financial planning team (Elissa, Dave, Jennifer, and Jen) attended a Financial Planning Association of San Francisco meeting on Tuesday that featured Gary Schlossburg, Senior Economist for Wells Capital Management, presenting on the outlook for the U.S. economy and financial markets into 2015. We thought…
The government has now been “shut down” for 11 days and we face the further threat of a default if Congress fails to raise the U.S. debt limit within a week. While the former is painful, ever more so the longer it lasts, the latter would be truly…
This is part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that President Obama signed into law on March 23, 2010, also dubbed ‘Obamacare’. The fact that these health insurance marketplaces are government-sponsored does not mean the government will itself be issuing insurance as some…
Who? Participants in employer-sponsored retirement plans [401(k), 403(b), 457(b), profit-sharing plans] and/or IRA owners ([traditional, rollover, SEP, SIMPLE]. What? This is the minimum amount you are required to withdraw from your account each year. When? Distributions must start by April 1 of the year…
What Happened? On June 26th, in United States v Windsor, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was unconstitutional ab initio (from the start). The court decided that if the citizens of a state voted to recognize…
College Graduation For many people around the country, May means cap and gown, graduation ceremonies, and having or witnessing the experience of the slightly fearful but exhilarating realization that one chapter in life has ended and a new one is about to begin. As always, this should be a time…
Elissa’s “Confessions of a Cobbler” You know the saying about the cobbler’s children having no shoes? I have to confess to being a bit of a cobbler. Okay, my children have shoes – real ones and the financial planning version: ROTH IRAs. But I was…
Investing With a Broken Compass: the Broken Analogy While sitting amid the scattered pages of the Sunday paper the other day, leafing through the magazine section, we came upon a full page ad placed by BNY Mellon Wealth Management that offered the following opinion: The…
In this edition of the Digest, we conduct a Wisdom of Crowds experiment, celebrate Elissa and Dave’s contribution to the Financial Planning Competency Handbook, share photos from our Virginia Retreat and Open House, highlight Elissa’s contribution to The Wall Street Journal, and get ready for…