Financial Symmetry News & Views

Archive for ‘Take Charge of your Finances’

Historically, most people have not had to consider the problem of owing Federal estate taxes at their death. With little or no estate planning, most property you own at death is subject to this tax, and will likely include things such as your home, retirement accounts, life insurance policies, investments, and many others. As [...]

Have you ever felt anxious about your investment portfolio?  Who hasn’t?  A recent presentation at one of our professional conferences pointed out that five out of every six years will produce a stock market return sequence that either triggers anxiety or smacks your portfolio so hard that you wonder why you ever trusted the markets [...]

Many of us are familiar with inflation. But what about deflation?

Chances are, you know somebody who has made a vow to go to the gym twice or three times a week, and even bought a gym membership, and never gets around to going.  You probably also know people who don’t put money in their company’s 401(k) plan, even though the company matches some or all [...]

Many investors have become disillusioned with their investment strategy.  After all, at the end of the 2000s,  most investors were left with less than they started with at the beginning of the decade.  So a desire to do something different (try something, anything else for goodness sakes!) is completely understandable.
Lots of people have made money [...]

Many of our new clients tell us they found out about fee only financial planning by listening to talk radio or watching their favorite financial pundit on television.  Media personalities such as Suze Orman, Clark Howard, and Dave Ramsey do a great service by inspiring consumers to take control of their financial lives. We also [...]

When we start working with a new client, one of the first steps is typically consolidating the number of accounts they have outstanding.  In our experience this makes your finances easier to manage by reducing the mental accounting that needs to take place every time a financial decision is made.  While this has always made [...]

Many illustrations of investment performance calculate the growth of a hypothetical investment from a given starting point.  Typically there is a benchmark, such as the S&P 500 index, charted alongside for comparison purposes.  The models show that had you invested a specific dollar amount, for example $10,000, you would have the initial $10,000 plus whatever [...]

While we emphasize the importance of annual tax planning, it’s also important to not let tax avoidance override your other financial goals.  Liz Davidson, of Forbes.com, wrote a nice piece describing how people lose money when they let tax issues dominate their investment decisions. The article does a great job of examining why payments [...]

Have you ever had the pleasure of receiving an audit letter from the IRS?  You walk back from your mailbox with the fearful nervousness that you may owe more in taxes than you had originally thought.  You slowly remember that you rolled over your old 401k to an IRA last year, and are confused as [...]