Chris O'Shea took a pay cut to become a financial advisor. Then he left the firm for nearly a decade to coach high school sports and work with students at his church. He came back with a completely different sense of what this work is really about. Read his story.
By Mike McCarthy, CPA/PFS, CFP® In this business, you sit across from clients in some of life’s most difficult moments: job losses, market crashes, divorces, and deaths. But if someone asks me to name the hardest conversation I’ve ever had,…
Worried you might be making mistakes that could derail your retirement? Discover the 5 retirement planning mistakes we often see and how to fix them early.
Most people with a concentrated stock position know they should diversify. What they do not know is how to do it without handing a large chunk to the IRS. In this article, Chuck Bender walks through how a net unrealized appreciation strategy (NUA) combined with a donor-advised fund helped one client retire comfortably without an unnecessary tax hit. If you are sitting on a large position in a single stock, this is worth a read.
By Graham Ewing, CFP®, MBA, Director of Financial Planning Standards A couple came to our office not long ago with a straightforward goal: make sure they were ready to retire. The husband was considering retiring soon, the wife planned to…
There has been a lot of talk about Roth conversions so I wanted to help bring greater clarity to the issue. First, we will discuss the differences between a Traditional Individual Retirement Account (IRA) and a Roth IRA. Second, we will…
The greatest financial scams are perpetrated on the most vulnerable group in America, aging senior citizens who are slowly losing mental capacity. The aging process invokes emotions of fear, consequently triggering emotions of anger or greed because the mental capacity to…
Could you be on the hook for your parents’ long-term care expenses? The answer is YES! In about 30 states, including Pennsylvania, there are laws called filial reasonability or filial support laws, which may obligate children to help defray their…
Age 59½ is a key age for both a traditional IRA and a Roth IRA, because at age 59½, you may withdraw from either a traditional or a Roth IRA without incurring a 10% penalty. With a Roth IRA, however,…
Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) come in two varieties—the traditional IRA and the Roth IRA. The traditional IRA allows you the opportunity to claim a tax deduction on your income tax return for contributions made to the IRA, and you must…