Happy New Year !  I am writing you to summarize the following: An overview of 2015 Stock Market Performance (All Data from Morningstar) January nose dive (or normal market volatility) Why I’m always rationally optimistic (Stolen from the title of Matt Ridley’s Book– The Rational Optimist) – and why you should be too. 2015 Total […]

As if the fiduciary standard meme isn’t enough of a debate these days, JPMorgan hopes that nobody notices how far away they are from relative suitability. In fact, the entire JP Morgan private banker model is to shovel as much $JPM product down clients’ throats as they possibly can. Mutual funds, mortgages, trust services, credit […]

We are discussing & recommending to all of our clients to consider opening a Charitable Giving Account/Donor-advised fund. Charitable Giving Accounts have many advantages over the traditional ways of charitable giving. One of the biggest is record keeping. You make one or more contributions to your giving account during the year. So at tax time […]

Taxpayers making more than $250,000 (married filing jointly (MFJ)), or $200,000 (single), may experience 2013 marginal tax rate increases ranging from 13% to 189% over current 2012 rates  – Taxable estate of $5,120,000 will see an increase of 22,659,990.00% over 2012 – if your estate is over $5,120,00 have your food tested at all family […]

The current renewed downward volatility in the world stock markets (Volatility is a nice way of my saying my stock portfolio looks like…****!) is reviving unwelcome feelings of anxiety, fear, and a sense of powerlessness. However, acting on our emotions we can end up doing more harm than good. The increase in market volatility is […]