Today’s post is a guest blog post from Kim Waldman, who is our Chief Operating Officer at Stephens Wealth Management Group. So, you want to make the most of your financial review meeting, but you aren’t sure how? I totally understand and was in that place myself just a few years back. Following are a …
Managing Money in A Relationship
If you are in a relationship, are you on the same page when it comes to finance? No?…read on! I recently watched an old episode of How I Met Your Mother, in which Lily was hiding a massive amount of credit card debt from her husband. He didn’t know until they applied for a mortgage. …
LGBTQ+ Pride Month
Welcome to Pride Month! June was chosen for LGBTQ+ Pride Month to memorialize the Stonewall Riots which took place in June 1969. If you don’t know about the riots, Drunk History put together a great clip to tell you all about it here. As a result, you may hear about many pride events/festivals/parades happening this …
Can You Afford A Pet?
We adopted some cats a couple of years ago. As of this month, they are three years old, which apparently in cat years is 28 in human years. Little did we know the expenses coming for one cat, who is named Shadow, because he is all black like a shadow, even his little black nose. …
Excess 529 Funds?
So, you were a #ResponsibleAdult and you planned for your child’s future with a 529 plan. They were attending school and you withdrew funds to pay for their tuition and room and board. Then, the universe threw you a curve ball, causing your child’s university to put all classes online and/or require students to stay …
College Funding Part 2
In my last post, I started to explain the different ways that parents (or whomever) can save money for college. This post covers 4 additional ways. Again, here is a handy dandy chart: Like Traditional IRAs, contribution limits apply to Roth IRAs. In addition, with a Roth IRA, your allowable contribution may be reduced or …
College Funding Part 1
May is “529” month (get it- 5/29? It’s a complete dad joke). I will be talking about college funding. Do you have a child or grandchild that will someday attend college? Great, now go back in time and start saving a lot of money about 5 years before they were born, and maybe you will …
1st Quarter Capital Market Review
Stocks surged higher in the first quarter with the ongoing coronavirus vaccine rollout and a larger than expected government stimulus. The markets rallied with the hope of a quicker return to normal activities. The S&P 500 (US large cap stocks) rose 6.2% for the quarter. Energy and financial stocks were the top performing sectors (see …
Should I take the standard deduction or itemize my deductions this tax season?
It is tax time. Normally, we would have our taxes filed by now, but this year we have an extension. But I am not thinking about taxes, I am thinking about summer, which I am going to tie into taxes on today’s blog. We typically rent a place up north each summer for anywhere from …
Should I take the standard deduction or itemize my deductions this tax season?Read More
DIY Investing
I heard a great analogy the other day. It has to do with oil changes in your car. If you wanted to, you could figure out how to do an oil change and save yourself some money. However, you might get oil dripped on your face, like what happened to my husband the first time …