Portfolio Rebalancing: What? Why? When? Have you ever received a Raymond James trade confirmation (or several), and quietly wondered what it was for? It was probably the result of Portfolio Rebalancing, an action I took on your behalf. My name is Jessie Schlanderer, and I am an Investment Analyst and Wealth Advisor here at Stephens …
Budgeting
Aggregating
What is aggregating? Aggregating allows us to consider the assets, liabilities, and other holdings of your household so that we can better coordinate the financial planning we do with you. Many of our clients have multiple accounts with Stephens Wealth Management Group, a mortgage with one bank, a car loan with a different bank, checking …
Employee Stock Options II
Part 2 of 2 Employee Stock Options Last week, I discussed these and how there are two different kinds. When an employer gives you employee stock options, it is not considered a taxable event. It’s only when you DO something with the options that you have to pay attention and figure out if it is taxable …
Employee Stock Options I
Part 1 of 2 What the heck is an employee stock option? Publicly traded companies may offer employees stock options as a form of incentive compensation. These options give you the right to purchase company stock at a specific price. There’s a lot of jargon to share when it comes to employee stock options. The …
Credit Card Debt
Welcome to October, which is National Credit Card Awareness month! There was an article published on the Credible financial website that did a survey of 500 Americans with credit card debt. The survey said that of those survey participants, age 18-34 years, 33%+ said that debt is the scariest thing in their life. Just over …
“Too Conservative” for Investing?
Am I too conservative for Investing? The market has been somewhat volatile this year and some of my clients have expressed fear that the markets are “too high” and they should get out until this is over. My question to them is—how do you know when it’s over? It’s very tempting to want to play …
Relationships and Finance
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. …
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 Preparing for College Funding In my last post, I started to explain the different ways that parents (or whomever) can prepare for college funding. 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 …
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 …