If you’re over 70 ½, have an IRA, and give significantly to charitable organizations – pay attention!  I’m writing about the Qualified Charitable Distribution – QCD - a great tax benefit. 

Here are the specifics:  you can do a direct distribution from...

Tax Reasons for the Subchapter S Election

There are lots of great reasons to organize your business as a corporate entity with a Subchapter S election.  You have limited personal liability, flow-through of net income, ability to take a Section 199A deduction, and ability to, as the owner,...

Now that I’m a beneficiary of Social Security, I know whereof I write.  The SSA is now a part of my life, my wife’s life, and for better or for worse will be until we’ve assumed room temperature. 

I began drawing my retirement benefit at age 66, which was my Normal...

They don’t teach young people anything in school anymore. 

How many of my readers have thought this exact same sentence at one point or another?  I usually think it when I made a reference to literature or music that someone else doesn’t get.  I mean, hasn’t...

January of 2023 kicked off with a bang. We’re in the midst of a stock market rally that we haven’t seen in over a year.  The market rose, and rose, and kept rising – all in the last 8 weeks.  We’re far from all-time highs, and expect that to be the case...

I’ve always loved language.  I won both the English and Spanish prizes at my high school graduation.  The turn of a phrase, or change in meaning a comma can make, have always fascinated me.  If you haven't read Lynne Truss' excellent and funny book on punctuation, do so!

For...

I mentioned earlier that I made a mid-life career transition from retail management to financial planning.  Over the years I was responsible for women’s, men’s, children’s, electronic, and home departments.  It is my observation that men’s apparel has just as...

We actually read newspapers

Picture this:  dad in his easy chair reading a newspaper.  Something out of Norman Rockwell, right?  But that’s how I grew up.  Either the New Haven Register or the Hartford Courant were delivered by a paperboy.  Dad brought the Wall St....

Smartphones and conversation

Ok, I’m going to say it:  cursed be the man who untethered phones from walls so that women could walk around talking on them.  Hurl all the abuse you want at me.  But I’ll give the men an equal diss:  why do commuter trains have quiet...

Taking on a new client

When we agree to do financial planning for a new client, we do, of course, ask a lot of questions.  Notice I said, when we agree.  The implication here is that we do not take on everyone who comes to us.  After an initial interview we can usually tell whether...

Money and Credit

As I mentioned in my introduction, my parents are products of the Great Depression.  It was my mother who first taught me about money and budgeting – she controlled the family purse strings.  Dad was the breadwinner, and he brought home cash each month and turned...