Resources

Legacy Planning: Help Your Wealth Live On

As we journey through life, accumulating wealth and achieving success, it’s natural to want to leave a lasting legacy for future generations. Legacy planning goes beyond traditional estate planning by encompassing not only the transfer of financial assets but also the preservation of family values, traditions, and aspirations.  In this blog, we’ll explore the importance […]

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National Clean Up Your IRS Act Month: Tips for Tax Season

March is National Clean Up Your IRS Act Month, which serves as a timely reminder to review, organize, and streamline your tax-related documentation and strategies. Tax season is upon us! It’s a time when individuals and businesses alike take stock of their financial affairs, helping ensure compliance with tax regulations and optimize their strategies.  In

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Seizing Opportunity: Is Now Is the Time to Invest in Annuities?

With economic uncertainties and market fluctuations, it’s natural to feel uneasy about your financial security. However, now might be the perfect time to consider purchasing annuities to help safeguard your retirement income. Annuities are financial products that provide a stream of income payments to the holder over a specified period, typically during retirement. They are

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Why You Shouldn’t Solely Rely on Social Security in Retirement and How to Maximize Your Retirement Income

Relying solely on Social Security benefits for retirement income may not provide the financial security you need in your golden years.  While Social Security can be a valuable asset, understanding its limitations and exploring additional income sources is crucial for a comfortable retirement.  In this blog, we’ll delve into why depending solely on Social Security

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Retirement Myths You Should Know

Misconceptions about finances can hinder your ability to effectively plan for retirement and adhere to your plan. When strategizing for your retirement, it’s essential to ensure you’re equipped with accurate information. The aspiration to break free from the daily 9-5 grind is a powerful motivator for many contemplating retirement. However, realizing this vision of retirement

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TR=I+G Guide

Starting about five years ago I began using the term “Income Generation” to describe the demographic encompassing my clients, prospective clients, and myself. To put it simply, the term refers to today’s generation of retirees and near-retirees. That means Baby Boomers but also older Gen Xers, who are also in their 50s now and nearing the age when they’ll need to start preparing for retirement income.

But what makes us the “Income Generation”? Why is it so important for our generation to understand the benefits of investing for income — more so than previous generations? I’ll answer those questions in this report while also sharing a host of facts and tips to help meet your own retirement income needs and goals.

The simple fact is, the Income Generation faces a host of unique challenges — meaning challenges different from those faced by our parents and grandparents. So, let’s start by talking about perhaps the trickiest of these challenges, which is the fact that we live so long.

Longevity
The average life expectancy today in the U.S. is 78.7 years, compared to 68.2 years in 1950. Advances in healthcare have made it possible for people to remain active and productive well past age 65. As a result, you might want to work well past that age, or not retire at all. This is all great on the one hand, but it can also lead to problems, mainly financial ones.

Be aware, if you’re a couple in your 60s today, statistically there is a 50% chance that at least one of you will live into your 90s. That means you need a strategy designed to help provide financial security and retirement income for up to 30 years. Not 20 years. Not 25, but 30 years. Now be aware that the average person is psychologically wired to think and plan no more than five to ten years into the future. And even the average financial advisor doesn’t see much further than that.

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Retirement Risk Report: Will You Outlive Your Money?

Few inventions in recorded history have revolutionized the way we live like the Internet. It has changed the way we communicate and has made thousands of previously slow, complex processes faster and more efficient. Yet, while solving old problems, the Internet — like any invention — has also created new ones. Among the biggest of those problems is the vulnerability of sensitive and/or personal information to a relatively new breed of criminal: cyberthieves.

Most of the country was personally impacted by this problem in September 2017 when Equifax reported a security breach that allowed hackers to access the personal information of 143 million Americans. Equifax is one of three major credit reporting agencies (Experian and TransUnion are the others), and all keep extensive databases of credit-user information that include everything from dates of birth to addresses to Social Security numbers. Once a cyber thief gains access to such information, they can use it to steal your identity and potentially gain access to your credit accounts and personal finances.

Electronic identity theft can ruin a family financially, and unfortunately, it is an issue with no easy solution. According to a 2017 study by Javelin Strategy & Research, between 2011 and 2017, identity thieves stole over $107 billion. In 2016 alone, some $16 billion was stolen from 15.4 million U.S. consumers, up from $15.3 billion stolen from 13.1 million victims a year earlier.1 The increase illustrates that even as cybersecurity measures improve, criminals become increasingly savvy.

Greater Risk for Older Americans
The bottom line is that keeping our identities and finances safe from criminals in the digital age will be an ongoing challenge for both businesses and individuals. That’s especially true for individuals at or near retirement age whose accumulated assets can potentially make them more attractive targets for thieves than younger people who are still in the early process of building their wealth. A top priority for most Americans over age 50 should be “financial defense,” which means they should focus on the use of strategies designed to generate income and protect assets from major losses due to extreme fluctuations in the financial markets. In the digital age, however, another essential component of financial defense is cybersecurity: knowing how to protect your identity as you do everything from online shopping and banking to buying gas.

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