Some individuals get the nice surprise of a big tax refund every tax year (if this is you, don’t be too happy – you’ve been lending Uncle Sam money interest free). Other folks get the unpleasant surprise of having to write a big check to Uncle Sam. For the latter individuals, there may be a way to lower their tax bill and save more for retirement. Let’s look at an example. Assume an individual has a tax bill of $4,000 and they want to reduce this. Naturally, there are other deductions they may qualify for, but in this case, they’ve exhausted all other options except this one: saving to their 401k. Let’s also assume this individual’s marginal tax rate is 25%. The individual can take their tax rate and divide it into their tax liability for the year – in this case $4,000 divided by 25%. This comes to $16,000. […]
March, 2017:
Anchoring
How we think and the way that we perceive information can have a powerful impact on our decisions. Often, the first piece of information we receive is what we will use for future reference when making decisions – and whether we feel those decisions are good or bad. This is referred to anchoring or anchoring bias and is very well described in Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. Let’s look at an example. Recently, I had a student ask me regarding his benefit package and starting salary he was offered from a potential employer. This student will finish a master’s degree in May and this will be the first “real” job the student will have out of school. Initially, the employer was talking to the student about project management and leadership opportunities. When it got down to brass tacks, the company was talking about a potential starting salary of […]
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Sorry to Rain on your Parade
I wanted to take a brief moment to remind our readers of a fundamental investing truth that tends to get overlooked, forgotten, or deliberately disregarded during times of market euphoria. Think about this. If you had a million dollars at the beginning of 2016 to invest and I said that over the year that there would be a Supreme Court vacancy, the Cubs would win the World Series, interest rates would rise, and Donald Trump would become president – would you invest that million dollars in the market? I would bet that many people would not. They would guess that 2016 would be a dismal year for market returns. Yet, in 2016 the Dow returns 13.4% and the S&P 500 returned 9.5%! With all of that uncertainty and the improbable happening, the market still had a great year of returns. Those who stayed invested were rewarded. Those who sold (say, […]
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And if you’ve come here to learn about queuing waterfowl, I apologize for the confusion. You may want to discuss your question with Lester, my loyal watchduck and self-proclaimed “advisor’s advisor”.