Do you know your rights as a taxpayer? There’s a Taxpayer Bill of Rights, and you should become familiar with it. Know your rights!
August, 2017:
Create Your Own Luck
“Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” The other day I was eating lunch with my kids. After lunch was over I gave them a “treat” from the drawer that we normally house goodies of all sorts. I happened to grab a couple of gold-wrapped chocolate coins. These coins were renditions of the JFK half-dollars. My youngest grabbed her coin and said, “heads or tails?” I quickly said “heads” while she flipped the coin in the air. The coin landed on the floor. Tails. I said, “Well, we both lost.” My daughter quickly exclaimed, “I won daddy.” When I asked her how she won when the coin landed tails she replied to me, “I called both heads and tails.” Win-win. Essentially, my daughter had created her own luck. And I immediately thought, “This is excellent fodder for a blog post. So here we are. The reason why I mention this is […]
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529 vs. Life Insurance
Over the past few weeks I have been asked (and pitched) the idea of whether cash-value life insurance makes sense as a vehicle for saving and paying for college. By cash-value life insurance, I am including whole life, variable life, universal life and variable universal life policies. First, in almost all cases, it does not. The very few cases where it may make sense will be covered shortly. Here are some reasons why a 529 college savings plan is better than cash-value life insurance. 529 plans have very high contribution amounts. Depending on your state, the total amount you can contribute to your 529 plan is very high, and the annual contribution amounts are high as well. From a federal tax perspective, you are allowed to contribute up to $14,000 annually without incurring gift tax consequences. This amount doubles to $28,000 annually if you’re married and elect to split the […]
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The Retirement Answer
Although I will admit that the title of this post is a bit glamorous, I wanted to share the simplicity of the message. Typically, every morning we will sit down to eat breakfast. Meals at our house are generally jovial, with discussions ranging from which animal would win in a fight to how my kids will spend their day. A few mornings ago, however, my oldest asked me a rather interesting question. Knowing what I do for a living she asked, “Daddy, what do you have to do to retire?” My immediate response was, “That’s a great question!” At age 7, my heart swelled that she was already thinking about retirement. Before I could give an answer she quickly quipped, “Wait. I know. You have to save enough money so that one day you can retire.” I was speechless. Pretty profound for a 7-year-old. Finally, I replied, “That’s exactly what […]
Sterling Raskie, MSFS, CFP®, ChFC®
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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”.