Famous football coach Lou Holtz once said, “Pressure is what you feel when you are not prepared.” Retirement Income Planning (also the title of one of my books) is about preparation… not procrastination. In continuing to make my financial planning practice better and more valuable for my clients, I keep adding new capabilities, important services, and hopefully, good, relevant, and interesting information over time. BUT… in this blog post, I want to offer you a new and free resource. It’s … Continue reading

See the new tax bracket table for 2021 at the bottom of this post. The standard deduction for married filing joint has been increased to $25,100 and $12,550 for single filers. For those of you still working and making your FICA (SS and Medicare payroll contributions) will be applied to more of your income in 2021. The maximum amount of income that will be subject to FICA taxes will be $142,800 (up from $137,700 in 2020). As I wrote a … Continue reading

No matter how you feel about the presidential election results, it’s highly likely that you will see some changes in your future tax calculations and resulting tax bill – especially for my wealthier clients. Let me preface this BLOGPOST, by saying that nothing written below is etched in stone. These are simply Joe Biden’s wish list. He will have pressure from the more liberal side of his party to tax more and have more entitlements. Depending upon what happens in … Continue reading

Wow – what a year 2020 has been so far. And we still have the elections to come! At various times this year the S&P 500 index has been down -30% and up +8% from where it was when 2019 ended. Right now it’s currently up about +7% YTD. And the Nasdaq 100 has been even more volatile — down as much as -20% and up as much as +43%, and believe it or not has a +33% gain YTD. … Continue reading

Still Time to Get $150,000 from the SBA Can your business use an infusion of cash to deal with losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic? The hugely popular federal Payroll Protection Program (PPP) that paid forgivable loans to millions of businesses ended on August 8 (although it could come back in revised form). But you can still obtain a low-interest Emergency Income Disaster Loan (EIDL) of up to $150,000 from the Small Business Administration (SBA). Do You Qualify for an … Continue reading