By Michael J. Searcy
As a physician, you spend countless hours working so that others can enjoy a healthy and fulfilling life, leaving you with fewer hours to spend on yourself and your finances. With your focus on your profession, you may fall victim to making financial mistakes that can add up over the long run. Here are four financial mistakes physicians make and ways to avoid them:
By Michael J. Searcy
Have you heard of loss aversion? In economics and decision theory, “loss aversion refers to people’s tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains.”
Loss aversion may help explain why people are not saving enough for retirement – they may avoid saving today because it feels like they’re losing the ability to use that money for things they want now and don’t recognize the delayed gratification of using that money for a comfortable retirement in the future.
Sending a child or grandchild off to college is an exciting time for a family. For the student, it’s an opportunity to leave the nest and begin the first phase of adulthood; for parents and grandparents, it’s a time to take pride in the years of hard work preparing the next generation for the real world. College is also the first time many young people become responsible for their own finances, and the habits they learn will help set the stage for their financial futures.
Preparing your estate in advance is one of the greatest gifts you can give your family. Many estates include real estate in the form of a primary home, vacation home, and other family properties. While inheriting a property can be a wonderful legacy, it also comes with obligations that heirs may be unprepared or unable to fulfill. If you intend to leave real estate to your heirs, ask yourself these five questions to help avoid creating problems for your loved ones.
By Jessica Kmetty
Backdoor payments, hidden fees, loopholes in the rules…these were the conflicts of interest buried in fine print that advisors who were not acting as fiduciaries used to chisel away about a quarter of their clients’ retirement savings. When the Department of Labor issued their fiduciary rule, the theme was clear: when advising clients on retirement, advisors would legally be considered fiduciaries required to put their clients’ best interests before their own interests and excessive profits and loopholes would no longer stand. This sounds great for the investor, but what about the hidden consequences?
If you have a furry friend, you know your pet relies on you for every need. What would your pet do without you? Although pets are legally considered to be property, to those of us who own pets, they’re more like members of the family. And so, just as you make preparations to care for the human members of your family after your passing, you need to think about how to look after your pets as well.
Here are some options that can help you ensure your pets are cared for if something happens to you:
By John C. Fales
Sometimes it’s hard to tell your spouse they’re spending too much money, to tell your friends you need to skip the annual trip this year, or to tell your child their new car needs to be a joint investment rather than a gift. However, wouldn’t it be easier to have a crucial conversation today rather than a really challenging one later that starts with, “We have a big financial problem”?
If you’ve ever felt a rush of excitement at making a big purchase or experienced feelings of shame at making a financial mistake, you know that our relationship with money isn’t completely rational. For most people, money comes with a lot of emotional and psychological baggage that affects the decisions we make.
The 401(k) plan is becoming the single largest source of retirement savings for a majority of American workers. According to the Society of Professional Administrators and Recordkeepers (SPARK), over 55 million people participate in 401(k) plans. If you participate in a 401(k) plan, the good news is that you have more control over your retirement money. The bad news is that you have more control over your retirement money.
By Michael J. Searcy
When it comes to an advisor managing the money you are saving and investing for retirement, the management and recommendations should be transparent and made with your best interest in mind.
The Department of Labor believed this strongly enough to spend years working on a rule that was finally issued on April 6, 2016. The rule states that any advisor managing a retirement plan or its participants is a fiduciary, legally bound to make decisions in the best interest of their clients. This rule also applies to advisors who recommend consumers move their investments from a retirement plan to an Individual Retirement Account (IRA).
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