An integral part of our planning for clients is our continuous monitoring of new thresholds that affect retirement plan contributions, Social Security taxation and Medicare premiums. Listed below are the figures for 2012. There have been a few changes in pension plan contributions for the 2012 tax year due to cost of living adjustments (COLA)...Read More
Medicare Primer for the “New Boomers”, by Rosanne Roge, CFP®, CSA®, RFGSM Well, the Baby Boomers are beginning to enter the Medicare program and the momentum will be building rapidly. This is the crowd born between 1946 and 1964. As of 2011, that would make us between 47 and 65 years old. Currently, there are...Read More
At a recent Investment Management Committee meeting we were discussing the importance that gold plays in our portfolios. Over the past year, many clients have asked if we had exposure to gold. To their surprise, we let them know that we have always maintained exposure to gold in our portfolios via investments in several mutual...Read More
Portfolio Strategy We just completed a series of Investment Committee (IM) meetings to review our portfolio strategy. We started with a view of the world’s investable capital and how it is distributed. The purpose of this exercise is to become more informed on the changes to the relative size of the various markets and to...Read More
The Government Giveth and Taketh Away The GOOD news is that Social Security recipients will be getting a Cost of Living Adjustment beginning in January, 2012. The raise is expected to be about 3.6% which is a pretty sizeable increase. This is great news since there have been no COLA adjustments for Social Security for...Read More
“You will never be a leader unless you first learn to follow and be led” Tiorio Recent market volatility is being attributed to many things. Some true and others are pure speculation. The problem is not the problem, the problem is that our politicians don’t know how to think about the problem. So here is...Read More
The Standard and Poor’s (S&P) downgrade of long-term U.S. debt from AAA to AA+ is sad, but it is not news. Everyone already knew we were in trouble and to act surprised is unjustified. Now we and our politicians can no longer deny it. It’s official, which may be good for us long-term. While the...Read More
Our elected leaders in Washington, D.C. are playing a dangerous game of chicken. They are making everyone nervous about the deadline (August 2, 2011) for extending the debt ceiling. While every expert on the subject, including Congress, knows that the only solution is to raise the debt ceiling, they are using this to score points...Read More
I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately about the issues facing our country, particularly the financial dimension of government. Following the release of the Republican budget proposal authored by Rep. Paul Ryan, President Obama’s subsequent response and the recent downgrading by Standard & Poor’s of our country’s economic prospects, I thought I would share...Read More
