If you are self-employed or a business owner, you have several retirement plan options to consider, including an Individual (or Solo) 401(k) plan. This flexible plan can allow you to contribute both as an employee and employer, which can increase your potential retirement savings.
Unless you are independently wealthy, most people need insurance.1 Life insurance is of particular importance if you are young and have just had your first child. At this stage you become responsible for the care and upbringing of another person, including paying for college. Without large sums in the bank or invested, there is a great need to provide for your children and spouse / partner if you die prematurely.
If you bought a stock, stock or bond mutual fund or ETF (Exchange Traded Fund), and 12 months or more has passed and the value of this investment has decreased, you can sell up to $3,000 of losses and deduct that from your ordinary income. The other option is to offset a gain with a loss.
As we near the end of 2023, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced the 2024 brackets for federal income tax purposes. A tax bracket is a range of income taxed at a specified rate. U.S. income tax rates are graduated, so you pay different rates on different amounts of taxable income.
When you finish your undergraduate or graduate degree, you finally have a regular paycheck. Life is good as you can finally start paying off debts, replacing that old car, and taking that longed for trip abroad. After those expenses, there’s not a lot left to put aside for retirement. And who cares? Retirement is 40 years away. That’s something that your parents are worrying about and we know how old they are!
When one thinks of what a financial planner does, many probably think about investments or maybe helping prepare for retirement or perhaps even getting a better handle on one’s expenses. It can be all of those things and here at FPS, we do quite a bit of that every day. Recently, I was telling a client who was approaching 65 that I helped a client that week research Medicare plans to find what was a good fit for them.