After a complicated year, the next dawns with new opportunities. Now is the time to think about the new year and plan for action. The start of a year is the right time to work on a dream or two. It is also an excellent time to adjust or refine a financial strategy. As we bid farewell to 2022, we are thinking of you—and we hope this new year brings joy, peace, and happiness to you and all those you love.
The Appeal of Low-Risk Investments I have many clients who may be influenced by their parents who lived through the Great Depression or may have lived through at least part of it themselves. They may remember that taking even modest investment risks can bring financial catastrophe. For this reason, many senior clients will be seeking safety of principal and generation of income, not growth, during retirement. A good amount of my older clients frequently say they are not looking for a roller coaster ride. Many are typically looking for a predictable strategy with as much financial confidence as possible.
THANKSGIVING Trivia is defined as: details, considerations, or pieces of information of little importance or value. I hope our thoughts and trivia will offer some value to impress your family and friends during your Thanksgiving conversations. Thomas Jefferson was the only president who refused to recognize Thanksgiving due to his staunch belief of separation of church and state. Thanksgiving was a day of prayer and reflection which created this dilemma for him.
Are Online Banks Safe to Use? This is a very common question I get in meetings and over the phone from clients. The answer is yes, as long as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. insures an online bank, it will offer the same coverage as the FDIC-insured bank you use. FDIC covers up to $250,000 per account for each individual customer. You can confirm a bank is FDIC insured by using the FDIC’s BankFind tool (https://banks.data.fdic.gov/bankfind-suite/bankfind), which permits searches by bank name or web address. You should also consider that an online bank with a high yield may be associated with a familiar traditional bank. Sometimes, an online bank division may share the same insurance as their brick-and-mortar division. Citizens Access or Investors eAccess are two examples:
The Value of Covering a Stay-at-Home Spouse with Life Insurance My client was an engineer, on his way to partner, at his firm. Talking with his wife about insurance, he did not see the value of covering his wife, who was a stay-at-home mother. “Why do I need that?” he asked. “She doesn’t make any money staying at home.” If you Google it, the average stay-at-home parent is worth about $110,000 a year, depending on what article you read. In our practice, we talk about buying insurance on a stay-at-home parent to protect the other parent’s career. If something happens to him or her, I always ask, “Do you want to have a choice to work or stay home?” Life insurance gives you a choice.
Should you Annuitize your Retirement Savings If you’re retiring soon and own an annuity, you may be considering converting your retirement investment into a series of periodic payments. Or you may consider finding out more about the options you have to annuitize your 401(k). Annuitization converts your retirement savings into a guaranteed stream of payments for a fixed period or the rest of your life. In most cases, the funds that are being annuitized are invested, whether that's in bonds or stocks. Then the money is used to make a series of periodic payments to you. But the contract must be annuitized to receive this benefit. When someone is ready to begin receiving their annuity payments, the annuity carrier converts the accumulation units laid out in the contract into annuity units and details the amount to be paid monthly.
