When should one begin to plan their estate? The answer is now. It is never too early in your life or financial journey to plan for a time when you will no longer be in control or around to manage your assets, your estate. What makes up your estate? “An estate is everything comprising the net worth of an individual, including all land and real estate, possessions, financial securities, cash and other assets that the individual owns or has controlling interest in.” Net worth is everything … [Read more...] about Now is the Time for Estate Planning
Steven Calabrese
Risk Management: Protecting your Assets
As you progress through life and build your wealth, it becomes necessary to protect yourself, your family and your assets. The most common way to protect is to buy some form of insurance. When you buy insurance, you shift the risk to a third party and away from you. At different times in your life, it will be necessary to have different levels of protection. In some cases, being self-insured is an alternative. Life Insurance If you have anybody dependent upon you, life insurance is … [Read more...] about Risk Management: Protecting your Assets
How to Plan for a Comfortable Retirement
When do you begin planning for retirement? Now is a good time to start. If you do not have a plan, it’s time to get started. The more time you have until retirement, the more wealth you can accumulate. We will present some options to consider. Education As we move into other finer aspects of preparing our long-term financial plan, we once again must understand all of our potential options. Preparing a long-term financial plan must include retirement planning, regardless of the amount of … [Read more...] about How to Plan for a Comfortable Retirement
Maximize Tax Savings with Health Benefits
Many employer-sponsored health plans offer a variety of options all focused on reducing your tax liability. Health plan premiums are generally paid with pre-tax dollars, reducing your tax liability. The type of plan you choose can have other tax savings benefits. Flexible Spending Account A Flexible Spending Account (FSA) can be used to pay for dependent care as well as medical expenses. Contributions are made pre-tax, reducing your tax liability. If you plan on using it for dependent … [Read more...] about Maximize Tax Savings with Health Benefits
How to Minimize Taxes
This is not meant to be an all-in total tax guide, but rather some valuable high-level education on taxes to help you dig deeper and minimize your tax liability. As every situation is different, a tax expert should be consulted. The best place to start is to begin to educate yourself as to how may be the best way to reduce your tax liability. Do you feel that you overpay? Do you do any tax planning? What is the potential impact of taxes on retirement? Investing? Estate planning? Do you know … [Read more...] about How to Minimize Taxes
How to Invest and Grow your Wealth
How do you invest and grow your wealth with markets down and inflation up? Are you kidding? No, as a matter of fact this may very well be a perfect time. But we are in a bear market. Consider that stocks are on sale. Will they rebound? Let’s see what history tells us! What is a Bear Market? A bear market is defined as a decline in the market indexes of 20% or more. All the indexes are in bear market territory in 2022. The average bear market lasts about 388 days. Since 1928, we have had … [Read more...] about How to Invest and Grow your Wealth
Buying a Home
Continuing to build our financial plan, we will now discuss an important aspect for you to become successful. Buying a home is not as simple as you think. There are several options and variables that must be considered when buying a home. We will discuss them as we make our way through important decisions you will need to overcome. Check the Current Climate As we enter late fall 2022, the economic sentiment is not positive. We face inflation, rising interest rates, a down stock market … [Read more...] about Buying a Home
Getting Educated About Financial Planning
As we continue building our financial plan, we will now discuss a very important aspect for you to become successful. Education; yes, education. We will step out for you some things for you to consider. I always laugh when I hear someone say, “I can’t wait to get out of school.” Really? If you are not always learning, then you will not meet any of your goals let alone your financial goals. Learning is a lifetime journey. Whatever the method, whatever the experience. A wide variety of … [Read more...] about Getting Educated About Financial Planning
How Proper Debt Management Will Make You Wealthy, Part II
In last month’s column, we discussed the different kinds of debt. In this column, Part II of our discussion on eliminating debt, we will explore how to create a foundation for building wealth. If you missed Part I, you can read it here: https://quadcitiesbusinessnews.com/how-proper-debt-management-will-make-you-wealthy/. Get Mad The first step for eliminating debt is getting mad. You must get mad at the banks, credit card companies and yourself. Paying them all that interest is working for … [Read more...] about How Proper Debt Management Will Make You Wealthy, Part II
How Proper Debt Management Will Make You Wealthy
Several debt management strategies can be implemented that will put you on the path to accumulating wealth. I would like to take a look at several types of debt and begin to dissect them. Finally, I will make a recommendation as to one possible way to attack your debt. How Much Debt Do Folks Have? While the total outstanding debt on a national basis is a record $15.84 trillion, including mortgages, here is a list of the average amounts of outstanding debt by age group, excluding mortgage … [Read more...] about How Proper Debt Management Will Make You Wealthy
