Using Complex Beneficiary Designations to Give Your Heirs Flexibility
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Not every custodian is willing to accept the complexity, but I am grateful that Schwab is.

How to Use An Efficient Frontier Graph
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While an efficient frontier graph cannot hand you a perfect asset allocation, it remains a useful tool in analyzing what the past can tell us about a wide variety of investments.

How to Avoid Being Swindled By Elder Fraud
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As fiduciaries, we are on your side to ensure that your goals are met. Protecting you from elder fraud is just one of the many services we can offer as a part of comprehensive financial planning.

A Review of Finances at Age 60
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I’m turning 60 this week. Even though I plan on working as long as possible, this is an important check point.

How to Save for Retirement When You Are Old And Broke
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No matter how small your savings or when you start accumulating them, those small changes have large effects over time.

Four Reasons to Rebalance
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In these ways, rebalancing can be of great value to a long-term investor’s portfolio.

Risk-Return Analysis of Freedom Investing
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In this article, I am reviewing the quantitative measurements and performance metrics of Freedom Investing to see how its risk and return compare to the EAFE Index, its benchmark.

The Best Way to Fund a Charles Schwab Account
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After you have opened your account, there are many methods of contributing to or funding your Charles Schwab account. The best and easiest four methodologies are as follows.

A 25-Year Review of Freedom Investing
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These findings together demonstrate how Economic Freedom seems to have been a valid factor for higher expected returns than investing in the EAFE Index alone.

You Deserve More Than Investment Management and a Retirement Plan
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We strive to provide the necessary resources for anyone to prepare their own investment plan and meet their financial objectives for free on our blog, but we offer more services than that to our clients.

Remembering The 2008 Crash as a Financial Planner
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Sometimes, you don’t get a second chance to be brave.

How to Use Your 401(k) to Convert Only Your IRA’s Nondeductible Basis to Roth
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If you have an accepting employer plan, you could consider rolling the pre-tax funds into your 401(k) this year while converting your nondeductible basis cleanly to a Roth IRA.

‘You Make Most Of Your Money In A Bear Market; You Just Don’t Realize It At The Time’
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You don’t have to time the market to make money in the market. In fact, timing the market is usually a losers game as the market often pushes your emotions to do exactly the wrong thing.

13 Financial Actions to Consider During Market Downturns Like This
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Market returns are out of your control. These thirteen actions are in your control.

Five Beneficiary Ideas Other Than Family
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When family inheriting is not an option or you are not all that close with your relatives, sometimes it can be trickier to decide where to leave your estate.

Q&A: What is a Diversified Alternative to an Individual Bond Ladder?
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A stability allocation has two purposes: to meet withdrawal needs and to move the portfolio more conservative (less risky) by dampening the volatility of stock returns.

How to Acquire Prepaid Schwab Cashiering Envelopes
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Unfortunately, you must order cashiering envelopes directly from a Schwab agent. Here’s how you do it.

Harvest Major Capital Losses Whenever You Have Them
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While you can only use $3,000 per year of capital losses to reduce your taxable income, you should bank as much capital loss as possible for other future uses.

Q&A: Which Products Do You Buy and Which Do You Avoid?
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The selection of what products we purchase or avoid for clients is based solely on what we believe gives our clients the best chance to meet their goals.

Save More Even If It Is Less Than You Should
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No matter how small your savings, those small changes have large effects over time.

How To Spend: Use Only Just Enough
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Most of our regular use of items is habitual. Developing a mindset that uses less requires changing our habits.

Beware Sloppy Retirement Advice
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There are at least seven major mistakes in this advice by Wells Fargo Asset Management.

How to Switch to Paperless Delivery at Schwab
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To avoid a higher trading fee at Schwab, it is in your best interest to turn on paperless delivery for everything that you can.

How To Update Your Address at Schwab and Why It Is Not Straightforward
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Luckily, you can update your address online. Unfortunately, it is not as straightforward as the average investor suspects it will be.

Avoid Identity Theft By Using Different Random Passwords On Each Website
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Here are some of the best practices to protect your identity.

Charles Schwab: How to Order More Checks or Deposit Slips (2019 Update)
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Schwab used to have a streamlined service for ordering more checks. Now as of 2019, they have outsourced their check ordering to a third party.

Using Forward P/E Ratio To Dynamically Tilt A Portfolio
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A low forward P/E suggests higher expected appreciation.

Core Values Budgeting: One Strategy to Identify Budgeting Changes
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Here is a strategy that can both help you identify what you value and help you start your budget.

Q&A: How Should I Balance Retirement Savings With Other Needs?
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Anything which is not contributing toward your financial independence should be considered part of your lifestyle spending.

How to Calculate Safe Spending Rate from a Fixed Pension
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Setting aside some of the payment to cover future inflation is a prudent retirement planning practice.

Best Practices for Your Estate Plan’s Tangible Property List
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“I may leave a list or other written statement expressing how I wish certain items of my tangible property to be distributed.” But how do I do that?

How to Budget for Emergencies (The Series)
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It is possible to be prepared for financial emergencies by living 10% more frugally and saving for the inevitable eventuality.

HealthSavings Administrators HSA Investment Recommendation
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A low cost timeless portfolio for your HSA with HealthSavings Administrators.

Q&A: Do You Offer Roth Conversion Planning for Someone Who Is Not a Client?
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Kudos to you for noticing the value of Roth conversions! We have three ways we can help.

The 30-Year Value of a Single Roth Conversion
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Thirty years of interest, dividends, and capital gains tax is a significant savings.

How to Confirm a Schwab Bank Check You Wrote Was Cashed
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What ever happened to that check? Here’s how to find out if it a Schwab check you wrote has been cashed by the recipient.

How to See Your Schwab RMD Online
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For those who are doing it themselves, this page can help you satisfy this important IRS requirement.

The Full Complexity of All Required Minimum Distribution Divisors Explained
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Most divisors are looked up in tables based on your age. Others are calculated based on last year’s divisor. Some particularly unfortunate cases have distribution deadlines rather than divisors at all.

How to Use Schwab Bill Pay
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Many of us are anxious about paying our bills on time, but using payment aids like Schwab Bill Pay can help alleviate some of that anxiety.

The Power of Compounding
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It is hard to prioritize saving, but it pays off. Here is how.

Diagnostic Tool: What Are Normal Market Movements?
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It is common for investors to be surprised by movements in their portfolios, but it is harder to determine if these movements mean that anything should be done.

Fund Your Child’s Roth with Chore Income
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There are many opportunities to pay your children. If that payment can be counted as earned income, then the child is eligible to fund their Roth IRA.

Getting Started as an Executor
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This is intended to be a brief overview of what you should do once you realize you are overseeing an estate.

2019 Analysis of Fund Families on the Marotta Buy List
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The Marotta Investment Committee typically builds portfolios with average expense ratios of about 0.24%.

Your Estate Plan Might Disadvantage Your Heir’s Cost Basis
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Is what I’m accomplishing here worth sacrificing the step up in basis? If it is not, perhaps there is a better way to implement your estate wishes.

The Dangers of Individual Stock Investing
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Portfolio construction is extremely important to achieving your long-term goals. Don’t risk those goals by assuming that individual stock-picking is a superior strategy.

Read This Before Starting Social Security Earlier Than Age 70
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Even though is often the worst choice, most people take Social Security as early as possible, at age 62. This decision reduces lifetime benefits by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

An Honest Conversation About Compensation
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For the proper Victorian, acts of love and money should not mix. Although this honest conversion may ruffle Victorian sensibilities, it is a foundation of the trust we forge with our clients.

Where to Get a Second Opinion on Your Insurance Policy
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If you ask, the broker will gladly tell you how much of that type they’d recommend getting, but not whether you need it in the first place.

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