For those not familiar with the phrase “aging in place,” simply put, it refers to choosing to stay in your home with family, friends, and neighbors around you as you grow older (instead of moving to a residential facility designed to support long-term care, such as an assisted-living facility)
We talk a lot around the office about work/life balance, and for some reason, while it has always been a concept that I support, the terminology has never seemed to resonate with me. Perhaps because I am not sure that there is ever truly a balance—which to me has meant equalization—in my family, my marriage, and my unmet goals.
Investors are often preoccupied with generating attractive returns and managing risk in their portfolios. However, one aspect that should not be overlooked is the tax efficiency of our investments. Diversified portfolios hold a wide range of investments with different asset classes/securities having different return and tax efficiency characteristics. Tax-efficient asset class placement can have a significant impact on long-term wealth accumulation and should be an integral part of any investor’s strategy. This is a strategy that we, at Meira, have regularly used over the years.
Our MEIRA clients are increasingly utilizing charitable giving by donating to charities through Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs) from their IRA Investment accounts (if you’d like to learn more, please let us know). In some cases, we’ve had clients who wanted assistance in identifying a charitable organization, so I developed a bit of a how-to-guide below.
Winter of 2022…it was a regular working day, where in the evening I was to meet a friend for dinner. As I was leaving for dinner, my cellphone stopped working and said SOS—little did I know it wasn’t because I didn’t have a signal!
I was blessed to have been raised by a mother who believed in spending less than you make. Thankfully, that belief is ingrained in me and particularly came into play when my older child went off to a private college four years ago! I reexamined our monthly expenses and was determined to find ways to save money.
As we started the year 2022—beginning to look at the pandemic restrictions in the rear view mirror—most of us were looking forward to enjoy what our ‘new normal’ may look like. Fast forward to today, and the world is presenting us with a very challenging year on so many fronts.
Part of our role as Financial Planners is to ask questions that go beyond the numbers. Most of our clients have a goal of accumulating assets and making sure that they spend their money wisely. These are very important goals, but it's important to make sure that we think about other risks that we all face as we age: