Personal Financial Advice from a former Certified Financial Planner
Should I use my Roth IRA for college? As a former financial planner, I would often get these questions from clients who read something somewhere. Much like patients asking doctors about drugs they heard about on TV, such questions rarely ended up being a good idea. When it comes to …
You have probably heard, but college is very expensive. Make that very, very, expensive. College is so expensive that even if you do pretty well with earnings and income, it can be hard to afford. In fact, having a higher income might actually make college harder to afford. Financial Aid …
The best 529 plan for Wisconsin residents depends on how you want to invest funds for your child or other beneficiary. Students may attend any college or university in any state regardless of any investment in the Wisconsin 529 plan. For example, you can save in a Wisconsin 529 plan …
It’s always nice to get good news. CollegeInvest 529 Reduces Feeds for Direct Portfolio According to a recent release from CollegeInvest CEO Angela Baier, the administrative fee for the CollegeInvest Direct Portfolio was reduced from 0.32% to 0.31% on August 1, 2021. That means more of those college savings dollars …
To read financial advice magazines and websites, you might think that anyone who uses a financial advisor is either dumb, or very rich. These money publications all say that with a little research and education, everyone should be able to do all financial planning and investing themselves to achieve financial …
The 529 plan is a tax-advantaged college savings plan. Of course, like all plans that offer IRS sanctioned tax savings, there are rules and regulations regarding just how and when a 529 plan may be used. One of these limitations involves how much money you can contribute to a 529 …
In March, the government began offering options to help benefit borrowers with student loans during the Covid pandemic. The Covid student loan benefits were to stop collecting on student loans, to charge 0% interest rates on student loans, and to suspend student loan payments. Basically, you could turn off paying …
Have you opened that 529 plan account yet? A while back, while discussing whether or not you need a financial advisor, I talked about how just knowing what to do isn’t always enough. As an example, I pointed out that just knowing you need a 529 plan for your college …
Estate planning is one of those topics that seems to be widely misunderstood. First, there are different kinds of estate planning. The most necessary kind for everyone is simply having a will of some sort. It really doesn’t have to be anything fancy, especially if you don’t have a lot …
There is an article on the CNN website with the headline that T. Boone Pickens thinks Tesla cars are too expensive. The article really isn’t about that, and T. Boone (man, I really hope people call him T. Boone) only says that he thinks the next thing Elon Musk should …