Articles on Wealth Management Topics

The seemingly endless debate about the standards of care with which various types of financial advisors are legally required to treat their clients received some much-needed attention in Congress recently. Given that the SEC and DOL are both working on new rules governing the relationship between advisors and clients, it's critical for current and prospective consumers of financial advisory services to understand the regulatory environment and to be aware of recent developments.

New 401k plan design features (auto-enrollment, auto-escalation, and riskier default investment options) are based on the knowledge that, in general, investors and retirement savers do not make very good financial decisions. Reams of academic research support this conclusion.

If you rely on the media, and particularly the local media, for your coverage of the stock market, you will find that the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is the most oft-quoted measure of how the stock market performed on a given day. And yet most stock market professionals - portfolio managers, analysts, strategists and the like - will refer to the S&P 500 Index instead of the DJIA as their preferred yardstick of market performance. Why is this?

The decision as to whether or not to rollover a retirement plan account to an IRA should be based on more factors than just the associated mutual fund management expenses. On its website, the Dept. of Labor provides guidance to retirement plan participants, i.e. employees, on how to evaluate the fees and expenses associated with their plan: "... don’t consider fees in a vacuum. They are only one part of the bigger picture including investment risks and returns and the extent and quality of services provided. Keep in mind the importance of diversifying your investments."

A few years ago, the Treasury Dept. issued a ruling that may give rise to some interesting retirement planning strategies. Owners of IRA and 401k accounts are now permitted to use as much as 25% of their account balances up to $125,000 to purchase so-called "longevity annuities".

Discerning consumers are becoming aware that there is an alternative to conflict-laden, commission-based and fee-based financial "advice". It comes as no surprise, then, that many financial advisors are now misrepresenting themselves (whether out of ignorance or out of something even less savory) as being "Fee-Only".

As we begin to prepare for tax season, IRA contributions are on the minds of many taxpayers. This should be no surprise since not only do tax-deductible IRA contributions reduce current tax bills, but non-tax-deductible IRA contributions have the potential to reduce future tax bills as well. With these tax benefits in mind, here are three ways to effectively increase your household's IRA contributions that often fly under the radar:

The Tax Policy Center estimates that recent changes to the tax code in the form of last year's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) "... will cut individual income taxes for 65 percent of households overall, but raise taxes for about 6 percent of households." Even so, why not resolve to improve your financial situation even more in the New Year. Depending on your circumstances, there may be a variety of moves to make to reduce your tax bills (or to offset them by saving money in other ways).

457(b) plans are retirement plans for government workers and for highly-compensated employees of non-profit organizations. As such, 457's are offered by some of Utah's largest employers, including Intermountain Healthcare and the University of Utah. These plans are analogous to 401(k)'s and 403(b)'s, but they differ in one critical way.

The "Fee-Only" business model of delivering financial advisory services has garnered a lot of positive press in recent years. In response to this groundswell of accolades for "Fee- Only" financial advice, commission-based advisors and their employers have devised a number of ways to protect their turf. Most of these are meant to confuse the consumer.