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I talk a lot about “tax buckets” with clients. Different accounts are taxed differently: brokerage or non-retirement accounts with capital gains get their own (often lower) tax rates, while traditional IRA or 401(k) accounts that are taxed wholly as ordinary income when you take regular distributions in retirement. Then there are Roth accounts, which see no federal or state tax when you play by the rules and take money out in retirement. You fund them in the present with afte

Procter & Gamble employees work very hard for their sectors and business units, and it's a proud day when you are offered access to the Company’s LTIP awards: an annual mix of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) and Non-qualified stock options (NSOs). These are often the levers that turn a great career into an exceptional retirement plan, but integrating them into your financial plan across a decade or more of other income can be a tangled web. Here is a bit of the basic rubric I h

My father will turn 78 this year, and I've watched his quality of life drop like a rock over the last ten years. It's a story familiar to many Americans. For him it was stage four cancer and stroke, but neither have taken his life. Instead they have taken his autonomy and his happiness, as each day it gets harder and harder for him to navigate his world and communicate with those around him. America is a competitive place to live in. We love to assign winners and losers to ev

You can spend a lot of time and money working with a therapist to learn the powerful lesson, "control what you can control." Much the same applies to financial planning and investing. There is enough research to quote ad nauseam that the great majority of people and money managers cannot consistently beat the overall market. In other words, we don't get to control when a tweet or a new war moves the market, and trying to time such things is folly. This leaves us with a better

Wealth is, for better or for worse, woven into every fiber of the American experience. This manifests differently for each of us, but as we get older we gravitate more and more towards “our people” and learn to smile and check out politely with everyone else. Since wealth management is a very personal service, anyone working with me should feel comfortable that I am one of your kind. In these posts I'll offer financial planning ideas in my own words and tone so you can begin