Blog

Last month we celebrated the day of my 40th anniversary with West Financial! How did that happen? To be honest, it hardly seems like it's been 40 years – and that is a gift. As I have aged, the clients have aged with me. We now have 95 clients aged 85 and older. The oldest client I have worked with was 104, and was she a character!

When families get together to celebrate the holidays, it is a great opportunity to discuss wealth transfer with the next generation. Too often, families do not communicate about finances and are not educated on the basics of estate planning.

If recent stock market gyrations have given you some sleepless nights, we have some thoughts on what you can do to reset and face the challenges ahead. While declines of 20% or more are expected to happen from time to time, a loss on paper is just that, and now is a good time to reassess how you are feeling as an investor in today’s market.

You have probably heard about this year’s hot investment, Treasury issued Series I savings bonds. We wrote an article in the spring about I bonds when the interest rate was set to 9.62%.

Panic! At the Disco sings about having high hopes, shooting for the stars, and having a vision. It often can be easy to lose sight of your goals in the midst of a busy schedule. Shoot, it is even easier not to set goals for yourself in the first place. Between work obligations, family commitments, and the occasional global pandemic, you may not even think about giving yourself the time to set goals.

When I stop to think about it, I find it amazing that most of my friends and family (and myself!) are getting within striking distance of retirement. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I started my career in this industry

For the past few years, we relied on my husband’s start-up business losses as a “saucepreneur” to offset any tax payment shortages throughout the year. In 2021, that strategy failed, for a number of reasons. It never occurred to me that we would have any issue with underpaying our taxes.

The first lesson I learned in Econ 101 was the concept “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” As a freshman college student on a prepaid meal plan, I was initially skeptical.

In the Northern Virginia area, we come across many successful professionals who have significant philanthropic desires. As financial professionals, it is important that we understand different charitable gifting options to explore with the client as part of their financial or estate plans.

I recently attended a Fidelity sponsored webinar in which they presented their new whitepaper on bitcoin. In general, I’m skeptical of digital assets such as bitcoin and other digital currencies, as well as Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the like.