Insights

In our last piece, we introduced some of the tools of the tax-planning trade. These include tax-sheltered accounts for saving toward retirement, healthcare, and education, as well as tax-efficient tools for charitable giving, emergency spending, and estate planning. It’s one thing to have the tools. It’s another to make best use of them. After all, the same paintbrush can create a valuable work of art, or a clashing mess on canvas. It all depends on how you use the brush.

Whether you’re saving, investing, spending, bequeathing, or receiving wealth, there’s scarcely a move you can make without considering how taxes might influence the outcome. No wonder people get nervous when there’s lots of talk about higher taxes, but little certainty on what may come of it, and who it might affect. How do we plan when we cannot know?

Second Quarter 2021|Jim Williams| We have heard and seen a good bit about inflation lately. A modest general inflation rate is mostly seen as a stabilizing force in the economy and is likely a consequence of an ever-increasing money supply which may be necessary to accommodate an ever-growing economy. As the economy emerges from the effects of lockdowns and restrictions, the economic damages caused by those actions are becoming manifest.

First Quarter 2021|Jim Williams| Just this last month, the CFP Board announced, based on a Practice Analysis Study (which describes what planners are actually doing in their practices), the addition of a new Principal Knowledge Topic: The Psychology of Financial Planning. As a Principal Knowledge Topic, the Psychology of Financial Planning will be included in the Body of Knowledge required of CFP Professionals. The topic will be included in examination starting in 2022. This topic has grown up from the roots of the financial planning profession and it is good news and none too soon.

Dimensional Co-CEO and Chief Investment Officer, Gerard O'Reilly, offers an update on the performance of value stocks relative to growth stocks across the global markets, addressing the theory and data supporting a positive value premium over longer periods of time and recent premiums in the context of last year's (2020) market downturn.

Fourth Quarter 2020|Jim Williams| A year ago, I wrote about the then-current state of the evolution in the company and the progress of the transition here. This will be more about my personal transition and my immediate plans.