Advanced Wellbeing offers financial therapy insights each week to inform more details about financial therapy.
The “Trump account” savings vehicles that were created as part of last year’s “Big Beautiful Bill” are now available. If you have children younger than 18, should you open one of these 530A accounts for them?
The “Trump account” savings vehicles that were created as part of last year’s “Big Beautiful Bill” are now available. If you have children younger than 18, should you open one of these 530A accounts for them?
The “Trump account” savings vehicles that were created as part of last year’s “Big Beautiful Bill” are now available. If you have children younger than 18, should you open one of these 530A accounts for them?
A client called me last week wanting to know how to claim a $7,500 tax refund he thought he’d missed.
His question was based on an email sent in early July to Social Security recipients from Frank J. Bisignano, commissioner of the Social Security Administration. It read in part: “. . . over 35 million American seniors received an average of $7,500 in relief this tax season.”
When you think about building wealth or financial success, what’s your “freedom number?”
This is the term that financial planner and therapist Prudence Zhu uses for what is often called “financial independence.” It means having enough passive income to live on without having to work and earn money.
If your elderly mom needs assistance with daily money matters, but you live three states away, where do you find the help she needs? For years the best I could offer in this situation was a referral to a bookkeeper. Now I know of a better option—a daily money manager.
Dying and money collide in ways most of us never think about until we have to. When someone receives a terminal diagnosis, they and their loved ones are forced to deal with emotional and financial complexities around death at the same time. A financial planner who is also a trained death doula helps clients navigate both.
A common issue I see with financial planning clients is whether and how to provide financial help to adult children. Should they pay for college? Take care of debt? Bail out financial mistakes? These decisions are made from a complicated mix of love, fear, guilt, hope, and sometimes unresolved history.
A classic and wise piece of advice from financial advisors is to live within your means. I have written often about the importance of frugality in building wealth and financial wellbeing.
Yet there is a difference between frugality by choice and frugality from fear. For those who grew up in poverty, the emotional impact of that early struggle can shape a reluctance to spend money even when their circumstances have changed and they have more than enough.
Why doesn’t a dollar go as far as it used to? Inflation is one long-standing factor. Tariffs currently are another. A third, quieter cause is the U.S. dollar losing ground against other major currencies.
This decline is happening largely in the background. A weakening dollar acts as a hidden tax, one that most people feel long before they understand why.
