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.”
“Find a financial advisor who is a fiduciary, someone legally bound to put your interests first.” I have made this recommendation many times over the years. Now, most financial advisors technically qualify as fiduciaries, which is a problem for consumers.
As you advance in your career and begin to build financial security and invest for the future, you will build a financial team. Most likely, you’ll find a CPA to do your taxes, a financial advisor for investments, and an attorney for legal matters such as estate documents. Ideally, each professional will be capable and will act in your best interest. It’s natural to assume that their work will come together coherently. Yet it often doesn’t.
“But we can’t cut back our giving; they depend on us.” A retired couple wanted to continue giving generously to their church, even though it would have jeopardized their own financial health. Their money scripts included a belief that giving until it hurt was a virtue.
Religious trauma is one of the childhood experiences that can shape money scripts with damaging lifelong consequences.
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.
For decades, a divide has limited the options for American workers who are saving for retirement. Assets held outside of retirement plans have access to hedge funds, private equity, real estate partnerships, and other alternatives that move differently from the stock market and can offer different kinds of returns. Meanwhile, 401(k) plans have long offered a limited menu — stock funds, bond funds, a target-date fund, perhaps a money market option, and little else. A new Trump administration policy may close this gap.
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.
