Is your Will worthless? While a wonderfully drafted Will helps to transfer wealth and hopefully minimize inheritance tax, a Will without proper estate planning can sometimes become worthless. Beneficiary designations, ownership titles, or transfer on death provisions all have affects which could negate a wonderfully drafted Will all together. It is important to make sure your complete estate plan involves …
A Rotten Week Ends With A Huge Upward Reversal
The key word for this past week’s stock market action could be summed up in just one word: reversal. The whole week came down to just one 90 minute stretch this past Friday – from 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Alabama time– during which we got better-than-expected revisions to second quarter GDP, and a much over hyped speech from Fed …
Eight Questions to Ask About Roth IRA Conversions: ADVICE Column
In a previous article, I couldn’t tackle all the issues associated with this complicated conversion dilemma, nor can I completely finish them here. However, I’d like to propose a number of additional issues worth considering, based on feedback to my original article, in the hope that it, as well as other discussions, will prompt advisors to step back and at …
Social Security in Trouble
Recently a question was asked to Barack Obama about Social Security. The President remarked: “So here’s the thing. Social Security is not in a crisis.” Hold up a minute, maybe the President has not read the Trustee’s of Social Security Annual report issued August 5th 2010. The “Social Security Act” requires the Trustees of Social Security Trust Fund to report …
Dying Without A Will
What happens if you die without a Will? Well, really no one dies without a Will, because if you haven’t created one for yourself the state you live in will. Dying without a Will is known as dying “intestate”, which basically means the state at which you live at the time of death already has specified laws to determine how …
The Dog Days of Summer Cause a Volatile Week
It was another wild and volatile week in the equity markets this past week, although the turbulent activity was tempered somewhat by the lack of trading volume. Stocks started out the week on a weak note, and rebounded slightly to end mixed on Friday. What really threw cold water on the stock market this week was the ugly weekly jobs …
Friday the 13th Comes Early
Friday the 13th of 2010 actually came this past Wednesday, when the stock market began to panic over a possible double-dip recession when the Federal Reserve issued another warning about our nation’s weak economic conditions. The major stock indexes all dropped by nearly 3% on that dismal Wednesday and continued to sputter throughout the rest of the week. Talk is …
Stocks Muted By Poor Jobs Report
Stocks were sent reeling southward this past Friday as the monthly jobs report was disappointing to say the least, and raised fresh worries about economic weakness and the risk of deflation. The jobs report, which showed non-farm payrolls fell by a larger-than-expected 131,000 last month, added to a stream of economic data over recent weeks that indicate the American recovery …
Red Hot July Stocks
The temperatures in Alabama weren’t the only thing that was hot during the month of July. All of the major equity indexes were higher by around 7% for this past month, the biggest month investors have enjoyed since a year ago. Investors flip-flopped throughout July, buying stocks on strong earnings reports and then subsequently selling on weaker-than-expected economic numbers. For …