Author Archives: Megan Russell

My grandfather served in Japan during World War 2. He turns 96 this year.

We recently received the following questions from a prospective client. Here are our answers.

Inflation has at least four grievous effects on our economy. This 2014 article explains them.

You can find out if your child or other employee qualifies by reviewing your 401(k) plan document.

Staying fully invested is an important part of your financial plan. Yet still, there are at least five reasons to hold cash.

With life insurance salesmen, life insurance often becomes the hammer and any client concern a nail.

If you have cost basis information missing in a taxable account, it is important to work with your custodian on correcting the missing information.

In this two-part mini-series, we discuss the two sides of learning how to shop more effectively. This time, we discussed how to buy more value by being aware of where you are spending money.

Because so much of your net worth is in traditional IRA, how quickly you expect to withdraw from your retirement account assets will heavily influence how quickly or slowly the math would advise that you convert.

There are several reasons why you either might not be allowed to contribute the full amount or may accidentally over-contribute to an HSA.

Some investable assets in the name of the child can currently keep $2,300 of unearned income from the tax rate of the parents.

In this two-part mini-series, we discuss the two sides of learning how to shop more effectively. This week, we talk about how to spend less money.

Both are U.S. debt obligations which are adjusted by the Consumer Price Index, but they do so very differently.

Home bias is the tendency of investors to invest a majority of their assets in companies domiciled in their home country.

This is why we say: We have no secret ingredient at Marotta Wealth Management.

In this video, David used examples from our tax planning service to demonstrate what a Roth conversion plan might look like and how systematic Roth conversions can create a higher after-tax net worth in the future.

We advocate for billing traditional IRAs to themselves but billing Roth IRAs to a taxable brokerage account. Here is the math of why.

This post reminds us that there are at least four reasons to rebalance where the benefit can be demonstrated or measured.

This quarter, we saw that in 1-year returns ending June 30, 2022, Developed Freedom Investing had a -1.19% disadvantage, Emerging Market Freedom Investing had a +0.46% advantage, and Overall Freedom Investing had a -0.12% disadvantage.

FRDM is interesting, but using our country specific funds plus a low cost Vanguard Emerging Market fund allows us to emphasize freedom for as low a cost as possible.

Rather than trying to time your investments based on one or the other, the advice is simple. Stay the course. Invest. Rebalance.

This common gift to new computer programmers hides a life lesson for us all.

This month, the forward P/E ratios showed considerable variation with many sectors returning to a fairer valuation.

Currently, 12-month inflation is 8.58% and the crowdsourced expected inflation is 2.88%. Here’s what to do.

As always, it is best to confer with a tax professional on matters such as these.

Unfortunately, neither “yes” nor “no” is a correct answer to this question.

Stay the course. Rebalance. Don’t peek.

Juggling domestic responsibilities is a second shift adults are burdened with. I find this analogy helps me to set my expectations and focus more properly.

Walking away from tempting purchases is particularly difficult, especially for those who regularly shop, but by training yourself to slow down in your spending, you can concentrate your dollars towards the purchases that create the most joy.

Inflation is like the rain. You must prepare in advance in order to stay dry.

In this podcast, we discuss the hazard of advertising for your budget and how to not fall prey to marketing tactics.

The S&P 500 saw an intraday bear market today, dipping over 20% down from a prior high and then correcting back before the day’s close.

One obscure way we bring value to clients is how we bill them.

While you may think that the account owner needs to stay the same, you can easily change the account owner.

In this podcast, we discuss why spending is the core of your financial plan, how to align your spending with your goals, and how to use Core Values Budgeting to identify budgeting changes.

We continued to hire her for several of the same tasks as last year, but also added a few new ones.

Whenever the IRS challenges you, the burden of producing evidence that your claims are true rests entirely with you.

Singapore is approximately 37.6% in the Financial sector and has yet to increase its domestic interest rates.

This quarter, we saw that in 1-year returns ending March 31, 2022, Developed Freedom Investing had a +1.44% advantage, Emerging Market Freedom Investing had a +2.07% advantage, and Overall Freedom Investing had a +1.28% advantage.

We are constantly reviewing our portfolios’ asset allocations in order to bring them more in line with our Investment Committee’s best practices. Here is a summary of our recent changes.

This year, we decided to analyze the predictive power of these sub-scores on overall future investment returns.

Three generations explain this family saying which teaches one method of mitigating risk.

Roth conversions pay off. Repeat it to yourself now. Repeat it to yourself at tax time. Roth conversions pay off.

At the start of the year, purchases of all of these securities had no transaction fee at Charles Schwab. However in December 2021, Schwab added a transaction fee to some of the holdings.

Luckily, reporting and using your tax credits on your state tax return is very straightforward.

A gone-fishing portfolio is a portfolio of just a few stocks which should weather the ups and downs of the market fairly well while only rebalancing twice a year.

Don’t let stress about tax filing requirements keep you or your child from a powerful opportunity to provide for their future.

Now that the Franklin Templeton funds have been added to the Institutional Intelligent Portfolios platform, we are updating our allocations to use the cheaper funds as their primary targets.

The strangest fluke of the tax return is that the actual calculation of how much base tax you owe does not have a form; it has this worksheet.

The 25 lines are so simplified, they end up being difficult to follow what exactly they do. So, for those of you who are curious, here’s what they do.