PFA Ponderings

Sometimes we in the planning world tend to paint with a broad brush.  Rules of thumb become ingrained and biases develop.  In doing some self-introspection, I recently identified such behavior in myself around the topic of Reverse Mortgages. I was quick to dismiss reverse mortgages as sub-optimal financing schemes for…

Healthcare costs a lot.  Especially in the US.  And it costs more for people over age 65, who tend to be more likely than the younger population to utilize medical care.  To help with covering these costs, President Johnson signed Medicare into law in 1965. Medicare comes in several parts….

Okay, last week’s blog focused on harvesting capital losses, and it being a great way to reduce taxation by offsetting capital gains and, to a limited degree, regular income if done correctly. Despite recent market volatility, though, the truth is that if you have invested over the past 10 years,…

This week’s blog post is being written on the first of November.  October has gone by, and here in Maine, the leaves have been falling almost as quickly as stock prices. While declining stock prices are not a popular thing in and of themselves, the fact is that it is…

The 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act, like most tax code overhauls, was born out of bits and pieces of manipulation. The most memorable of these was an initiative brought forth by Senator William Roth of Delaware.  The Individual Retirement Account, legislated into existence in 1974, had become a staple of individual…

While I can’t put the whole day together in my mind (and while many of my co-workers weren’t born yet), I do recall that I had film class that evening.  Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra was the film we were breaking down. It took a while to get to the subject…

Having children is one of the great joys in life.  I speak from experience, having been a child at one point and seeing how much enjoyment I provided my parents. As to whether or not having kids is prudent from a strictly financial standpoint, that’s subject to a wide range…

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know that just ain’t so.” (Unknown: Not Mark Twain, although frequently attributed to him) There’s perhaps no more the longstanding piece of conventional wisdom in personal finance:  “Don’t throw your money away at rent.  Buy a…

Fifteen years after they were rolled out, Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) remain one of the least understood tax-advantaged savings vehicles in existence.  They came into being as part of the 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush.  These plans allow certain…