Monday, May 21, 2018
Monday, November 23, 2015
Teach What You Know About Family Life Values...
Your life experience is a valuable lesson the world needs to hear. As you share your story, your "Brand", weave it into your every day conversations as you go about your Business & Professional route. Your Business & Profession funds your Personal Financial Plan which in turn funds your Life Values Plan. As you plan, use these Seven Simple Steps:
- Account for Where You Have Been
- Account for Where You Are
- Account for Where You Want to Be
- Devise a Plan
- Implement the Plan
- Monitor the Results
- Adjust as Necessary
Monday, December 8, 2014
7 Key Areas of Life - Monday is Familial Day
We have many Family roles in our life. My Family life progression is as follows:
1. Child of God
2. Son
3. Nephew
4. Cousin
5. Brother
6. Husband
7. Son-In-Law
8. Brother-In-Law
9. Uncle
10. Father
11. Father-In-Law
12. Grandfather
To be the best you can in Family life, define your Roles, and set your Goals.
1. Child of God
2. Son
3. Nephew
4. Cousin
5. Brother
6. Husband
7. Son-In-Law
8. Brother-In-Law
9. Uncle
10. Father
11. Father-In-Law
12. Grandfather
To be the best you can in Family life, define your Roles, and set your Goals.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
A Roadmap To Selecting Your Best Strategy To Fund College And Retirement...
Saving for college and retirement is a daunting task for most families. Some families try to save for both at the same time, but most families are unable to accomplish this without sacrificing their current lifestyle or going broke. For the families that must decide which one to save for, the answer is simple. Retirement funding should take priority. Retirement is the dog, college is the tail.
Since college is a more immediate problem and involves their children, many parents fund college at the expense of their retirement. This can lead to disastrous retirement consequences. Therefore, unless you are secure in your retirement plan, you should not consider saving for your children's college costs. Children can borrow for the entire cost of college and thus, not jeopardize your retirement. In addition, most children are unlikely to contribute to their parents retirement.
This guide is designed to help alleviate these problems by showing how to plan, save, and pay for college and retirement at the same time without sacrificing current lifestyles or financial security.
When developing a funding plan for retirement and college simultaneously, long-term solutions for each funding plan are developed. When thinking only in terms of funding college, and not retirement, you may be forced to consider conservative short-term investments that may produce lower yields during college years and the years immediately proceeding the college years.
If taking a holistic long-term approach to funding college and retirement concurrently, you can invest in higher-yielding investments because of the longer time frame. You will not be forced to invest in conservative low-yielding, short-term investments for college that could have a significant negative effect on your future retirement funds.
Since there are many attractive loan programs available to you and your students to fund college, you are not forced to use conservative short-term investments or liquidate long-term investments to pay for college costs.
To make funding education and retirement a non-issue, you must consider how to:
*Maximize cash flow in order to invest funds in education and retirement accounts.
*Utilize the numerous education tax incentives provided by the IRS to reduce taxes and produce "tax scholarships".
*Qualify for merit and need-based financial aid offered by colleges.
If you can maximize the benefits produced by the above strategies, you may not have to compromise your retirement and education goals.
This book is available on the NICCP website...see the link below:
http://www.niccp.com/categories.asp?id=40
Since college is a more immediate problem and involves their children, many parents fund college at the expense of their retirement. This can lead to disastrous retirement consequences. Therefore, unless you are secure in your retirement plan, you should not consider saving for your children's college costs. Children can borrow for the entire cost of college and thus, not jeopardize your retirement. In addition, most children are unlikely to contribute to their parents retirement.
This guide is designed to help alleviate these problems by showing how to plan, save, and pay for college and retirement at the same time without sacrificing current lifestyles or financial security.
When developing a funding plan for retirement and college simultaneously, long-term solutions for each funding plan are developed. When thinking only in terms of funding college, and not retirement, you may be forced to consider conservative short-term investments that may produce lower yields during college years and the years immediately proceeding the college years.
If taking a holistic long-term approach to funding college and retirement concurrently, you can invest in higher-yielding investments because of the longer time frame. You will not be forced to invest in conservative low-yielding, short-term investments for college that could have a significant negative effect on your future retirement funds.
Since there are many attractive loan programs available to you and your students to fund college, you are not forced to use conservative short-term investments or liquidate long-term investments to pay for college costs.
To make funding education and retirement a non-issue, you must consider how to:
*Maximize cash flow in order to invest funds in education and retirement accounts.
*Utilize the numerous education tax incentives provided by the IRS to reduce taxes and produce "tax scholarships".
*Qualify for merit and need-based financial aid offered by colleges.
If you can maximize the benefits produced by the above strategies, you may not have to compromise your retirement and education goals.
This book is available on the NICCP website...see the link below:
http://www.niccp.com/categories.asp?id=40
Monday, December 15, 2008
Life Goals
By John E. Girouard
December 1, 2008
Advertisement
When coaching other financial planners, I've realized that too many of my peers are caught up in trying to make clients comfortable, too eager to prove their trustworthiness. They have it backward. My role in my clients' lives is to make them uncomfortable enough to talk about themselves in an honest way. This is how you build trust, which leads to comfort, which leads to loyalty. It's good planning and good business.
Your job would be easier if clients focused less on how much money they think they need and could tell you what they'd like to do with the third act of their lives. Often, they have trouble articulating this, but that shouldn't stop you from trying to find out. Encouraging people to ponder the purpose of their lives can trigger life-changing conversations that lead to successful outcomes and grateful clients. I ask all new clients, before I've done any planning, to write down the five things they would ultimately like to be known for, or to have accomplished or achieved. This exercise can be a bit awkward, but it allows people to express what they intuitively know and give it substance that they can act on.
Soul Searching
This soul-searching exercise is part of an intake process, refined over the past three decades, that requires patience and a well-tuned ear. Financial planners I work with are often in a hurry to win the confidence of clients so they can move on to selling products that help them meet commission targets. Instead, I tell them to take a deep breath, lean back and listen up.
I have two basic rules of engagement. First, when new or prospective clients show up for the first meeting clutching a folder bulging with financial records, I tell them, "I don't want to know anything about you financially. Put away the account statements and tax returns, and let's talk. I want to get to know you." The first three meetings with new clients are about their lives, not their money. Before I start crunching numbers, I want to know the role or purpose of money in their lives, and about the life they'd like to be living in retirement.
Same Income, Different Goals
Two different clients may have the same number in mind for retirement income, but they may also have opposite life goals. One may have lived in the same house for 40 years and can't wait to travel and see the world. The other may have spent his or her entire career traveling and never want to step on another airplane as long as he or she lives. Those life experiences suggest two different financial plans.
My other rule is that I insist both spouses participate in the process. Many a husband has assured me, "My wife doesn't care about all that. She lets me handle it." It makes no difference if the prospect has $500,000 or $5 million. If a couple is involved, I want to get to know them as a couple or I won't take them on.
In our frantic culture, people yearn for connection. The family doctor is extinct, the trusted lawyer has become part of a big firm, families are spread to the winds and we barely know our neighbors. Financial planners are uniquely positioned to play the most important role in people's lives. To do that, we need to spend less time showing how smart we are and more time showing we care.
It's a different business model from hitting your sales marks. But the extra time you spend up front cements a relationship that will pay for itself in the long run. You won't earn a commission right away. But these clients are more likely to stay with you.
John E. Girouard (www.JohnGirouard.com) is author of The Ten Truths of Wealth Creation, CEO of Capital Asset Management Group in Bethesda, Md. and founder of the Institute for Financial Independence.
December 1, 2008
Advertisement
When coaching other financial planners, I've realized that too many of my peers are caught up in trying to make clients comfortable, too eager to prove their trustworthiness. They have it backward. My role in my clients' lives is to make them uncomfortable enough to talk about themselves in an honest way. This is how you build trust, which leads to comfort, which leads to loyalty. It's good planning and good business.
Your job would be easier if clients focused less on how much money they think they need and could tell you what they'd like to do with the third act of their lives. Often, they have trouble articulating this, but that shouldn't stop you from trying to find out. Encouraging people to ponder the purpose of their lives can trigger life-changing conversations that lead to successful outcomes and grateful clients. I ask all new clients, before I've done any planning, to write down the five things they would ultimately like to be known for, or to have accomplished or achieved. This exercise can be a bit awkward, but it allows people to express what they intuitively know and give it substance that they can act on.
Soul Searching
This soul-searching exercise is part of an intake process, refined over the past three decades, that requires patience and a well-tuned ear. Financial planners I work with are often in a hurry to win the confidence of clients so they can move on to selling products that help them meet commission targets. Instead, I tell them to take a deep breath, lean back and listen up.
I have two basic rules of engagement. First, when new or prospective clients show up for the first meeting clutching a folder bulging with financial records, I tell them, "I don't want to know anything about you financially. Put away the account statements and tax returns, and let's talk. I want to get to know you." The first three meetings with new clients are about their lives, not their money. Before I start crunching numbers, I want to know the role or purpose of money in their lives, and about the life they'd like to be living in retirement.
Same Income, Different Goals
Two different clients may have the same number in mind for retirement income, but they may also have opposite life goals. One may have lived in the same house for 40 years and can't wait to travel and see the world. The other may have spent his or her entire career traveling and never want to step on another airplane as long as he or she lives. Those life experiences suggest two different financial plans.
My other rule is that I insist both spouses participate in the process. Many a husband has assured me, "My wife doesn't care about all that. She lets me handle it." It makes no difference if the prospect has $500,000 or $5 million. If a couple is involved, I want to get to know them as a couple or I won't take them on.
In our frantic culture, people yearn for connection. The family doctor is extinct, the trusted lawyer has become part of a big firm, families are spread to the winds and we barely know our neighbors. Financial planners are uniquely positioned to play the most important role in people's lives. To do that, we need to spend less time showing how smart we are and more time showing we care.
It's a different business model from hitting your sales marks. But the extra time you spend up front cements a relationship that will pay for itself in the long run. You won't earn a commission right away. But these clients are more likely to stay with you.
John E. Girouard (www.JohnGirouard.com) is author of The Ten Truths of Wealth Creation, CEO of Capital Asset Management Group in Bethesda, Md. and founder of the Institute for Financial Independence.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Updates On 529 College Savings Plans
Targeting 529 Abuses
According to the Kiplinger's Washington Editors, the IRS will clamp down on 529 plans this year and issue regulations that will target abuses. Under the microscope: putting as much as $120,000 (the maximum 529 pay-in that's free of gift tax) into accounts for different people, then quickly changing the beneficiary on all of the accounts to one individual. And another ploy...stuffing a lot of money into a 529 plan and later using the funds to pay for retirement. That allows contributors to circumvent the pay-in ceilings and distribution requirements that apply to qualified retirement plans.
A Change in 529's
Politics isn't the only place where people are opting for change, states the Investment News.
Nervous account holders spooked by the recent turmoil in the markets are either switching over to more conservative investments in their Section 529 college savings plans or inquiring about options such as account rollovers, according to state officials in charge of programs.
"We've seen a dramatic increase in investment changes, and 99% are being made into certificates of deposit, which we began offering in October," said Megan Perkins, program director for Wisconsin's College Savings Program in Madison. The state's EdVest direct-sold plan, which offers the CDs, has about $1.2 billion in assets.
According to Internal Revenue Service rules, 529 account holders can change allocations to an account for the same beneficiary only once during a calendar year.
As a result, industry officials say, a number of account owners who have already made the one change, or "rebalancing" permitted by law, are considering rolling over their accounts from one state plan to another so that they can make a change, or have already done so.
Finding the "positive" side to your 529
529 plans are tax shelters, according to the Wall Street Journal, that allow you to invest tax-free for college expenses. In a curious twist, if you have lost money in one of these accounts, you may still be able to deduct those losses from your adjusted gross income.
The tax break in question would show up as a miscellaneous itemized deduction on your income tax return. You can only deduct those to the extent they exceed 2% of your adjusted gross income.
There are lots of caveats. This is one of those things you don't want to try on your own, consult your tax accountant.
According to the Kiplinger's Washington Editors, the IRS will clamp down on 529 plans this year and issue regulations that will target abuses. Under the microscope: putting as much as $120,000 (the maximum 529 pay-in that's free of gift tax) into accounts for different people, then quickly changing the beneficiary on all of the accounts to one individual. And another ploy...stuffing a lot of money into a 529 plan and later using the funds to pay for retirement. That allows contributors to circumvent the pay-in ceilings and distribution requirements that apply to qualified retirement plans.
A Change in 529's
Politics isn't the only place where people are opting for change, states the Investment News.
Nervous account holders spooked by the recent turmoil in the markets are either switching over to more conservative investments in their Section 529 college savings plans or inquiring about options such as account rollovers, according to state officials in charge of programs.
"We've seen a dramatic increase in investment changes, and 99% are being made into certificates of deposit, which we began offering in October," said Megan Perkins, program director for Wisconsin's College Savings Program in Madison. The state's EdVest direct-sold plan, which offers the CDs, has about $1.2 billion in assets.
According to Internal Revenue Service rules, 529 account holders can change allocations to an account for the same beneficiary only once during a calendar year.
As a result, industry officials say, a number of account owners who have already made the one change, or "rebalancing" permitted by law, are considering rolling over their accounts from one state plan to another so that they can make a change, or have already done so.
Finding the "positive" side to your 529
529 plans are tax shelters, according to the Wall Street Journal, that allow you to invest tax-free for college expenses. In a curious twist, if you have lost money in one of these accounts, you may still be able to deduct those losses from your adjusted gross income.
The tax break in question would show up as a miscellaneous itemized deduction on your income tax return. You can only deduct those to the extent they exceed 2% of your adjusted gross income.
There are lots of caveats. This is one of those things you don't want to try on your own, consult your tax accountant.
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