Financial Planning

Over the past couple of decades the Internet has transformed our lives, and nowhere is this truer than when it comes to financial advice. Across the entire range of products and services, transactions that once took place in the context of a personal relationship are now conducted online: we can…

Most of us begin each new year with the best of intentions. And most of us reach the end of the year without having made good on our promises to ourselves. When it comes to your money, however, there are several concrete steps you can take to help ensure that…

Over the past fifteen years I’ve had the pleasure of working with many smart and capable professional women. I’ve spoken with even more about their finances. Here are the biggest mistakes I’ve seen these smart women make with their money. #1: Not showing up By far the biggest mistake many…

10 Years Old – Kind Of Though the very first instance of something like a modern donor advised fund (DAF) was created in the 1930s, it wasn’t until President George W. Bush signed the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (H.R. 4) that the current framework for this charitable vehicle was…

For many of our younger clients, the question of whether they can afford to buy a house is more pressing than the question of when they may be able to retire. We live in what is arguably one of the priciest real estate markets in the US, if not the…

Technology is a wonderful thing. Technology creates problems and can come with unintended consequences. These are simultaneous, if seemingly contradictory, truths. Nowhere more so than in the world of financial advice. Back in the ‘old days’ of financial planning, practitioners created spreadsheets to model their client’s individual financial situations. The…

I was having a friendly conversation with a professional acquaintance recently and happened to mention that I had just finished contributing to my IRA for this year. “Really?” she replied. “My accountant told me I couldn’t contribute to an IRA.” I was shocked that any accountant would make such a…

What’s the hardest part of creating a successful long-term financial plan? Is it investing? How about insurance analysis? Long-term care planning? Social Security planning? Tax Planning? Actually, it’s none of those. For 98% of all the clients I work with the most difficult part of creating a workable financial plan…

As we move closer to year end, we at Griffin Black start to focus on how we can help our clients close out the 2014 fiscal year in better financial shape than they would otherwise have been. Given the fact that marginal tax rates have risen sharply over the past…

There seems to be a growing realization that, as much as our schools focus on preparing our children for their future careers, they generally do little or nothing to prepare them for a life in the world of money. As a result, clients occasionally ask us for resources that they…