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College can be expensive. In fact, tuition inflation over the last decade has averaged 4.635%. Education planning is now a long-term financial consideration for many families and the 529 plan has become the default choice for those that want to save for college.  

Whenever my five-year old finds coins on the ground, he gets really excited. He’ll pick up that penny or a quarter and exclaim, “Look at all my money!”  In his eyes, he’s become the richest boy around. After all, money can mean different things to different people. But how would he handle it if he really did end up with a large sum of money with no one else to help? This is where financial conservatorships and guardianships are important.  

Regardless if you are an experienced fiduciary functioning as conservator, an executor working to close a family member’s estate, or a new trustee for a close friend’s trust, the process of locating and marshaling assets can be challenging. 

Let’s assume you’re in the market to partner with a financial advisor. Finding a good financial advisor who successfully meets your financial needs is comparable to finding the right hair stylist who considers your face shape during haircuts or a dental hygienist who remembers you have sensitive gums. It’s not always an easy process and there will likely be some trial and error before landing on the right one. But once you’ve landed on a few candidates one of the first qualifying questions should be around their compensation structure and whether they are a fee-only financial advisor or fee-based.

In January 2009, Hal Finney received the very first crypto asset transaction from bitcoin’s mysterious creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Finney was a master cryptographer and had been researching a way to create a new type of currency that was private and unbeholden to governments or institutions. A post on a cryptography mailing list about something called Bitcoin intrigued him. Bitcoin pioneered using cryptographic public keys and private key pairs as a way to create a digital currency.  Using this method, Nakamoto sent ten bitcoins to Hal Finney as a test.  Since then, cryptocurrency has exploded into a completely new type of asset class. Proponents believe that the decentralized finance model behind crypto assets will disrupt traditional finance. 

The other day, I started playing Trivial Pursuit with my daughter. I normally like to try and answer my weakest category first.  For me that’d be pink – popular culture.  This time, I knew the answer to the question and slid my piece into the circular playing piece with a satisfying click.  Only 5 more colors to go to fill my game piece.

The Elon Musk Twitter saga continues. As the world’s richest man attempts to acquire the roughly $43 billion social media platform, the world is dialed in. 

There’s nothing better than a fresh chocolate chip cookie straight from the oven.  Soft, not crispy, with the chocolate in that perfect gooey texture. There’s that perfect window of time before the cookies cool off and go into the cookie jar for the grandchildren.  If grandma’s nice, she’ll let you sneak a couple before dinner, but usually they’re kept safe so as not to spoil dinner. But, what do cookies have to do with revocable vs irrevocable trusts?

America’s “middle child” generation, otherwise known as Generation X, is on the cusp of a new financial stage. Nearing retirement or heavily focused on building their retirement funds, those born between 1965 and 1980, have shifted their focus from day-to-day expense planning to building a portfolio that will carry them through retirement and other life changes.