Since the novel coronavirus began spreading across the globe, it has impacted everything about our daily lives. However, while some of the effects were immediate, such as quarantines and lockdowns, one of the less obvious was how it would impact retirement planning. 

In this article, we want to look at the various ways that COVID-19 has disrupted retirement plans. To help understand these effects better, we’re going to look at the three stages of planning - early, pre-retirement, and retirement. We’ll also pay attention to the various legal changes that were inside the relief bill passed in March. 

When it comes to estate planning, it’s crucial to have all of your assets and beneficiaries listed and up to date. However, because this planning can be relatively messy at times, what you want may not always come to pass. For example, what happens if your beneficiaries predecease you? 

Although this situation can be rare, there’s already a process for what happens to your assets. It’s called per stirpes, and it can ensure that your money or property will pass down to living heirs should your beneficiaries die before you do. 

We have some super exciting news around here at NextGen Wealth. We have taken our trademarked financial planning process, The Financial Freedom Blueprint®, and turned it into a do it yourself online course.

So, if you’re the do it yourselfer type when it comes to your personal finances, you now have a financial planning process laid out for you that will take you through every step of the way.

President Trump signed into law the ‘Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement’ Act (SECURE Act) on December 20, 2019. It became effective on January 1, 2020. The SECURE Act is considered a part of the government’s spending bill and will affect retirement savers inevitably. 

The legislation puts into place several provisions that are designed to strengthen retirement security across the country. It also includes several common-sense reforms that are considered long overdue. These reforms are designed to make retirement more accessible and easier for many Americans.

When discussing retirement planning, it’s crucial to prepare for the most significant expenses you’ll be facing. While you can control some of these, one cost that will only get higher is healthcare. Unfortunately, as you get older, your body will require more maintenance and upkeep, which can lead to more hospital visits, medications, and other treatments.  

To ensure that you’re ready for rising healthcare costs, we want to outline the best way to plan for them during retirement. Whether you’re going to retire in a few years or a few decades, it’s never too soon (or too late) to prepare. Here’s what you need to know. 

Remember when saving for retirement used to be so easy? Yea, I don’t either because I wasn’t alive back then. However, if you were, all you had to do was work 40 years at your employer, get your pension and social security and then sail off into the retirement sunset.

Today, on the other hand, it's a totally different story. It now basically falls completely on your shoulders. There are so many questions. How much should I save in my 401k? What do I even invest in? What about a Roth IRA? The list can go on and on. Let's take it step-by-step to get you moving in the right direction so you can get to retirement – or what I like to call financial independence – sooner rather than later.

With the Equifax date breach being announced just over a month ago, credit reports and credit scores were actually an important topic of conversation for a change. However, a month in this day and age can seem like years ago.

Now that it is almost considered old news, we’re back to our normal everyday lives and, believe it or not, that’s not thinking about our credit reports or even our credit scores. That has become old news and we’ve now moved on to the next headline.

Now that the holidays are over, it’s back to reality. For many – hopefully, not you – it means paying off all the debts you racked up from your extremely generous giving. Let’s just hope you had already budgeted for it and you were merely using your credit card to get the free rewards.

Regardless of whether you have debt or not, sometimes, unknowns pop up in our lives where we need to get access to money. If you don’t have it sitting in a savings account – which I’m sure you do if you’re an avid reader of this blog – you have to find it somewhere.

We’re headed for another recession. At least, that’s what people are saying, both on the news and elsewhere in the media. However, with an economy that’s thriving right now, where is all of this recession talk coming from? 

While we’re not going to dive into the many variables that are included in modern economics, one element that has financial analysts shook is the inverted yield curve. However, outside of stock exchanges and broker offices, chances are that you don’t understand what this curve is and what it means for the economy. 

Long term financial planning is not an easy task. You have to consider a myriad of potential setbacks, changes and opportunities that will arise over an extended time period. It can be exhausting to map out your plans, but still more draining to do what you need to do when sticking to those plans. 

Fortunately, once your plans are set you can put them out of your mind unless there is a major life transition. It’s those transitions that are the hardest to plan for financially.

What kind of legacy are you going to leave when you die? If you haven’t pondered that question yet, now is the perfect time to start. If you have money or any property that you want to pass on, it’s well past time to get a plan in place for when the inevitable happens. 

However, when it comes to estate and legacy planning, you will want to include your children in this process. It may be tempting to try and figure everything out on your own, but it’s often much better to keep them involved. 

As the old saying goes, the only constants in life are death and taxes. However, while you can’t avoid paying your share to the government, you may be able to lower your tax burden. Income shifting is a well-known tactic for moving money around so that you don’t have to pay as much in taxes. Today, we’re going to dive into this strategy and see how income shifting might be able to lower your taxes. 

What is Income Shifting?

The name of this tactic kind of gives it away. To reduce the amount you owe, you simply shift your income to another person. Let’s say that you’re in a relatively high tax bracket (i.e., 35 percent). So, instead of paying all of your income at that rate, you give part of it to a relative in a lower tax bracket (i.e., 10 percent). 

No matter how old you are, it’s never too late to start thinking about retirement. Although you will want to put money away in a variety of different accounts, one of the most reliable is an IRA. You may already be familiar with Traditional and Roth IRAs, but the fact is there is a way to move money from a Traditional to a Roth, which is considered a Backdoor Roth IRA or a Roth Conversion.

Both actually do the same thing in a slightly different way. A Backdoor Roth IRA is typically in relation to converting a Traditional non-deductible contribution to a Roth IRA. A Roth Conversion is normally in relation to a larger amount being converted from a Traditional to a Roth. Again, they both do the same thing but just have different names. Today, we’re going to focus on the Backdoor Roth IRA.

For many individuals, the primary concern is to save as much money as they can before retirement. After all, the bigger your nest egg, the less likely you’ll run out. 

However, even if your retirement accounts are bursting at the seams, budgeting is still a necessity. In many cases, without a budget, you could wind up having to dust off the old resume because your funds are starting to run low. 

As a financial advisor, I meet with individuals and couples who hope to retire early all the time - I mean, who doesn’t. Once I sit down with them for some basic number-crunching, we work together to create a long-term financial plan that will guide many of their decisions. 

This can include how much to invest, when and where to invest, and ways to increase cash flow and returns while keeping long-term costs and taxes to a minimum. 

Do you have a 529 plan? Do you work with a financial advisor? Do you have a 529 plan that’s managed directly through your financial advisor?

If you answered yes to the first question, then that’s perfectly fine. If you answered yes to the second question, that’s great as well. However, if you answered yes to the third question, well, that’s where I tend to differ from a lot of financial advisors… and yes, that’s coming from a financial advisor.

First of all, congratulations that you are able to max out your 401k. Whether it’s $18,000 if you are under 50 years old or $24,000 if you’re over 50, that is a lot of money to sock away on an annual basis.

Now that we have established you're contributing the max, the next question I ask is do you receive matching contributions from your employer? If the answer is yes, another congratulations are in order because not all employers provide a company match.

Hello blog-reading folks! I wanted to let you know that I was just recently interviewed on the Financial Grownup podcast if you want to check it out. You can subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player or just click the play button below. 

It was a ton of fun and I had a blast talking with Bobbi. She has an awesome podcast that covers everything you need to know so you can be a real financial grownup.

Hello blog-reading folks! I wanted to let you know that I was just recently interviewed on the Chain of Wealth podcast if you want to check it out. You can subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player or just click the play button below. 

It was a ton of fun and I had a blast talking with Denis and Katie. They have an awesome podcast that talks about all things personal finance and they just recently reached over half a million downloads….CRAZY!

Whether you’re a first-time real estate investor or an experienced veteran, you can always do a little bit more to maximize profit in your investment properties. Here’s how you can get the most bang for your buck. 

Fix-and-Flip for Cheap

One of the most common types of investment properties are fix-and-flip properties. For the uninitiated, a fix-and-flip investment is when you buy a house that’s undervalued, most of the time because it’s old and run-down. You purchase it at a cheap price, fix it up and make it nice—thus improving its value—and then you sell it to make a profit.