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The newest reports, released on April 22, 2019, discuss the current financial condition and ongoing financial challenges that both programs face, and project a Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for 2020.

Need more time to pay your 2018 taxes? Should you extend? Will there be penalties? Should you wait to file. Here are few tips and thoughts on what to do for your 2018 taxes.

The FOMC has raised the funds rate nine times since December 2015, with four increases in 2018 alone. As recently as September 2018, the committee projected three more increases in 2019. That dropped to two projected increases at the December meeting.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), most people with Medicare who receive Social Security benefits will pay the standard monthly Part B premium of $135.50 in 2019. People with higher incomes may pay more than the standard premium.

On the eve of Thanksgiving the Nasdaq is down more than 15% from its all-time highs. The S&P 500 is off 10%. Many strong growth stocks are down 30% to 40%. This quick and volatile correction has everyone wondering if this is just the tip of the iceberg with interest rate increases and trade fears dominating the news.

When sweeping tax reform passed in December, 2017 small business owners rejoiced over a new tax deduction aimed specifically at small businesses with pass-through income. Section 199A provides for a deduction based on Qualified Business Income. Understanding this deduction will be one of those impactful ways to save in taxes going forward.

Required minimum distributions, often referred to as RMDs or minimum required distributions, are amounts that the federal government requires you to withdraw annually from traditional IRAs and employer-sponsored retirement plans after you reach age 70½. We review a couple key points on why RMDs create such a tax problem for future and current retirees.

Risk of total loss in a portfolio increases significantly when withdraws are being made during loss years. Risk is dynamic, difficult to measure and often misunderstood. In retirement it’s important to consider sequence of return risk. Sequence risk is the risk of lower average long-term returns or even total loss, because of taking withdrawals during negative return years. Read on to get a visual explanation and solution to this problem.

Tax planning is difficult in those years you expect to recognize unusually high amounts of income in a single tax year. There is a new solution to deferring taxes on these transactions, they are called Opportunity Zones.

In 2011 one of the largest asset management firms, GMO, stated that the S&P was worth no more than 950. They also stated that “risk avoidance looks like a good idea” and that their 7 year projection for large cap U.S. stocks was just 2.7% per year.