FINANCIaL
FIELd NOTES
Teaching Kids That Money Is Finite
If your children or grandchildren never feel the sting of running out of money, will they ever learn to manage it? For families with wealth, this is one of the more underappreciated challenges in raising up the next generation. I’ve seen this firsthand from many clients who express concerns that their grandchildren don’t seem to share the same financial values they do…
How Many Hours Should Your Teen Really Work?
Most clients I’ve met with have two reactions when their teen child or grandchild lands a job. The first is pride, and the second is worry about time management and homework.
How much work is too little? Too much? It turns out, this question has been researched. I recently came across this article from The University of Minnesota and a few other institutions that have followed this topic for decades…
Optimizing Tax Lot Selling
Many clients have spent decades building a brokerage account by consistently saving, reinvesting dividends, and staying invested through the bumps. Now, as they approach retirement, they are ready to start drawing it down. The question most people never think to ask until they are actually selling: which shares do you sell first?
The answer can save you thousands of dollars a year in taxes…
When Tax Brackets Lie to You
On paper, a retiree can look like they are firmly in the 12% bracket. In practice, their next dollar of income can cost nearly three times that. The reason is due to the way the tax system works, particularly something called “income stacking.”
Take a retired couple, the Smiths. Their income this year looks like this: $48,000 in ordinary income from Social Security, a small pension, and interest, alongside $130,000 in long-term capital gains and qualified dividends from their brokerage account…
When Pre-tax (not Roth) 401k Contributions Can Make Sense
Most people think of the Roth vs. pre-tax 401(k) decision as a simple bet on future tax rates. But there is a more specific opportunity hiding in that choice, particularly in the years leading up to retirement, and it has everything to do with where in the bracket structure your deduction lands versus where your Roth conversion starts…
The Recent Birthday Party Invite Scam
You open your email inbox and see a cheerful email from a friend inviting you to a birthday party. It's an email directly from your friend, and it seems they are using one of the many internet invitation websites (Evite, Punchbowl, etc). So you click to open the invitation.
This is one of the more effective scams circulating right now, and it's landing in inboxes because it doesn't look like a scam. It looks like a party invitation. Security researchers flagged a sharp increase in these attacks through late 2025, and they're still going. I’ve personally heard from multiple people who have fallen for this because the email looks so legitimate…