Special Needs Financial Planning

The hedge fund firm Renaissance Technologies, founded by James Simons, has been an object of amazement, admiration, and envy for years, because of the incredibly high investment returns of its flagship Medallion fund. In a new book, author Gregory Zuckerman explains how Renaissance did it. He also shows how a key Renaissance employee used his riches to get Donald Trump elected president.

Few of us realize the anxiety-ridden mindset that drives prospects to seek a financial advisor. If they did, they would structure their initial meetings very differently.

There are several things a client can do to plan for long-term care costs that may be incurred as one ages. But for the large majority of clients for whom self-insuring is not an option, what are the alternatives?

Because you’re an expert on all things financial, you may believe you know what’s best for others – in their financial lives and otherwise. But it’s unlikely you do. The culprit is your inability to communicate effectively, as these “bloopers” illustrate.

Am I the only one who is growing concerned about the current trajectory of the financial planning profession?

Picking the wrong niche is one of the worst decisions you could make for your practice.

According to a 2016 Return on Disability Group report, over 56 million people in the United States identified themselves as having a disability. This demographic, along with their caretakers, requires specialized financial planning, but are often left underserved by their advisors.

When is it appropriate to commence a guardian proceeding? What do I have to prove? What concerns should I have about bringing a proceeding? Can it be avoided?

Let’s be clear. October’s market decline was a rather mild warning shot. At its lowest close, the S&P 500 lost -9.9% from its September peak, before rebounding in recent sessions. As I noted during the 2000-2002 and 2007-2009 collapses, intermittent “fast, furious, prone-to-failure” rebounds are among the factors that encourage investors to hold on through the entirety of major declines.

Advisors often receive clients’ advance directives, such as durable powers of attorney and health care proxies, that were drafted in a different state, perhaps many years ago. Are those still valid?

To get CPAs to like you, there’s no more powerful tool than empathy. Here’s what is going on in the mind of the CPA when you approach them to be a source of referrals.

The music is fading out, and a trap-door has opened up in the floor, but they're still dancing. In recent days, the combination of extreme valuations and unfavorable market internals has been joined by acute dispersion in daily trading data that often occurs within a few days of pre-collapse peaks in the market.

For years, Adam Sharp has helped accredited and retail investors get in on the ground floor of some of the most promising early stage investment opportunities. These include not just venture capital but also equity crowdfunding and cryptocurrencies, which he added last year to his two research offerings, First Stage Investor and Crypto Asset Strategies.

If you lapse into a lecture about the overwhelming evidence supporting passive investments, remember you might as well be showing the prospect an article about bird feeding.

On December 2, Senate Republicans managed to obtain enough votes to pass sweeping US tax reform legislation, but with several changes compared with the original House of Representatives' bill. At more than 470 pages, the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" is certainly not a light read. But, it has some important implications for individuals and corporations, for better or worse in some cases.

You routinely engage in some practices that on the surface make sense. But you would gather more assets if you discarded them. Here are three examples.

Can 529 funds be used for gap-year expenses? I recently had a parent ask me if their child’s 529 college savings account money could be used to help pay for gap-year expenses. Here’s the short answer: Maybe.