What is a “Trusted Person” any why do we keep asking you if you’d like to add one to your account?

Since about the 1960s there have been a variety of rules and regulations in place to protect the privacy and personal information for investment clients. For obvious reasons, financial advisors and institutions cannot share client information without the client’s explicit consent. And for the most part, this is a very good thing.

Why Isn’t It Working?

Have you ever seen the old Popeye cartoons?

If you have, then you know there was a certain vegetable that gave Popeye super strength as soon as he ate a can of it. That’s right, spinach.

He would eat that can of spinach and his muscles would immediately get bigger and he would suddenly be able to defeat his arch enemy Bluto and rescue his true love Olive Oyl.

The Warning

If you are a typical investor (or financial advisor for that matter), it is possible that the S&P 500 index could do a great deal of damage to your retirement plans.  To be clear, the problem with the S&P 500 index is not that it has performed poorly or that I’m predicting that it will perform poorly in the future.  The problem is that way too many investors and financial advisors give the S&P 500 stock index way too much power over their financial lives.

Over the last few years, I have been hearing more and more about women (and men) working with a divorce coach to help them during and after their divorce.  They are often seeking out the help of a good coach because they want an experienced guide who can help ease the emotional pain of their divorce while focused on the things that matter most.

To find out more about what a divorce coach does and how a coaching program may be a help to you, I turned to well-known divorce coach Elisabeth Klein.  Elisabeth has written multiple books, speaks to thousands of women each year, and provides coaching to women who are either in a difficulty marriage or who are going through a divorce.

Getting through the emotional, mental and financial challenges of a divorce is rarely easy.  While you may feel a sense of relief when that ordeal is concluded, you still have a variety of challenges to face – redefining yourself as a single woman, a changed social and perhaps economic picture, and processing the end of your marriage. 

All of that can be pretty exhausting, which is why you might be looking for some simple, even lazy ways, to make sure your financial fitness is on track post-divorce.

If you are divorced, the recent changes to the Social Security law may mean that you will not be able to collect as much from Social Security as you had thought.  That is because the Budget Act of 2015 eliminated the option for anyone born after 1953 to file what is called a restricted application.

A restricted application allowed you to begin collecting a Social Security retirement benefit from your ex-husband at your full retirement age and then switch to receiving benefits based on your work history at age 70.  This made sense for many divorced women because for every month you delay starting your Social Security benefits, the amount of your monthly benefits increases.  A restricted application would allow you to get paid based on your ex-husband’s Social Security benefits while waiting for your benefits to grow larger.

Not too long ago, a friend of ours gave us a bottle of pure maple syrup from Vermont.  It was delicious.

It got me thinking about the process of how maple syrup was made.  I wasn’t sure how they got syrup from a tree, so I did a little bit of online research.  Apparently, they put what they call a spile into a tree and the tree sap comes out through the spile and into a container below.