Home ownership is one of the biggest investments you can make in life. If and when you consider buying a second home for pleasure or potential rental income, the decision warrants thoughtful and careful consideration, especially in terms of your finances and long-term financial goals. You need to be prepared for the long-term responsibilities that come with owning a second home – from unpredictable and potentially costly maintenance repairs to taxes and the inevitable nuances of having renters – you need to ensure you are both financially and mentally prepared for the responsibility you are assuming. Here are five things to reflect on before you take the next steps towards ownership of a second property.

Saying 2020 has been a wild ride is putting it lightly. Although it would be great to fast forward and file this year in the past, we are not quite there yet. With two months left before the ball drops, a lot can still happen this year, especially with the election a mere few days away, promising phase-three vaccine trials, and an approximately two-trillion-dollar stimulus package being worked on. 

October 22, 2020 – Alex Assaley is pleased to announce that he has been named to the 2020 edition of the Financial Times 401 Top Retirement Advisers. The list recognizes the top financial advisers who specialize in serving defined contribution (DC) retirement plans across the U.S.

Each year, most organizations and their retirement plan fiduciaries must go through their annual 401(k) (or 403(b)) audit. Employee retirement plans are heavily governed by the Department of Labor (DOL) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS); and, the retirement plan audit makes sure that all the work involving the Plan was done correctly throughout the year, and if it wasn’t, identify the proper steps are taken to fix things and implement controls to prevent issues in the future.

As you continue to navigate the second half of this unprecedented year, we want to provide you with an update on the most important legislative changes enacted in 2020 thus far that directly impact you and your employees. The following information will help you gauge the changes to the retirement, employee benefits, and employer-sponsored retirement plan landscape throughout this year to ensure you are aware of what you are responsible for as an employer and/or committee member. In addition to discussing the items managers and HR executives should be aware of in terms of their organizations’ employees’ well-beings, financial lives, and benefits, I’ll also shed light on the overall state of retirement in this COVID-19 environment and explain how challenges can also create opportunity for long-term investors.

When thinking about today’s markets, it’s helpful to reflect on the old adage, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Keep these words in mind as we take a look at the traditional S&P 500 Index, the market-capitalization-weighted index of the 500 largest publicly traded companies in the U.S.

Financial Wellness is by no means a new idea, but this year its need is beyond measure. Today, many Americans are struggling with their day-to-day finances: Studies show that nearly 76% of employees are living paycheck-to-paycheck; 29% say they deal with personal financial issues on the job – often for two to three hours a week, and 70% of companies who have financial wellness programs don’t have formal measurements to assess the value of those programs.

Developing a plan to re-active your workspace will be challenging and complex. You must determine which workers need to come back first, develop a phase-in period for welcoming them back, and adjust your workspaces to adequately reflect and implement social distancing guidelines, and overall and most importantly, provide a safe and healthy environment for your employees to work in.

Earlier this year, at the end of March, the CARES Act was passed into law with broad legislation around stimulating the economy and providing some stability to businesses, households, and individuals during the COVID-19 health pandemic. Within the CARES Act, there are provisions that impact both companies and organizations that offer retirement plans to their employees. Here, we’ll identify how these changes come into play as we move throughout the year, what these key provisions mean for retirement plans, and the administrative oversight these new provisions necessitate from employers.

In the new normal of our COVID-19 economy, it seems like it’s business as usual (with a slight twist) for some and a complete disruption to the normal business cycle for others. We frequently discuss the performances of various market indexes in our market updates; but for this commentary, we focus on breaking down what’s happening within the various sectors that comprise the S&P 500 Index – the primary U.S. market index – to provide you with a better understanding of how the markets are anything but business as usual.