If you’re a parent or a grandparent, chances are that at some point you’ve woken up in a cold sweat thinking about college tuition costs. College tuition is rising 6-7% every single year, and given…
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Wiping the Slate Clean: The Ins & Outs of Student Loan Discharge
One of the murkier areas of student loans is the various ways you can get rid of them without actually paying them back. As you might know, there are pretty helpful forgiveness options in the federal…
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Money-Centered vs. Happiness-Centered Living
Today’s post is going to fall a little more on the abstract side of the spectrum. To date, most of the posts you’ll find on Above the Canopy are somewhat technical, and oriented toward achieving financial…
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What Will Healthcare Cost in Retirement?
Planning for retirement takes careful preparation and a decent idea of what your budget will be once you stop working. This can be a pretty scary process with so many unknown variables. How much will…
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401(k) Auto Rollovers: A Convenient Safe Harbor for Small Business Retirement Plans
OK – with a new year upon us it’s time to clean up that rusty old 401(k) plan at your small business….right? Let’s say that you work in or own a small business, and are…
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Turbotax vs. Accountant: When Should You Hire a CPA?
Let me start by saying that I’m a big fan of most tax preparation software. Taxes are a cost in and of themselves. Any way to automate the prep and filing process in a compliant…
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What’s the Optimal Portfolio Rebalancing Frequency?
If you’ve read the blog for very long, you probably know that I’m a big proponent of thoughtful and customized asset allocation. The percentage of your portfolio invested in stocks, bonds, cash, and real estate…
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Mutual Fund Capital Gains Distributions: What They Are & How to Avoid the Tax Hit
If you’ve ever invested in a mutual fund, you may know that they’re required to distribute at least 95% of their capital gains to investors each year. You may also know from experience that these…
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The Top 7 Mistakes People Make when Planning for Retirement
Hello ATC Readers! This post is to announce that I’ll be hosting a free retirement webinar in a few weeks. I’ve been getting a lot of questions recently to the effect of “what am I…
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401(k)’s, IRAs & Tax Deferred vs. Tax Exempt Investing
Should I contribute to a traditional or a Roth IRA? This is a big question I get asked fairly frequently. And really, the conversation expands beyond individual retirement accounts. The decision whether to invest on a…
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