Archive for the ‘Life’ Category
What fills up your tank?
Posted on: February 28, 2013
How Can I Help?
“What makes you smile every day? What fills up your tank?”
These are questions a friend of mine asked me recently. For my wife, it is hosting dinner parties. She loves seeing people come together and enjoys conversations with friends. She does this almost every week now. It is also a great way for me to see her doing the thing she loves.
For me, it is learning improv and performing comedy on stage. English is not my first language, and I never thought I could do that. Now, I regularly go on stage to make people laugh.
The reward of a financial advisor
Posted on: January 7, 2013
Recently, a client of mine fell, broke his hip and ended up lying on the floor for 20 hours before he was rescued. I went to visit him in the hospital a couple of times. The good news is: he is out of immediate life-threatening danger. The bad news is: he may be wheelchair bound for the rest of his life.
When John first came to me to seek my help with his personal finance, I looked at his overall financial big picture and was pleased overall. He worked at federal and state jobs and enjoyed good pensions. On top of that, he had a decent investment account.
But there was a gaping hole in his retirement security: he was turning 70 then, was divorced, and his children lived far away. That meant if he were to get sick, nobody would be there to take care of him; he would need to hire caregivers. Right then, I insisted that he buy long-term care insurance.
- In: Life | wealth management
- 4 Comments
Is this your retirement fund?
A client of mine is about to retire, and she asked me when she should start to receive social security payments.
Complicating her decision is that her husband passed away 10 year ago, and she is currently working for the federal government.
It quickly dawned on me that this is actually a very complicated question, one that this advisor, most of whose clients are doctors and business people in their 40s and 50s, is not well-equipped to answer.
You can imagine my delight when I found out on a flight that the foremost social security expert of the country, Mary Beth Franklin, was sitting right next to me.
She is a former senior editor of Kiplinger. After she retired from the job, she became a contributing editor of InvestmentNews, a magazine for financial advisors.
Little-known Secrets of How Small Business Owners Pay for their Kids’ Education
Posted on: July 18, 2012
College graduation
Being a small business owner comes with risk, responsibilities, and advantages.
This week I went to a seminar called “Little-known Secrets of Paying for College”.
My biggest take away was that everything being equal, being a small business owner makes it easier for your kids to qualify for financial aid. Let me explain.
Universities and colleges determine the financial aid eligibility of a student by the following formula: COA – EFC, where COA stands for cost of attendance and EFC stands for expected family contribution. COA is fixed, so the lower the EFC, the higher the amount of aid the student is eligible for.
- In: Life | wealth management
- 2 Comments
conscious and unconscious mind
What prompted me to write about financial peace of mind is actually something that happened to me recently that had nothing directly to do with the topic.
My iPhone failed to sync with my desktop calendar; as the result, I missed an important client meeting.
For a whole day and whole night, I had this nagging feeling that I missed something but couldn’t quite be sure what it was. Did I leave my keys in the gym? No.
Then, I woke up in the middle of the night and remembered the appointment that did not show up on my iPhone! Apparently, some part of my mind was not resting during sleep.
- In: Life
- Leave a Comment
This morning, I got an unexpected call from a client of mine. He asked me how the little one was.
My younger son was born with nasal cleft and lipoma corpus callosum, a benign form of brain tumor. This Friday, he will go into surgery to fix his cleft.
My client was calling to ask for his name, so that he can ask his rabbi to pray for him.
I am not Jewish but his gesture has sent positive shivers down my spine. This is why my job is so rewarding and why I am passionate about what I do.
Healthy Lifestyle
Longer life spans, rising medical costs, declining retiree medical coverage, and Medicare and Medicaid insolvency all add up to making health care costs a serious challenge for folks preparing for retirement.
According to Fidelity research, a couple retiring today at age 65 will need current savings of $200k to supplement Medicare and pay for out-of-pocket health care costs in retirement. In another five years time, the number could balloon to $275k. And that’s before we talk about long-term care.
- In: Life
- Leave a Comment
Last Monday, we took our newborn son to hospital for an MRI. He was found to have a lipoma corpus callosum, a very rare congenital tumor in the middle of his left and right brains.
Our pastor Lon Solomon has a daughter with brain damage. If it comes to that, we have an example to follow. Here is what he shared in Esquire magazine:
Jill was born perfectly normal. At three months she started having seizures, and they got worse. Eventually she lost the ability to speak. She’s probably had five thousand grand mals or more, and has serious brain injury. She’s sixteen now, and nonverbal. It took nine years, but finally the doctors figured out that she had mitochondrial disease. The mitochondria are the parts of your cells that produce energy, and hers don’t work right. Her brain doesn’t get enough energy. She used to have six or eight seizures a day. Once, she had nineteen. We never slept through the night.
Why I Am Most Thankful
Posted on: November 30, 2011
- In: Charitable | Life
- Leave a Comment
At 2:24pm on 11/5/2011, my second son Caden arrived in the world. Upon seeing his face, my heart sank since there appeared to be a tiny piece of flesh dangling from his nose.
