Beacon Wealthcare

20 Oct 2022 2023 Contribution Amounts, Tax Bracket Changes, and Social Security Increases

Posted at 13:53h in The Friday Brief by Ryan Smith, CFP®, RICP®, CTS™, MSFP

Within the last 7 days, the Social Security Administration (SSA) announced the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) recipients will receive, while the IRS released tax brackets for 2023. Add in projected retirement plan contribution limit increases, and next year you have three silver linings to the high...

13 Oct 2022 “All The Personal Finance Books Are Wrong”

Posted at 15:22h in The Friday Brief by Jared Korver, CPA, CFP®

That's the title of a September article by Derek Thompson at The Atlantic. It's provocative enough on its own, but wait until you read the subtitle: "They tend to treat their readers like fools without willpower. So you could argue that they’re wrong for the...

06 Oct 2022 On Being Weary

Posted at 19:58h in The Friday Brief by Ellen Martin

September felt like one of those months when the hits just kept coming. The stock market continued declining from mid-August’s high to set a new intra-year low on September 30. Hurricane Ian wreaked havoc in the Caribbean and the southeast US. Queen Elizabeth II passed...

29 Sep 2022 Don’t Panic

Posted at 17:10h in The Friday Brief by Geoff Hall, CFP®, RICP®

Sam published the first Beacon Investment Management Friday Brief on June 1st, 2001. At the time, we were experiencing the bursting of the Dot-com bubble and, though Sam didn't know it at the time, our country was just 3 months away from the September 11...

22 Sep 2022 How Americans Spent Their Money in 2021

Posted at 15:46h in The Friday Brief by Ryan Smith, CFP®, RICP®, CTS™, MSFP

Each year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the findings of their Consumer Expenditure Surveys (CE), which track the earnings and expenditures of American households. The first survey was done in 1888, though it didn't become an annual tradition until 1984, and is packed with...

15 Sep 2022 4 Dangers of High Incomes

Posted at 13:37h in The Friday Brief by Jared Korver, CPA, CFP®

If you are approaching a four-way intersection in the U.S., one that does not have traffic lights, the most common way to deal with the conflict between cars travelling in intersecting directions is to have one stop sign at each crossing. The four-way stop is...

08 Sep 2022 Sharing the Load

Posted at 18:46h in The Friday Brief by Ellen Martin

For some reason, people love to ask the question, “Who cooks dinner in your household?” As much as I love to cook, I don’t enjoy the planning process one bit. I want cooking to be a creative outlet but as soon as I attempt to...

01 Sep 2022 Safety Sam

Posted at 13:33h in The Friday Brief by Geoff Hall, CFP®, RICP®

Last week, as I was helping a friend prepare to buy a house, I was reminded of how tedious the process of closing a home loan can be these days. If you've taken out a new mortgage or even refinanced your existing one within the...

25 Aug 2022 The Candler Oak

Posted at 13:41h in The Friday Brief by Ryan Smith, CFP®, RICP®, CTS™, MSFP

My parents moved to Savannah, Georgia, last March. My brother had moved there a few months prior and they had become taken by the city and, I'd like to think, wanted to be a bit closer to me, Emily, and the kids (mostly the kids)....

18 Aug 2022 What Is A House For?

Posted at 16:32h in The Friday Brief by Jared Korver, CPA, CFP®

In September of 2014, Amy and I bought our first house. I had just quit a (higher-paying) job at a Big 4 accounting firm to come work at Beacon that spring, and without knowing much of anything about buying a house, we bought one: 955...

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