Think life insurance is a complete waste of money? You’d be dead wrong. The truth is, when planning over the course of a lifetime, an insurance policy is an irreplaceable component of your financial future. Consider for a moment – the possibility of how an unexpected death in the family can affect every aspect of a person’s life: education planning, estate planning, risk management.

As an investor, you can opt to donate a variety of financial assets, from government bonds to mutual funds as well as cold hard cash. For certain investors, directly donating shares of a publicly-traded stock can also be one of the most appealing ways to contribute to a cause they care about. Donating stock can even yield a number of tax benefits, which can be a welcomed bonus.

Understanding your investment time horizon is a key component of success in the investment world because it’s the period of time you expect to hold an investment strategy until you’d like the money back. Since the inception of the S&P 500, there have been zero rolling 20-year periods where (if you were invested solely in the S&P 500) you didn’t have more money than when you started.

When it comes to choosing a financial advisor, complexity can quickly begin to feel chaotic, especially when a fee structure is entangled with outside sources. For this reason, a fee-only advisor may be the most comfortable choice for a number of individuals. Fee-only advisors only receive fees from the clients they are working with and provide advice to, and cannot accept payments from other sources, no matter what products they’re offering.

What happens after you die? No, I’m not talking angels or pearly gates. What I really mean is, how are you sure your loved ones are taken care of? Thinking about the future beyond your own death is certainly not the most comfortable subject, but in the end, there’s nothing more important than ensuring the well-being of those closest to you.

So, you STILL haven't completed your Will? It’s not nearly as intimidating as you might think. Simply, it’s a legal document that goes into effect upon your death and tells your heirs where you’d like your assets to go and who Will take care of your children (if you have any). A simple way to start is by preparing a Will checklist. And while there is plenty of nuance and consideration required, here are the top 3 things you should keep in mind: 1.

Think back to December 2020: we knew that Joe Biden was elected President but--with the Georgia Senate seats still in a toss-up--we didn’t know what Congress’s makeup was going to be. That meant that trying to predict what was going to happen with tax reform was like asking a Magic 8 Ball.  Cut to today: we know that Democrats hold the majority in the House and a razor-thin majority in the Senate. That means tax reform may be on the table (among many other issues).

There’s no way to put enough emphasis on the importance of succession planning. Consider for a moment all that you do for your business–from all of the major strategic decisions to the small daily tasks that keep things moving forward, and everything in between. You’ve worked hard up until this point, and would ideally like to stop burning the midnight oil post-sale with little to no follow-up commitment on continuing to oversee your life’s work.