Financial Planning magazine conducts an annual survey of its readers to gauge the different types of technology in use by financial planners and advisers. 2008 marks the second year of the survey, and Joel P. Bruckenstein published an overview of the results and a comparison to last year’s survey information.
In case you missed it, here are some tips to be thrifty from the master of thrift, Andy Rooney.
I don’t imagine advisers would consider giving these tips to clients that may need to reduce their spending habits. I guess there’s more than one way to ensure a portfolio isn’t spent down during retirement.
Previously available through an annual subscription, AdvisorMax is an emerging online source for quality practice management articles as well as moderated discussion boards featuring a variety of subjects.
I’ve posted content several times to the Discussion Forums, but traffic to the forums fell off considerably since the summer (likely when the initial free 1-year subscriptions expired). Hopefully traffic will return to the site now that there is no subscription fee for access to content.
I stumbled across a company called PersonalRIA back in September. I found it through the TechCrunch50 Conference, a venue created where the best start-ups launch their ideas and proposals in front of the industry’s most influential VCs, corporations, fellow entrepreneurs and press. Coincidentally, TechCrunch50 is where I learned about DropBox, the completely awesome and innovative file backup, sync, and sharing platform that I use all the time.
With nearly 100 posts online at FPPad.com since its debut on January 28, 2008, I want to begin sharing the top monthly posts according to traffic reported by Google Analytics.
“The Wall Street Journal has a good article titled Feds Rethink Rules on Retirement Savings that discusses proposed changes Congress (or the Treasury, who knows?) may make to minimum required distribution laws for qualified and individual retirement accounts.”
“Here’s my not-so-bold prediction for challenging times: In less than 5 years, AUM fees will no longer be the main compensation mechanism for independent registered investment advisory firms.”
Once I hit 100 posts on FPPad, I’ll provide a top ten list of the most popular content over the last ten months.
Our firm uses dbCAMS for a variety of portfolio management procedures, including daily account reconciliation, rebalancing, and quarterly reporting. The creators of dbCAMS, Financial Computer Support, Inc. (FCSI), was recently acquired by Morningstar. Morningstar purchased FCSI and its dbCAMS product to enhance the company’s visibility in advisers’ day-to-day management of client portfolios.
Not much mention has been made about Morningstar’s plans for dbCAMS, but I recently came across the Fall issue of Morningstar Advisor that sheds some light on their plans.
The speed and severity at which the current economic crisis spread caught many advisers off-guard. In addition to managing and advising clients today, advisers want to look back at the significant factors that precipitated the event.
Unfortunately, most of the descriptions of the events leading up to the crisis are complicated and verbose. Have you seen Michael Kitces’ extensive research he published on credit crisis? It’s fantastic work, arguably award-winning work! But what if you want the information in an easy to swallow pill?
I’m willing to bet that many advisers have clients who opened new IRA accounts over the last several years. These accounts are likely worth significantly less today than the total amount of original contributions due to the unprecedented market declines experienced over the last two months.
Is there any way to obtain at least some tax benefit from losses in IRA accounts?
Initially, one might think that there’s nothing that can be done to realize any tax benefits due to the losses in IRA accounts. But in fact, IRA account losses can be recognized and lead to tax benefits for the right kind of clients.
Boy, if there’s one thing I hate about the arrival of the end of the year, it’s the last-minute tax-related agendas Congress mulls around.
Remember last year when the Tax Increase Prevention Act of 2007 (H.R. 3996) passed to provide temporary relief from AMT? And don’t forget the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 passed just over a month later in 2008. These bills placed huge strains on the already overloaded IRS and threw monkey wrenches in some advisers’ tax planning strategies.
Case in point: the Wall Street Journal has a good article titled Feds Rethink Rules on Retirement Savings that discusses proposed changes Congress (or the Treasury, who knows?) may make to minimum required distribution laws for qualified and individual retirement accounts.
On my radar this week is a Schwab Institutional Webcast on the recent enhancements to their Portfolio Rebalancer utility. After viewing an excellent demo of Tamarac on Day 2 of the NAPFA Technology Conferencein Las Vegas, I’m interested in seeing what Schwab is doing to position their own rebalancing and trading tools to streamline trading operations in independent adviser offices.
The webcast will be held this Thursday, November 20 at 4:00PM EST/1:00PST. Unfortunately our company has an all-day offsite staff retreat scheduled for Thursday, so I’m not able to attend the webcast. I’ll look for a link to the webcast archive and post it here if one is available.
It features Heath Batz, senior manager of online trading tools at Schwab Institutional, and Michael Granger, Vice President of Implementation and Client Management at Advisor Software, Inc.
@StephStricklen Check out a Bella Band; http://www.ingridandisabel.com/bellaband.html It extended my wife's existing wardrobe Twitter Link: 3 hours ago
sees Akismet going crazy. FPPad.com must have leaked into a comment spam bot. A cryptic sign it's getting noticed?!? Twitter Link: 5 hours ago
@KristineMcK I'm totally in favor of tax prep software; Clients show up on April 14 with lots of corrected 1099s or forgotten deductions!! Twitter Link: 5 hours ago
Financial Planning magazine conducts an annual survey of its readers to gauge the different types of technology in use by financial planners and advisers. 2008 marks the second year of the survey, and Joel P. Bruckenstein published an overview of the results and a comparison to last year’s survey information.
AdvisorMax
Our firm uses 
From the great folks over at 
I’m willing to bet that many advisers have clients who opened new IRA accounts over the last several years. These accounts are likely worth significantly less today than the total amount of original contributions due to the unprecedented market declines experienced over the last two months.
Boy, if there’s one thing I hate about the arrival of the end of the year, it’s the last-minute tax-related agendas Congress mulls around. 
On my radar this week is a Schwab Institutional Webcast on the recent enhancements to their Portfolio Rebalancer utility. After viewing an excellent demo of 
