Every year, the IRS makes cost-of-living adjustments that affect contribution limits for retirement plans and set thresholds for tax deductions, exclusions, and exemptions. Here are the key adjustments for 2019: Employer retirement plans IRAs The annual limit on contributions to traditional and Roth IRAs increased to $6,000 in 2019 (up from $5,500 in 2018), and people older than 50 can…
Read More
More Women on Boards
Why Aren’t There More Women on Corporate Boards? Why doesn’t your company have more women on its board? That’s the question that BlackRock, one of the world’s largest asset managers, asked companies that had fewer than two women on their boards.BlackRock nudged companies that make up the Russell 1000 Index (the 1000 largest US companies) to explain their strategy, saying…
Read More
Sustainable Investing, Part 2
In the first part of our discussion of Sustainable Investing, we looked at key building blocks and summarized strategies for building them into a portfolio. Now we’d like to dig a little deeper into sustainable investing. A Standard Challenge First the promising news: As we touched on before, there are ways to factor in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)…
Read More
Medicare Coverage Gap
The Medicare Coverage Gap One of the most confusing Medicare provisions is the coverage gap, often called the “donut hole.” It may be clearer if you look at it as the uncovered portion of the annual Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Coverage. Here’s a way to understand it better. This also applies to drug coverage that is integrated into a…
Read More
Wine & Finance, Fall 2018: Modern Loss and Grief
A Talk with Modern Loss Founder Rebecca Soffer One thing I took away from an evening with author Rebecca Soffer is that sharing grief helps make it better. We thank Rebecca, founder of Modern Loss, for coming to our offices in NYC to talk to Blue Spark Financial’s clients. So what is Modern Loss? It’s a book, and a website,…
Read More