If you live in New Hampshire or Massachusetts, you've likely heard about the Equifax security breach that occurred in 2017. This was the attack where hackers were able to get personal information of more than 145 million Americans. Recently, Equifax has agreed to a settlement of up to $700 million dollars to compensate individuals impacted by the breach.
If you do any amount of research online, you'll find financial advisors everywhere touting the benefits of the Roth retirement account. However, what is often less discussed are the differences between the Roth IRA and the Roth 401(k). What exactly are the differences, and how does this impact your retirement savings? There are pros and cons to each and they're not as similar as you might think.
Who does your advisor work for - you or their company? This question used to be muddled by brokers offering to be your ‘trusted advisor’, when in fact they were paid on commission by their company for selling you financial products (insurance, annuities, mutual funds). Well, the landscape just got even more muddled with new rulings by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc.
In case you haven't heard, a new bill has passed through the House of Representatives called the SECURE Act (Setting Every Community Up For Retirement Enhancement). The Act attempts to tackle parts of the retirement savings crisis. Like most bills that come out of Congress, there are good parts and bad. How will this impact you? Here are the top things we think you should know about this bill.
In today's world, an individual's personal finances are ever changing and throughout each of our lifetimes we will have dozens of financial accounts. Think about how many times you may have changed banks, insurance companies, retirement plans, etc. Sometimes we create new accounts and forget about the old ones. Trying to track down old accounts doesn't have to be a nightmare because the internet makes it easier than ever to try and track down old accounts.
Identity theft is one of the most prevalent crimes of the 21st century. Some of the more common forms of identity theft are unauthorized credit use and fraudulent tax refund claims. Another form of identity theft is called "Synthetic Identity Theft" and occurs when a criminal uses a Social Security Number in combination with fake information. Minors with no credit history are particularly susceptible to this type of identity theft.