The Blog

You’d think that this would be about golf, since here we are smack in the middle of summer. But I’m here with a word of caution about other kinds of traps, not of the sandy variety. Last week, we spoke about executors, and I’ll return to that subject soon. But today, I thought I’d issue some words of caution about … Read More

How is your summer rolling along for you? I’d love it if you sent us an update on what you have been doing … even if it’s just a personal update. (You can send us an email through the link at the top of the page.) We take great joy in knowing that our work is being done on behalf of some … Read More

If you pay close attention to the news media (which I don’t advise, but in our digital world, it can be unavoidable), you might be feeling a weight, almost as if there is a sense of impending doom. I saw a recent survey that indicated that almost one third of respondents felt that we could be headed towards a second civil … Read More

It’s been a great pleasure to reconnect with some Chatsworth, CA clients this past week, as we have had the opportunity to conspire together about building their financial fortress, with the “new” tax law in mind. There are still plenty of provisions within these new tax regulations for which the IRS has not yet issued clear guidance, but that doesn’t … Read More

The government doesn’t need a loan from you… that’s what the Federal Reserve is for. That said, the most recent Treasury statement shows that the Feds collected a record $1,143,141,000,000 in individual income taxes through the first eight months of fiscal 2018 — that’s $1.1 TRILLION — and still, the government ran a $532.2 BILLION deficit those same months. So perhaps they … Read More

For sports fans, that was quite a run last week. The NHL crowned its champion (and the nation’s capital seemed like it was one massive street party for the weekend), the rest of the NBA conceded to the Golden State Warriors, and we witnessed another Triple Crown in horse racing. Now, well … there’s baseball. But this is a good … Read More

Now that we’re into June, it really does feel like summer is here. The air conditioning kicks in, the days are hotter … and, if you’re like me, “focus” becomes something I have to set myself towards. It doesn’t just “happen” — especially when the days are hot. It might be simply because tax season is now fully behind us, and … Read More

Memorial Day weekend can often feel a little disjointed. There we are with our burgers, our pools, our picnics — all while we are supposedly remembering the sacrifice of so many thousands who laid down their lives in the line of duty for this country, and for the sake of our constitutional freedoms. However, when you talk to veterans from … Read More

I’ll tell you what… The month of May is beginning to look a lot like December. Definitely not because it’s cold out there, but with so much “end of school year” stuff happening these days, from graduation parties (ranging from pre-k “graduations” all the way up through college and beyond), to weddings (both royal and otherwise), to sports seasons wrapping … Read More

Did you see Google’s demonstration of their new virtual assistant technology, Duplex, last week? If you did, like me, probably you were both amazed … and a little bit terrified of the implications. Essentially, Google is close to figuring out how to make it so that machines and robots can engage in regular human interaction — with the human being … Read More