Americans holding universal life insurance policies may get an unpleasant surprise from their insurers in the next few months, if they haven’t already. According to the Wall Street Journal, many major insurers are raising the premiums on universal life insurance policies that they sold as many as 20 or 30 years ago.
This means that people past retirement age could see premium increases that range from 5-6 percent to as high as 200 percent, depending on the amount of their coverage.
What’s prompted the change is the fact that interest rates have been low for the past several years, which has impacted investment income. Although insurers have a contractual right to raise costs on policies, it’s rarely invoked.
This post is part of our series for advisors to pass to their clients. Knowing more about your clients’ needs will help you to better serve them. Aging doesn’t have to be scary, and we here at Ashar want to help you provide the resources that policy sellers need to flourish in this chapter of their lives.
It might seem paradoxical, but more and more Baby Boomers are using their retirement to get back into the workforce. But this time, it’s as business owners, rather than as someone else’s employee.
While for some people, a perfect retirement means tons of free time, long vacations, and not a whole lot else, others find that the retirement they’d always planned isn’t quite as fulfilling as they expected. For people who like to stay busy and productive, spending days reading, visiting with friends, or planning their next trip sometimes isn’t enough.
Starting a small business can be the perfect antidote to retirement boredom. Such an undertaking can present a brand new challenge, as well as an opportunity to learn new things, meet new people, and develop new skills.
When an aging parent or other loved one needs full-time care, many of us feel duty-bound to become a family caregiver. This can be especially true for adult children of ailing parents – after all, our parents took care of our every need for years. Don’t we owe them the same thing?
Choosing whether or not to become a caregiver is a difficult decision for anyone to make, even in the best circumstances. While your initial thought in this situation might be “Of course I have to take care of my parent/spouse/loved one – it’s my responsibility,” there are several things you should carefully consider before deciding to take the leap into this role.
Whether or not you keep your New Year’s resolutions past January this year, there’s something to be said for taking the time to reflect, regroup, and make some plans to move yourself forward in the new year.
In addition to the usual worthy resolutions having to do with eating better, exercising more, and spending more time with family, those of us who work in finance may have some business-related resolutions. We came up with a list of resolutions that financial advisors, planners, and others might want to consider for 2016.
This post is part of our series for advisors to pass to their clients. Knowing more about your clients’ needs will help you to better serve them. Aging doesn’t have to be scary, and we here at Ashar want to help you provide the resources that policy sellers need to flourish in this chapter of their lives.
Ah, December: the month of holiday cookies, festive parties, gift wrapping, family gatherings...and taxes.
Although the tax deadline isn’t until April of next year, the year-end is when financially-savvy earners and retirees take a good look at their income for the year and start making estimates on how much they’ll owe Uncle Sam.
This can be especially important for new retirees. Doing your first year of taxes as a retired person can be a bit confusing, and you don’t want to end up with a huge tax liability that you could have reduced, had you only known what to do. Your financial advisor can walk you through the best ways to reduce your tax bill - since he or she knows you and your finances personally, your advisor can ensure you use the most effective strategies for your situation.
This post is part of our series for advisors to pass to their clients. Knowing more about your clients’ needs will help you to better serve them. Aging doesn’t have to be scary, and we here at Ashar want to help you provide the resources that policy sellers need to flourish in this chapter of their lives.
When you’re in your middle age and heading out to work every day, retirement can sometimes seem like the carrot at the end of the stick, or the light at the end of the tunnel—whichever metaphor you like best. Even for those of us working in jobs we’re truly passionate about, there are moments when the idea of waking up every day and doing whatever we want just sounds irresistible.
Do you have a financial advisor, insurance professional, accountant, or other finance guru somewhere among your friends and family? If so - or if you are one yourself - you know it can be hard to find a gift that plays into their love of numbers, math, or economics without being just plain old boring.
Well, at Ashar Group we've got plenty of finance geeks in the family - in fact, our leadership team members President Jason Mendelsohn, CEO Jon Mendelsohn, and Vice President of Secondary Market Solutions Jamie Mendelsohn are all siblings!
Because of that, we'd like to flatter ourselves that we've gotten pretty good at picking out gifts for fellow number crunchers. You'll find a list of our top picks for gifts this year below.
Whether our caregivers are professionals, like nurses or home health aides, or family members, like spouses or adult children, their jobs can often be difficult, even thankless.
Professional caregivers have to develop that special balance of warmth, compassion, and practicality that allows them to do their jobs well, while still maintaining their own separate home lives. And family caregivers often have to make substantial personal sacrifices in order to do what they do, whether that’s leaving the workforce, changing their living situation, or rearranging their own family responsibilities to be available for the person who needs them.
Good caregivers deserve our sincere appreciation every day, but it’s especially important during the holidays. Whether it’s your sister who’s taking care of your parent, your spouse who sees to your each and every need, or a dedicated nursing staff at an assisted living home, take the time this December to show them how much you appreciate what they do each day. Here are a few ideas to get you thinking.
Depending on your level of creativity and how much you like shopping, deciding on client gifts for the holidays can be either a welcome interruption of your everyday tasks, or a dreaded assignment that you feverishly pass off on your partner or administrative assistant.
And while passing it off is, of course, a perfectly fine thing to do, you might want to take a look at this list of our favorite client gifts for the holidays first. If it doesn’t make you want to decide on gifts yourself, it may make your partner or admin assistant’s job just a little bit easier.
Teachers, government workers, healthcare professionals—for people in these professions, continuing education is part of the job. While continuing ed (CE) has always been important in order to keep skills and knowledge fresh, you could say that today it’s even more vital. After all, the rate at which we’re coming up with new approaches and best practices is only increasing.
For that same reason, continuing education for financial planners is just as important. There are different requirements depending on which certifications you hold, of course, with special certifications like Certified Financial Planner or Chartered Financial Consultant requiring additional CE hours or additional topics.
There’s no doubt that it can get confusing figuring out how many hours you need, and which topics you need to make sure you cover. Thankfully, however, you can do many if not all of your courses online, making the process itself easier than it used to be.
To help you out, here’s our list of the best ways for financial planners to meet their CE requirements.
