BFSG Blog

Financial Resources & News

The Fed’s Switcheroo

The U-6 Unemployment Rate Bottoms Have Been "Stuck" Around 7 - 7 1/2% Around Cyclical Turning Points It is readily apparent that the Federal Reserve (the “Fed”) is more focused on employment rather than inflation. Last year the Fed released a new policy framework (1) that included a shift away from its traditional practice of raising interest rates based on the headline unemployment rate (U-3)....

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Five Potential Tax Changes Under Biden

With a new president often comes new agendas and philosophical changes. This is especially true with the Democrats controlling the House and picking up important seats in the Senate. President Biden is expected to pitch his "Build Back Better" infrastructure plan on Thursday and how to fund the estimated $3 trillion price tag. Democrats will be forced to choose between budget reconciliation,...

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COVID-19 Update

On March 11, 2020, the coronavirus outbreak was officially declared a pandemic. Now a full year into the pandemic, we invited back Dr. Edwin Yu, the former Medical Director of the Division of Infectious Disease at Banner University Medical Center, Phoenix, Arizona, to provide us an update on COVID-19. Catch the replay here.

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There’s Still Time to Contribute to an IRA for 2020

Even though tax filing season is well underway, there's still time to make a regular IRA contribution for 2020. You have until your tax return due date (not including extensions) to contribute up to $6,000 for 2020 ($7,000 if you were age 50 or older on or before December 31, 2020). The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) delayed the April 15th tax-filing deadline to May 17th, giving taxpayers an...

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Simplifying Your Retirement Plan

Like all things in life, retirement planning has many aspects to it and a few items we can control but most items are beyond our control. To help remove some of the stress of retirement planning, we would like to help reframe the way that you look at retirement planning. Looking at the chart below it breaks down the most important factors that impact your retirement and are broken into three...

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BFSG LISTED AMONG TOP DC ADVISOR TEAMS

NAPA released the list of its Top DC Advisor Teams with Benefit Financial Services Group and many other individual office teams among the nation’s leading retirement plan advisor firms. Congrats BFSG for making the list for the 2nd year in a row! Click here to read the press release and here for NAPA's list. Disclaimer: Awards and recognitions by unaffiliated rating services, companies, and/or...

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Is Pot Growing Environmentally Friendly?

Now that cannabis is legal in many states, it may be the case that pot users and investors think that cannabis is environmentally friendly, but it is not! Growing marijuana indoors takes an enormous amount of electricity, water, and chemicals. In other words, growing cannabis is energy-intensive and unfriendly to the environment. Evan Mills writes in Slate, that a Colorado Study looked at the...

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Pandemic Relief Measures and Your 2020 Tax Return

The two emergency relief bills passed in 2020 and another in 2021 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic will make this an unusual tax season for many taxpayers. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act was passed in March, a second relief package was attached to the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, in December, and just recently the American Rescue Plan. The federal...

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Monthly Economic Summary

February is behind us as we now enter March. This time last year was one for the record books and look at the economic summary below to better understand what transpired over the last month.  As always, if you have any questions or want to discuss more in-depth do not hesitate to give us a call! Sources: Sources: J.P. Morgan Asset Management – Economic Update; Bureau of Economic Analysis...

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Do You Want Some Froth with That SPAC

When there is so much liquidity sloshing around the system, Wall Street always comes up with a way to capitalize with a bit of financial engineering. The latest soup de jour is a special purpose acquisition company (“SPAC”). A SPAC is a “blank check” company that raises money in an Initial Public Offering (“IPO”) to merge with a privately held company that then becomes publicly traded as a...

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Medicare Part B Premium

If you have just recently enrolled in Medicare, you may be wondering how your premiums are calculated. Although Medicare eligibility is not income-based, the income you report on your tax return does play a role on your monthly premiums. As with everything else when it comes to IRS and taxes, things can get complicated and confusing! As a refresher, Part A (hospital) generally has no premium,...

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Not All Emergency Funds Are Equal

At the end of 2019, no one predicted that the unemployment rate would hit its highest level since the Great Depression, average wages would decline but household incomes would increase, thanks to government stimulus checks.  Had the U.S. government not provided stimulus checks, many more Americans would have struggled financially. Financial advisors typically recommend having at least 3–6...

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The Perils of the Wall Street Hype Train

Wall Street can often feel like a popularity contest. Every year the market has a darling stock or stocks that everyone agrees to be the flavor of the month (or year, or decade) and the stock(s) will dramatically rise regardless of fundamentals or other factors. Asset bubbles inflating and bursting are a recurring phenomenon in world economic history – the British South Sea Company bubble...

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Is Bitcoin an ESG Nightmare?

If some of the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) rating agencies were to apply an ESG risk rating to Bitcoin, it would probably be a laggard and would be a nightmare to assign a risk rating to. The energy-intensive process by which computers solve complex algorithmic problems to verify blockchain transactions is an undeniable “Environmental” offender, the E of ESG.1 The carbon...

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