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A few weeks ago, I wrote about the "zero" percent tax rate on long term capital gains for individuals in the 15% tax bracket (or lower). I concluded that post by saying "a little pre-planning before year-end should be on your agenda." This "zero" rate can be of great benefit to many people, but in...

Ben Bernanke, Chairman of our Federal Reserve System, announced the other day that the Fed will attempt to stimulate the economy and drive interest rates even lower through a series of bond market maneuvers that traders have dubbed "the Twist." In the Twist, the Fed will invest $400 billion (yes, n...

Back in the day we called them "Conglomerates" and the name had a strange appeal among some investors. My corporate finance professors used to extol the advantages of diversified businesses (insurance, hotels, and aerospace, in one instance) as delivering potentially better returns with less risk. T...

Yesterday Nothnagle Realtors held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at their new Brighton office at 2349 Monroe Avenue, just down the street from us. It's great to have new neighbors, but of course Nothnagle Realtors has had offices here in Brighton for many years, until they moved their headquarters to a s...

I was in Ireland, staying in a small inn on a coastal bay in the southwest. In New York, financial titans were on the brink, and some fell into the abyss. It was three years ago today that investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. Their CEO, Richard Fuld, overplayed his hand, trying to s...

Many senior citizens pay no mortgage interest and do not have enough deductions in order to itemize. So, typically, they would receive no tax benefit from their charitable contributions. Again in 2011 there is a little-known tax planning tip involving charitable contributions for people over 70 1/2...

Congress has made major changes to our income tax code about every 18 months, on average, since I got out of college some 30 years ago. Constant adjustments to suit various political initiatives - incentivizing this and taxing that - have kept our tax code a difficult hodgepodge. The stridency of th...

Let's see if I've got this right: Stock prices declined last week due to fears that US banks might take losses on loans to European banks. European banks are weak because they have lent a lot of money to certain European governments that are having trouble meeting their payments. Those Eur...

Traditional logic is that at the end of the year investors who have realized capital gains during the year typically look to sell losing positions to off-set those gains. This year your thought process needs to be different. If you are in or below the 15% tax bracket (married couples up to $69,000...

Think back - not far, just three weeks ago: we had a pretty bumpy ride in the stock market, down nearly 18% in the last week of July and the first week of August. Bumpy enough to get the media on the case. Local TV, radio, and print media all called and we were happy to oblige with quotes and commen...