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The firm continues to pursue its vision of managing complexity and delivering simplicity. Deerfield, Ill. — Strategic Wealth Partners Group, LLC, an independently managed wealth management firm with offices in…

When we reflect on what to do with our wealth as we grow older, we tend to first think about where our money will go after we pass. Recently though, more and more people are shifting their perspective on passing down their wealth from an inheritance-focused view to a more immediate, experience-focused one.

Instead of saving every available dollar for their estate, people are using some of those assets to fund unforgettable family vacations, meaningful experiences with friends, and other memories that last a lifetime. People are also investing in their loved one’s lives while living, offering to contribute more to wedding costs, housing down payments, and business funding.

At some point in your life, you may be faced with managing a large cash inflow. Selling a business, collecting a deferred compensation payout, and receiving an inheritance are a few of the most common reasons. Regardless of the source of this money, you will have to decide what to do with it.

It’s an age-old investing debate: should I invest the cash all at once, or stage into the market over time?

I come from a long line of family members who were financial professionals. There are generations of Karmins before me who were either traders, stockbrokers, or asset managers. No doctors, no lawyers, and not even an accountant in our family.

So, I feel like I was destined for a career in finance. I graduated from what is now the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois, started my career as a portfolio manager at Northern Trust Bank, and ultimately found my passion in wealth management here at SWP.

Our team regularly reads articles from industry peers and trusted resources to stay up to date on financial markets.  We enjoy reading about topics related to economics, investments, current events, and financial planning.

In addition to circulating some of the best pieces internally, we thought our clients, partners, and friends might enjoy reading some of the same articles as us.

Here are 9 recent pieces that our team members have read, along with some commentary on why we found the respective articles interesting.

This blog is geared towards 401(k) plan sponsors, but is informational for everyone.

By now, you have likely heard of the SECURE Act 2.0—also known as “SECURE 2.0”—either in the news or through your plan’s record keeper. The goal of SECURE 2.0 is to encourage individuals to save more for retirement by giving plan sponsors opportunities to help their participants save. For plan sponsors that want to optimize their plan, these changes provide opportunities to better help participants.

In this article, we highlight several of the key changes brought about by SECURE 2.0, how participants benefit from these changes, and how plan sponsors can use these changes to enhance their retirement plan offerings.

For families with significant wealth, preserving this wealth from one generation to the next is often a central focus. And it’s a goal for good reason, as data shows that 90% of families deplete their wealth by the end of the third generational wealth transfer.[1]

Cultures around the world have come up with sayings to describe the process of families building—and subsequently losing—their hard-earned assets. In America, it’s “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations”; in Italy, it’s known as “from the stalls to the stars to the stall again”; and in China, it’s “from peasant shoes to peasant shoes in three generations.”

You likely heard about Silicon Valley Bank (“SVB”) this past weekend, and by now, you’ve probably also heard that the government took actions to quell fears that SVB’s failure might lead to a broader “contagion” effect. It seems as though the bank will, in fact, “fail” in the sense that its debt and equity will suffer or be wiped out…but customers will not lose their deposits, even temporarily.
What follows is a brief recap of what happened, and what it means for investors who don’t bank with SVB, but who are concerned about the downstream effects of its failure on their portfolios.

Protecting yourself from identity theft is like playing a game of whack-a-mole. As soon as you take steps to safeguard yourself from one issue, up pops another. And you aren’t alone in this struggle; this is an unfortunate reality of the modern world that we all must manage.
It seems that the latest threat involves checking accounts. In the last few months, an alarming number of friends, clients, and relatives have reported that their checking accounts have been hacked and funds have disappeared. For one friend, it happened twice within two weeks.