Portfolio Advisors Blog

If you have not already received your 1099 Composite and Year-End Summary for your respective accounts for 2012, it should arrive from Charles Schwab no later than the end of February. Should you have any questions regarding your Portfolio Report or your 1099 statement, please do not hesitate to call us. We also request that once you have completed your 2012 tax return that you provide us with a copy so that we may better advise you.

Warm Regards,

We just came across a great Financial Planning Flowchart that was published in the December 20 issue of Business Week. It was put together by the Business Week team of Nick Summers and Karen Wise with input from Milo Benningfield, a San Francisco-based financial planner; Eleanor Blayney, consumer advocate for the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards; Tim Steffen, Director of Financial Planning and Wealth Management at Robert W. Baird; Maria Bruno a senior investment analyst at Vanguard Group and Meir Statman, finance professor at Santa Clara University.

The chart does a nice job of mapping out basic financial planning tenets and touches on debt management, retirement planning and insurance needs. We thought you might find it worthwhile in your planning for 2013 and perhaps even a little fun.

As we enter the new-year, it may be worthwhile to reflect on 2012. Please see the article below written by Weston Wellington, Vice President with Dimensional Fund Advisors, entitled “2012: The Year It Didn’t Happen.” The article reminds us that, as is so often the case, earning the rewards offered by the world’s capital markets requires a combination of discipline and detachment from the ominous headlines that we are bombarded with daily. I hope that you find the article worthwhile.

We at Portfolio Advisors wish you the very best that 2013 can offer, and we remain here to serve you.

In his article, “The Top Ten Money Excuses,” Dimensional Funds Vice President Jim Parker suggests that we often deceive ourselves when it comes to our own money. How can this happen, one might ask? It can happen by constructing a façade of logical-sounding arguments that can often lead to decisions that are counter to our own long-term interests. Read on to learn about those top ten arguments and excuses along with how to avoid them.

From time to time, you may have the need to calculate the cost of a loan, or you may need to calculate the impact of increasing or decreasing contributions to your retirement plan. You may be interested in knowing if it is better to lease or buy a new vehicle. Perhaps you are curious about whether an auto rebate is a preferable choice versus securing a lower interest rate.

A wide variety of on-line tools can be found on our website and can be helpful with these and other common financial questions. In addition to those mentioned, you can also find a 1040 tax calculator, an amortizing loan calculator and a Roth IRA Conversion calculator to name a few. These useful tools can all be found on the Portfolio Advisors website at Online Tools.

Quiz Question: What do these companies have in common—Whitbread of the United Kingdom, Molson Coors of North America, Qantas of Australia, Honda of Japan, and Adidas of Germany?

Dimensional Funds Vice President, Jim Parker, provides the answer in his column “Sharing the Wealth: The Case for Equities”.

Portfolio Advisors, Inc. is proud to announce that Tina Mistry has completed her financial planning training and has passed the CFP® Certification Exam. She has obtained her Certified Financial PlannerTM certification, demonstrating that she has met the standards required by the CFP® Board.

The year 2011 could be remembered for the unsettling volatility seen in the S&P 500 index, a measure of large company US stocks. January offered a promising start with a 2% gain and by April, the S&P was up 8%. Wobbling followed during May and June, and volatility really began in mid-July with the index diving 17% in just 11 days. In August, the index rose or fell 4%+ on 5 of 6 consecutive days.

Happy New Year! We hope you and your family had a wonderful holiday season.

With the New Year comes along new reporting from Schwab for taxable accounts. The purpose of this posting is to address some new IRS tax reporting requirements and to explain how the changes might affect you.

I was listening to a news commentary on PBS last night and the discussion revolved around the state of the economy, 8 to 9% unemployment and the housing and financial mess that we continue to face. All agreed that these are indeed tough times. However, one of the guests reminded the others that tough times are not new and that over time we have always worked our way through seemingly impossible situations.