Kim Gannis, AIF®, is a Principal at Carnegie and Director of Retirement Plan Services and works in Carnegie’s Pittsburgh office. She has been with the firm for six years. Kim earned her Bachelor of Science in mathematics from the University of Pittsburgh; she is also a designated Accredited Investment Fiduciary®. 

“With my degree, I thought I was going to be a teacher coming out of school,” Kim recalls. “I soon realized that I would rather poke my eyes out than be a teacher.” She landed at Mercer as an analyst, then continued with positions at PNC Bank and American Century Investments. Her desire to understand the real side of money led to her move to Carnegie. She has been doing financial work all her life and plans to continue for the rest of her career. 

Let’s take a look at a day in the life of a principal and director of retirement plan services.

Education savings plans were originally created in the 1980s by various states as a way for students to attain the financial means required for a college education. These plans are still implemented at a state level and are either prepaid tuition or tax-advantaged savings accounts that can be applied to qualified education expenses. 

According to the National Association of State Treasurers, more than 12 million families have saved more than $258 billion in these plans over the last 40 years.

While the primary purpose of these accounts has always been to make a college education feasible from a financial standpoint, they should also be considered a valuable estate planning tool. In light of the current tax treatment of these accounts, they may provide a flexible means for parents, grandparents or other family members to transfer assets to a younger generation.

As the saying goes, if it is too good to be true, it usually is. In this case it is true, thanks to a recent inflation indicator.

A little-known type of U.S Government bonds called I-bonds are currently yielding more than 7%. The I-bond is a type of U.S. savings bond that is indexed to the Consumer Price Index’s trailing 6 month change. When the Treasury reset the rate at the beginning of November it was 7.12% annualized. This rate will be effective until May 2022.

Special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, have exploded in popularity this year, but most investors are still not familiar with these entities, sometimes called blank-check companies. 

Giving Tuesday is a global day of giving with a goal to unleash the power of radical generosity. According to Giving Tuesday Inc, $2.47 billion was donated on December 1, 2020, by 34.8 million people, just in the United States alone. Many of our clients have been giving generously to their beloved charities for years. However, if you know someone looking to make a difference or newly in a position to be philanthropic, consider sharing this step-by-step article with them. There are many ways to get involved this Giving Tuesday - here are some ideas!

The word fiduciary has evolved from some obscure financial terminology rarely uttered at the neighborhood cocktail party to the in-vogue standard. If your financial person doesn’t meet the standard, you might be deemed a rube.

The term fiduciary seems so commonplace that you might be tempted to take it for granted. Surely, your advisor wouldn’t stoop to anything less than being a fiduciary: a professional who always strives to work in your best interest, even after you are invested. You can check that box. Right?

In their most recent study about stress in America, the American Psychological Association found that 72 percent of people felt stressed about money. Finances can be a constant stressor for some, no matter what significant events influence it. Still, it’s no secret that the pandemic transformed the workforce rapidly and wreaked long-term havoc on the economy in 2020. Many people experienced food insecurity due to the unexpected impact of financial loss, and according to a survey published in November, 2020, about 63 percent of Americans had been living paycheck to paycheck since the start of the pandemic.

We’ve always been told that the only certainty in our lives will be death and taxes. Fair enough. But many of us would like to see a greater degree of certainty when it comes to our retirement, specifically as it relates to retirement income.

However, although there are tools to help determine our income after our work life, it really is a “best guess” and is not guaranteed. Add to that, the amount of time one will need that income is also speculation.

But there are steps we can take to augment traditional income sources. First, let’s define those typical ways of paying for our retirement.

Many among us found ourselves playing armchair epidemiologist at the outset of the pandemic. Casual discussions about rates of community transmission and projectile statistics of a cough in indoor settings, along with a browser tab open consistently to track worldwide COVID tallies, all served as useful distractions.

While the country grappled with this black swan event, healthcare infrastructure strained to accommodate three distinct influxes of COVID-infected patients in just nine short months. As the fourth wave continues to impact parts of the country today, it’s a little premature for a full postmortem on how the healthcare sector fared as a whole, but there are reasons to be hopeful.

Did you know that 90 percent of high net-worth households give to charity according to the National Philanthropic Trust? It’s an impactful way to ensure your wealth goes to good use. Nonprofit and charitable organizations are fueled by individuals who support their services. Currently, there are about 1.54 million charitable organizations in the U.S., and in 2019, 69 percent of charitable giving came from individuals.

In our first post in this series on living with wealth, we discussed giving to family. [Link to blog when posted] In this post, we concentrate on charitable giving. Outside of playing a pivotal role in helping a nonprofit organization thrive, charitable giving boasts a number of benefits for donors. Making a donation to a qualified 501(c)(3) makes you eligible for tax deductions, and giving a considerable amount can benefit your overall estate planning.

Take a closer look at how you can position yourself for sustainable charitable giving and, in addition, leave an enduring legacy after your death.