One of the most important aspects of responsible financial planning is risk management. A proper understanding of risk can help you anticipate losses and gains and create an investment strategy with your financial planner as you build wealth. Assessing your risk tolerance can guide you in your investment decisions. Armed with this knowledge, you can start to see the risk of avoiding risk.

It is important to identify your financial goals, what it will take to reach those goals and understand the level of risk you are willing to take to get there. Your goals and behavior must be aligned.

When you work or volunteer for a nonprofit agency, your work is important and valuable. You might even say you are “doing good in the neighborhood!” When you combine your nonprofit mission with strong financial management you can make an even greater impact for those you serve.

Strong financial management is critical to the success of nonprofit organizations and helps them be more effective. This is true now more than ever, with the impact of COVID placing increased demand on financial resources. It helps to enlist the support of a qualified financial advisor to help navigate your nonprofit through volatile times.

So, what’s the case for engaging a nonprofit financial advisor for your organization? Here are some key benefits:

Are you considering hiring a planner to help navigate your financial future? If so, do you know what financial planning entails? Financial planning revolves around taking a holistic view of a client's financial situation and advising them on how to achieve realistic economic goals.

While it seems simple enough, there are several myths surrounding financial planning that might prevent you from enlisting a planner. Let's examine four of these in detail to help you reach a better understanding of how a financial planner can meet your needs.

We continue our series profiling different financial advisors at Carnegie Investment Counsel with our Portfolio Manager Linda Fousek. Linda is a Chartered Financial Analyst® and her expertise areas are investment strategy and asset allocation, including portfolio construction and implementation.

Are we headed into a time of inflation? Many people and economists are debating this issue right now. In the “real world,” we’ve seen inflation in interesting areas such as Pokémon and NBA Top Shots trading “cards,” which had seen a spike up in prices earlier in the year. Housing prices are certainly rising. Plus, inflation is finding its way into commodities such as food inputs like soybeans, corn and more. Certainly, gas prices are higher at the pump than a year ago. And does it mean inflation is coming because of crazy high auction prices for things such as Jack Dorsey selling his first tweet ever as an NFT (non fungible token) for over $2.9 million?

In anticipation of Earth Day on April 22, we are sharing a new Earth-friendly installation at our local  office in Pepper Pike, Ohio. 

If you live in Northeast Ohio and have been out and about on Lander Circle in Pepper Pike, you might have noticed a slim upright structure that vaguely resembles the old-time gasoline pumps of a day gone by. However, this unit is not pumping out gasoline and instead delivers up to 13.2kw per hour of electricity to any needy electric vehicles (EVs) in the vicinity.

The Internal Revenue Service anticipates that more than 150 million tax returns will be filed this year. In a normal year, this is a colossal undertaking. But in a world still altered by a pandemic, it becomes a bit more complicated for all parties involved. We are here to help you navigate the process.

This year, tax time may be a little different. On March 17, 2021, the U.S. Treasury Department and the IRS announced that the federal income tax filing due date for individuals for the 2020 tax year would automatically be extended from April 15, 2021, to May 17, 2021. This postponement to May 17, 2021, of the federal tax filing deadline, only applies to individual federal income tax returns and tax payments otherwise due April 15, 2021. Also, note that this relief does not apply to estimated tax payments due on April 15, 2021.

Beginning in the 1930s, and accelerating in the decades that followed, employer-sponsored healthcare became one of the benefits American consumers have come to rely upon. Facilitated in part by changes in government policies during World War II, private employers began to offer health insurance as part of an overall compensation package for their workforce.

However, this system's evolution left many retirees without any medical insurance, which was often terminated when they left the labor force. This shortcoming was addressed in 1965 when Medicare and Medicaid were signed into law, giving tens of millions of Americans affordable access to hospitals, clinics and a network of physicians.

Accordingly, most Americans today have some form of health insurance, either through their employer or after they have retired. However, unless they are disabled, participants in Medicare must have reached their 65th birthday.

So what if you want to retire before age 65?

As a portfolio manager at Carnegie Investment Counsel, I am involved with creating portfolios designed to help clients meet their goals. For individuals, corporations or nonprofits, investment policy statements (IPS) are a way to outline goals and objectives. Outside of work, I serve as an investment committee member for my church's endowment. As such, I am sharing my IPS experience as a portfolio manager and as a community member in my church. Let's start with some basics.