Installment #1 in our continuing series on the latest federal stimulus package and what it means for investors. Paul Coleman III, CFP® discusses the basics of the package in this 14-minute video.
Once again this year, Level Financial Advisors has been named a finalist in Buffalo Business First's Best Places To Work in WNY! This year's virtual award ceremony is being held on March 31st....
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PRESS RELEASE Amherst, NY: Level Financial Advisors, an Amherst-based, fee-only financial planning and investment management firm that specializes in retirement planning, announced today that its assets under management have surpassed $500 million. The firm, with six CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ practitioners, was recently ranked as one of the top 500 RIA firms in the nation by Financial Advisor Magazine, most recently surpassing $400 million in assets in 2019. "We’ve maintained our growth pattern over the past eighteen months, including a strong end to 2020, despite the challenges of the pandemic," said Michael Heburn, the firm’s Chief Operating Officer and partner. “Our clients have continued to put their trust in us and our ability to help them with their financial goals. We are proud to be a growing, local company and are looking forward to a successful 2021.” Along with the addition of new clients and deposits from existing clients, strong investment growth in 2020 contributed to the...
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We are pleased to offer a new educational session, “Medicaid and Estate Planning: Answers to Popular Questions,” to our clients and special guests. Wednesday, March 10th at 6pm This is a great chance to familiarize yourself with the basics of estate planning as it pertains to long-term care and Medicaid. This webinar will discuss: • Should I put my house in my kids' names? • Can I pay my kids to take care of me? • How do NY partnership long term care insurance policies work? • Options for paying for a nursing home (private pay, Medicaid, long term care insurance). • Medicaid qualification criteria. • Nursing home pre-planning options (gifting and trusts). • Nursing home crisis planning (gift/loan strategy). • In home care: what will Medicare/Medicaid pay for? Click Here To Register For this Event...
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The CARES Act and the 2020 year-end coronavirus relief bill had a lot built into them. As we start the 2020 tax return season, here are a few items affecting individual taxpayers that we feel are most relevant: Certain charitable contributions deductible by non-itemizers Many who take the standard deduction, which became more popular after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 raised the standard deduction amounts, will be able to deduct $300 in 2020 for all taxpayers and $600 in 2021 for married couples filing jointly. This means that if you made a cash contribution directly to a 501(c)(3) you will be able to reduce your taxable income by up to $300 in 2020 and $600 in 2021. It is important to note that the contribution must be in cash, check, or credit card, and it must go directly to the charity and not a donor advised fund or 509(a)...
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Level’s Steven Elwell, CFP®, discusses fourth quarter market performance in this video. Transcript Here
Level’s Paul Coleman III,CFP® joins our COO Mike Heburn to discuss Gamestop and its impact on markets and the average investor.,
In my previous blog, I used our common airline flight experience as a retirement readiness analogy. In the last fifteen minutes before landing, the flight attendant will make an announcement describing a number of key tasks that need to be done to ready the plane for landing and we can liken this to the five years (give or take) prior to retirement. I outlined five high priority preretirement tasks. In this article lets focus on the first: Visualizing retirement in detail. During our early career years, we can prepare for retirement readiness, but often our notion of retirement is understandably vague. With so many elements of our future life yet unknown, it’s reasonable to simply save and invest a percentage of our salary for our future. If we do attempt to calculate our retirement needs, most calculators will assume a broad retirement income objective such as 70% of our current income. But...
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