5 Common Retirement Fears and How to Overcome Them
By Erin Wood, CFP®, Senior Vice President, Financial Planning and Advanced Solutions If we’re to believe everything we see in magazine and TV ads, retirement is a time of leisurely bike rides with your spouse, lunching with friends and exploring hobbies like painting or ceramics, all done i …
Do I Need a Financial Advisor? How to Know What You Need Now
By Erin Wood, CFP®, Senior Vice President, Financial Planning and Advanced Solutions, Carson Group Do I need a financial advisor? Given what I do for a living, I get this question a lot. I may be biased, but I think almost everyone would benefit from some kind of advice for their money. …
Do You Have a Cognitive Decline Plan?
By Erin Wood, CFP®, Senior Vice President, Financial Planning and Advanced Solutions, Carson Group My paternal grandmother was the type of woman who was always bustling with activity, whether it was hosting post-church lunches every Sunday or helping a neighbor in need. So, it was a bit …
How to Stick to New Year’s Resolutions
Picture this: My husband and I are squeezing in workouts by power walking at the gym where our daughter’s swim team practices. Normally, the brisk walks get our heart rates up and, after several laps around the indoor track, we’ve broken a sweat. In January, though, we find ourselves dodgin …
From Breadwinner to Retiree: How to Manage the Transition
The transition from breadwinner to retiree can be challenging for many. How can you prepare to enter retirement smoothly?
The Opportunity in Change: How Changing Goals Change Financial Plans
During the pandemic, my family moved into a new house. We weren’t planning on moving, but that didn’t stop us from participating in the pandemic housing boom. But we did so at a time where the kids weren’t yet out of school, so for about three weeks, we owned two homes. Instead of having to …
The Cost of Infertility: How to Navigate the Finances of IVF
By Erin Wood, Senior Vice President, Financial Planning and Advanced Solutions After my struggle with pregnancy issues, I was surprised by how quickly I found out I wasn’t alone. Friends, relatives, coworkers – people I’d known for years – were suddenly sharing with me a vital but private p …
Estate Planning for the Family Farm and Your Legacy
As a financial advisor who’s spent her career in the midwest, I’ve worked with more farm families than I can count. From buying new expensive equipment to riding out the drought years, there can be millions in play even on small family operations. Estate planning – splitting up the land bet …
Teaching Kids about Money from Childhood Through Adulthood
Teaching kids about money is especially complex – you aren’t just passing on a few bucks to go to the movies, but an array of attitudes, values and assumptions regardless of whether you mean to. Your kids watch, in a way not even they are aware of, how you interact with finance and how you …
Sorting Through the Noise on Social Security
We live in the Information Age, where any information we could ever want is available to us within seconds, but due to the overwhelming wealth of info and sources – not to mention neck-break speed of the instant news cycle – it feels hard to know what’s really going on.
