Welcome all of you to our summer 2019 client event !

What an interesting time it has been – an economy that has had a long run.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal had an interesting article about the economy – written about how we tend to just measure it based on the price of things, and how many of us focus on housing and land, and whether we and our friends are employed.  Economists call this “Consumer Confidence” – how the public feels about how well they are doing and how positive they are about the future.

The global population is aging at a rapid pace; the world population of seniors (60+) is expected to double by 2050[1]. This trend is apparent in the US as well – by 2030, older people (65+) are expected to outnumber children (18-) for the first time in US history[2]. Alternative investment strategies focused on age-related technologies and life sciences offer a unique “do good, do well” opportunity.  Florida in particular may be an especially interesting market by being at the epicenter of these demographic trends along with aging technology and life science innovations.

Planning for a successful retirement can be an intimidating task, to say the least. While many people are saving for retirement through employer-sponsored plans like 401(k)s or 403(b)s, there are additional options that can make all the difference between getting by and continuing to build wealth into your golden years. IRAs have been around since 1975, and while most people are somewhat familiar with them, very few people are aware of the full scope of opportunity offered by these accounts. There are several major considerations when choosing which strategy is right for you.

Since the concept of individual retirement accounts (IRAs) was introduced in 1974, there’s been a lot of misunderstanding about how they work and what types of investments are eligible to be held.

From a strictly legal perspective, there are very few things that an IRA owner is prohibited from investing in with their retirement account. In fact, the IRS code only identifies life insurance and collectibles as prohibited investments.  However, because such accounts must be held by third party custodians, it didn’t take long for banks and stock brokerage companies to realize that if they would act as the custodian, they could effectively limit what was offered through such accounts to only those investments which generated profits for them. In fact, custodial services are often offered by such firms for free or for fees so small that they don’t even cover the related administrative costs.