The Caldwell Trust Company Blog

If you’ve started preparing for your kids to attend college, you’ll quickly find the costs are no laughing matter. The costs of college fluctuates year by year, with expenses consistently rising. According to The College Board, the average price of tuition and fees have gone up more than $7,000 over the past 10 years at four-year private colleges and universities. That figure has outpaced inflation by more than 3 percentage points. In fact, the cost in 2018-2019 is about $9,716 for an in-state public college, and about $35,676 for private colleges.

While one-third of all millennials say they invest in the market, more than half of Millennials, who lived through the Great Recession, claim they will never be comfortable with investing in the stock market. Along with discomfort, lack of funds and poor financial literacy keep this generation from trusting the market. However, investing is a proven way to bolster financial security long-term, and there are ways to equip Millennials with the tools and knowledge they need to be financially secure now and later on in life.

Executive Summary:

• Domestic equities decline meaningfully
• Global markets generally fare worse
• Equity markets repricing after rates rise

Let’s dispel some topical misperceptions regarding last week’s sell-off in the domestic equity markets.

When it comes to retirement plans, there are many choices. One option that this article will dive into today, is the “profit sharing plan” which is a type of defined contribution plan that allows businesses to provide discretionary contributions -- meaning they can decide from year to year how much to contribute (or whether to contribute at all).

If you read the Wall Street Journal or listen to Bloomberg News, you’ve probably heard about robo-advisors. However, you may not know what it is or whether it’s the right service approach for your estate planning and investments.  

Although it sounds like something from a science fiction movie, robo-advisors are quite ‘real’.  They are automated digital investment advisory services – available online and through apps – that provide investment guidance without the intervention of a person, i.e. a human investment advisor.

Emerging in recent years as an alternative to traditional sources of advice, robo-advisors use computer algorithms, or sets of rules, to choose appropriate investments. The choices are based on a person’s risk tolerance, time horizon and other preferences indicated from an initial online questionnaire.

Caldwell Trust Company serves as a true fiduciary meaning we hold ourselves to a higher professional standard. Over the past 12 to 24 months the term fiduciary has been mentioned in several articles due to the Department of Labor’s ruling on the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974.  What you may not be aware of is how a fiduciary differs from a Broker or Financial Advisor as it relates to the management of your retirement funds or other matters.

Saving for retirement should be easy, but there’s a host of federal regulations and financial considerations that can make providing a reasonable plan to your employees complicated. That’s where having a trustworthy 401k program provider becomes incredibly important. A provider is responsible for ensuring that the entire plan functions (including handling various tasks like onboarding new participants and filing the appropriate forms) and that it does so legally and to the benefit of both the sponsor and participants. Businesses can find a bundled or unbundled solution for each aspect: non-producing administrators (i.e., focus on compliance), record keepers, and fiduciaries (i.e., investment managers that take on a certain amount of liability), trustee and custodian.

When an employee leaves your company, there’s a number of ways to handle the investments in their 401(k). You and the employee that’s leaving need to understand what’s the best fit for the money in question, such as whether to utilize 401(k) rollovers or withdraw the funds. Below we’ll discuss the pertinent benefits and costs to help you make the right decision.

On September 5^th 2017, the U.S. Securities Settlement Cycle will shorten from “trade date plus three days” or T+3 to T+2. The last time a move was made to shorten the settlement cycle was in 1995, when it changed from T+5 to T+3.  Whereas trading today is almost instant the settlement process is not. This push to a shortened settlement cycle is a beneficial step in aligning these two processes. 

When it comes to protecting your assets or ensuring your wishes are carried out when you are incapable of communicating them, you can hire fiduciaries to act with your best interests in mind and make decisions on your behalf based on their knowledge and area of expertise.