William F. Davis, CFP®

William F. Davis, CFP®  A prenuptial agreement only works if you sign it before the marriage falls apart. Try to negotiate one during the divorce and a judge will laugh you out of the room, and rightly so. Domicile works the same way. The evidence that you actually live in a low tax state has to be built while … Read more

Beyond the basics: contribution rules, conversions, the two 5-year clocks, and why the fine print matters  By William F. Davis, CFP®  Roth IRAs get talked about so often that it’s easy to assume everyone already understands how they work. In my experience, that’s rarely true. Clients generally know the headline: contributions go in after-tax, and qualified withdrawals come out tax-free. What they don’t always know … Read more

A Fed That Can’t Agree, a Market That’s Broader Than It Looks, and the Math on Staying In  Happy August. Somewhere between a Fed meeting that ended in the most dissents since 2016 and a market that hit a new high, sold off, and rallied back – all inside about a week – summer decided … Read more

The “magic number” everyone quotes is a survey result, not a plan.  By William F. Davis, CFP®, CDFA®  Northwestern Mutual runs the same survey every spring, and every spring it produces a headline. This year’s number is $1.46 million, which the firm says is what the average American believes they need to retire comfortably, up … Read more

By William F. Davis, CFP®  Every few years Washington hands out a new acronym and a new account type, and everyone scrambles to figure out if it’s worth the paperwork. Trump Accounts, which officially launched on July 4, are this cycle’s version. So let’s skip the noise and get to the arithmetic, because that’s really what this decision comes down to.  Here’s the … Read more

Why there’s no legal way to skip Required Minimum Distributions on a traditional IRA, and what you can actually do about the tax bill  If you have a sizeable traditional IRA, I can tell you the honest answer up front: there is no legal way to avoid Required Minimum Distributions entirely once you’re subject to them. The IRS designed RMDs specifically … Read more

There’s a strategy in the FIRE community called “Coast FIRE,” and I think it deserves a wider audience than the spreadsheet-and-subreddit crowd it usually lives in.  The idea is simple, even if the name sounds like a Silicon Valley protein bar. You reach Coast FIRE when the money you’ve already saved for retirement, left alone to compound with zero additional contributions, is … Read more

By William F. Davis, CFP®  The surprising psychology behind why retirees leave money on the table – and what to do about it.  I have this conversation more often than you might think.  A client comes in for their annual review. Their portfolio is doing well. Their Social Security and pension cover the basics. Their savings … Read more

A New Fed Chair’s First Real Test, an Expensive Market, and the Math Nobody Wants to Do on Social Security  Happy July. The fireworks this year aren’t just on the 4th – they’ve been going off in the bond market since Kevin Warsh took the podium.  Let’s get into it.  June by the Numbers  The S&P 500 closed out the … Read more

William F. Davis, CFP® What Divorce Attorneys and Their Clients Often Get Wrong About Asset Division  When a marriage ends, the financial conversation almost always starts with a number. You pull together statements from every account – brokerage, IRA, 401(k), pension, Roth – and someone draws a line down the middle. Half for you, half … Read more