Sterling Financial Group

A Connection Between Chocolate and Taxes
Two economists and a cognitive psychologist at the University of Oregon recently conducted a study that found some people really...

A Primer on Corporate Structures
Determining the appropriate corporate structure for your small business can be daunting. But separating the business from your personal...

Alternatives to Long-Term Care Insurance
Long-term care is not an easy subject to discuss. Nobody wants to admit they're getting older, or that catastrophe could happen to them. While long-term care insuranceâ€¦

Are You Ready For 401(k) Day
September 6 is 401(k) Day (see www.401kday.org for more information). It's a holiday that most of us haven't heard of. Even if your employer isn't planning any festivitiesâ€¦

Avoid the Law of Averages
Just who is your average investor? We all heard about this person each time we turn on the television, tune into the radio, or read a publication and discover someoneâ€¦

Avoid the Pitfalls of Self-Directed Investing
Whether you've already made some trades or are thinking of joining the ranks of online investors, you may wish to consider the followingâ€¦

Be Aware of IRS Identity Theft Scam
During the current tax season, the Internal Revenue Service has issued a warning about increased identity theftâ€¦

Being Proactive in Challenging Financial Times
Whether you are starting to build a nest egg, or are close to retirement, your investments have likely been impacted by negative market performance. As a resultâ€¦

Bettering Your Credit Score
Employers, lenders, and insurers all use your credit report to evaluate your level of responsibility before they decide whether to hire you or take you on as a newâ€¦

Beware of Online Phishing Scams
You've probably been targeted by a phishing scam and never knew it. Look for these “red flags” before you submit any personal dataâ€¦

Can Your Child Afford Not to Go to College?
We all know a good education is the foundation of future financial security. But convincing a child to go to college can sometimes be a tough taskâ€¦

Cash Flow Concerns? Consider Factoring
You may have head the old business owner's lament. “You can do a beautiful job on time, but it doesn't always mean you're going to get paid on time.” If you areâ€¦

Choosing an Appraiser
You may consider your family heirlooms “priceless”, but just how much are they really worth? Appraisals are more than just a resource to help you sell your assetsâ€¦

College Spending
There are some simple and effective ways that you can help prepare your college-bound children for the financial worldâ€¦

Cracking Down on Financial Stress
Of all stressors people are exposed to, financial stress may very well be the most insidious. Dealing with finances can be overwhelming because of all the otherâ€¦

Deciphering a Bear Market
The threat of recession in the U.S. and abroad continues to be a topic in the news. What's important to remember is that media pundits and even economists are not clairvoyantsâ€¦

Diversification Explained
You could probably break a wooden pencil in two without much strain. However, it would take a lot of effort to break a bunch of pencils. Now, imagine that loneâ€¦

Do You Know Your Cost Basis Information?
Cost basis is simply a fancy term used to describe what you originally paid for a specific security, including commissions and other expenses. It is used to determineâ€¦

Do You Really Need That Morning Coffee?
According to the Washington Post, the coffee drinkers among us would save $55,341 (and that includes interest) over 30 years if they cut out their daily $3 latte habitâ€¦

Does Your Credit Card Carry Hidden Danger?
It seems that credit card issuers get you coming and going. They charge youâ€¦

Does Your Health Coverage Need a Checkup?
While few people would advise going without health benefits, the number of people able to afford the costs of medical coverage is steadily decreasing. Spiraling costs haveâ€¦

Does Your Money Buy You Happiness?
Part of any financial advisor's job is to get clients to talk about their life goals and about their values and feelings about money. It helps clients pinpoint their financialâ€¦

Don't Forget Your Financial Fundamentals
Despite what the market may be doing, it's always a good time for you to get back to basics and focus your mental energies on something you can actually controlâ€¦

Earmark Your Personal Effects
There is no such thing as “distributed equally among my heirs” when it comes to bequeathing your personal items in your will. If you assume your children willâ€¦

Financial Considerations for Remarriage
Whether this is the first marriage for one of you, or both of you are veteran marrieds, it's likely that each of you is entering your new partnership with assets much greaterâ€¦

Financial Considerations of Hybrid Cars
With gas prices reaching record highs, you might consider buying a fuel-efficient hybrid automobile. It will certainly save you money at the pump and help improve theâ€¦

Financial Fact vs. Fiction
We understand that it can be tricky navigating through the world of financial services. Everyone seems to have an opinion, and it can become difficult knowing whatâ€¦

Financial Planning and Your Divorce
Divorce is not one of the happy milestones in life, but, unfortunately, it does happen. If you are dealing with the end of a marriage, consider these issues to protect yourselfâ€¦

Financial Records
Financial records really fall into two categories - tax-related and non-tax related. If you paperwork was tax-related - used in calculating your tax return - you need toâ€¦

Financially Savvy Travel
Freedom to travel is one of the well-earned rewards of smart financial planning. But as someone who's reaped the benefits of thoughtful guidance and thorough preparationâ€¦

Flexing Your Flexible Spending Power
Investing in a flexible spending account (FSA), a cafeteria plan, or a 125 plan at work reduces your pretax income and stretches your health care dollarsâ€¦

Fulfill Your Fiduciary Duties
If you are a key manager or human relations executive, you are already wearing many hats. One of them might be acting as the fiduciary of your company retirementâ€¦

Giving Circles
A giving circle is a form of philanthropy headed by a group of people who want to take an active role in how their money supports a particular cause or issueâ€¦

Handling Loan Repayment as Child Graduates
You've watched your children grow and mature over the past two decades and looked on with pride as they accepted their college diplomasâ€¦

Health Plans for Small Business Owners
If you're a small business owner, you're in a tough bind. You have a responsibility to yourself and your family. Yet you're understandably fearful about committingâ€¦

How to Buy a Second Home
Whether you've achieved a certain level of affluence, or you're looking to take advantage of what the experts say is a softening real-estate market, there are many things toâ€¦

How to Donate Money Effectively
Whether it's during the holidays or whether a disaster befalls us, Americans are always willing to donate to those less fortunate. It's the easiest thing in the world for us toâ€¦

How's Your Pension Doing
There are over 30,000 employer pension plans in the United States, according to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Pensions used to be considered aâ€¦

Insuring a Healthy Retirement
Imagine that you've set aside a handsome nest egg for retirement. Now imagine it gone, the result of chronic illness or disability that requires round-the-clock careâ€¦

International Home Ownership
Buying a house in another country comes with its own set of rules. If you don't acquaint yourself with the international real estate market, you may find yourself gettingâ€¦

Investing in a Green Future
If you're still managing finances the old-fashioned way, you could be missing an important opportunity to invest in the future of the planetâ€¦

Is a Biweekly Mortgage Right For You?
First, let's define biweekly: that's every two weeks. In essence, with a biweekly mortgage, you are splitting your monthly payment in half and paying it twiceâ€¦

Is It Time to Downsize?
With all the talk about plateaus or bubbles in the real estate market, many homeowners are getting nervous. It's understandable. According to Money magazine, â€¦

Is There a Housing Bubble?
A “housing bubble” implies that rapid speculative buying has driven home prices far beyond their actual worth. Because of this, the housing market is due for aâ€¦

Is Your Credit Score as High as You Think?
It is common to assume that paying bills on time automatically means that you'll have a high credit score. Unfortunately, that's not always the caseâ€¦

Making Sense of Dollars and Cents
With the recent economic downturn, many individuals are paying greater attention to their bottom line. Maybe you've experienced a life change and you'veâ€¦

Making the Nursing Home Decision
Relocating a loved one to a nursing home or elder care facility can be a difficult and nerve-racking process. Keep those ideas in mind if you are looking for a facilityâ€¦

Mixing Money and a New Marriage
Today's newlyweds face many financial obstacles and challenges. Dealing with the stress these challenges cause can be difficult. Here are ways to make the conversationsâ€¦

New Passport Requirements
If your travel will soon take you to our neighbors in Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean, you're going to need more than just your state-issued driver's license to enterâ€¦

New Year's Anti-Resolutions
As this year comes to a close, you may want to know what you can to do take more responsibility for your money in the coming year. A good first step is to stayâ€¦

Organizing Your Important Documents
You've likely heard a lot about how getting organized will free up your time, make you more productive at work, eliminate stress, and even whiten your smileâ€¦

Plan For Your Business
As an owner or executive of a successful small business, you are constantly engaged in the day-to-day tasks necessary to drive revenue. As your business grows, so doâ€¦

Pre-Planning Your Retirement
Like many Americans, you may have to put money into a 401(k), Roth IRA, or some other investment vehicle with the hope of one day enjoying your retirementâ€¦

Protect Yourself Against Identity Theft
While there's no guaranteed way to prevent yourself from becoming a victim of identity theft, there are precautions you can take to make it more difficult for someoneâ€¦

Questions to Ask When You Are Purchasing Long-Term Care Insurance
What kinds of care does the policy cover? Ideally, it should let you receive home health care, as well as skilled, intermediate, and custodial nursing home careâ€¦

Quick Ways to Reduce Homeowner's Insurance
You can save hundreds of dollars from homeowner's premium by doing any ofâ€¦

Raising Financially Savvy Kids
Life's a lesson: Kids learn reading and arithmetic in the classroom. They learn sport, and a sense of fairness, on the playground. But surveys show that kids learn everythingâ€¦

Reduce the Likelihood of an IRS Audit
While there is no guaranteed method for avoiding an IRS audit, there are many simple and effective strategies that can significantly reduce the risk of an auditorâ€¦

Retirement Lifestyle Campaign
Your retirement can last 20, 30, or more years. It's no longer a destination or an end result. It's just another milestone in your life's journey - one that unlocksâ€¦

Saving For College? 529 Plans Can Help
According to the College Board, four years of tuition, room, and board runs about $90,000 for a private college and $34,000 for a public institution. Eighteenâ€¦

Saving Money on Your Utility Bills
Don't let your money go out the leaky window, non-weather-stripped door, or drafty floorboards! Consider these energy-efficient tipsâ€¦

Securing Your Data
Most dictionaries define security as freedom from danger, risk; freedom from care, anxiety, or doubt; something that secures or makes safe; and, not least, an assuranceâ€¦

Should I Wait to Start Social Security Benefits?
The decision to begin or delay collecting social security benefits rests on several factorsâ€¦

Should You Donate Your Old Car?
Every year, several hundred thousand Americans donate the fair market value of their old cars (and even boats and planes) to charitable organizations for the tax deductionâ€¦

Should You Invest in Art?
The fine art market is a $10 billion-a-year industry in the U.S. alone. Over the past 50 years, art has returned a compounded annualized rate of 10.47 percent, accordingâ€¦

Should You Listen to Corporate Insiders?
There are few people more knowledgeable about a particular company's stock than its “corporate insiders”. These are usually key officers such as chairmen, â€¦

Should You Tap Your Retirement Savings?
When you're faced with a serious emergency, major expense, or funding a business venture, your nest egg can look tempting to crackâ€¦

Small Business Plans
Small businesses are often at a disadvantage when trying to lure key talent to hire them. Oftentimes, they can't compete with splashy benefits and perks that come withâ€¦

Small Business Retirement Plans
Many small business owners immediately diminish their chances by failing to offer even the most basic of employee benefits - a retirement planâ€¦

Socially-Responsible Investing
Your investments ideally should not only help you pursue your financial goals, but they should also match your values. For instance, consider the followingâ€¦

Spring Cleaning May Bring Tax Savings
Spring cleaning may help you find that some of your one-time treasures have turned into trash - which could mean treasure not only for those who are less fortunateâ€¦

Systematic Investing and Dollar Cost Averaging
Thanks to the ease of electronic banking and fund transfers, you can build your retirement savings without even thinking about it. Each month - or each paycheckâ€¦

Talk to Your Children About Your Estate
Even in the most supportive and loving families, this discussion can be hard. Be honest with your children about what they can expect. Be clear about the reasonsâ€¦

The New Place to Spend Retirement
Despite the image that marketers portray of contented retirees lounging on the beach, there are more older workers in the labor force than ever beforeâ€¦

The Ponzi Scheme: An Old Con That's Making News
In light of the media storm generated by the Bernard Madoff scandal, we've been hearing a lot about Ponzi schemes. But aside from knowing that these events aren't goodâ€¦

The Woman Philanthropist
When it comes to charitable giving, women often support causes they are truly inspired by. Because women, on average, are acquiring greater levels of personal wealthâ€¦

Underutilized Retirement Account Options
Many Americans are worried that they won't save enough money to support their retirement goals. If you participate in an employer-sponsored planâ€¦

Updating Your Beneficiary Information
Whether you decide to leave your estate with family, friends, a charitable organization, or even the beloved furry friend that greets you at the door every eveningâ€¦

What Are Wash Sales?
To keep investors from taking advantage of the benefits of tax selling, the Internal Revenue Service created the wash sale ruleâ€¦

What is Tax Selling?
Tax selling is selling the underperforming stocks or options in your portfolio at a loss to offset any capital gains - or profits on the portfolio - you have madeâ€¦

What to Do in an Economic Slowdown
A recession is defined a two consecutive quarters in which gross domestic product (GDP) growth is negative. During the first part of 2008, U.S. economic growthâ€¦

What to Know About Roth 401(k)
A traditional 401(k) plan lowers your taxable income as you save for retirement. Only once you start receiving distributions from the account, usually at retirementâ€¦

What Women Need to Know About Investing
Women need to take special care when it comes to their finances. A couple of common facts about women and their financial health may influence your futureâ€¦

What is Stock Market Volatility?
When the stock market goes up one day, and then goes down for the next five, then up again, and then down again, that's what you call stock market volatilityâ€¦

Will Your Business Survive the Intergenerational Pass?
“I gave everything I could to make my business a success. And ever since my kids joined me in the effort, I have felt a huge sense of satisfaction in building my dreamâ€¦

Your Parents and Their Finances
Talking to your parents about the state of their finances as they get older may not be easy. They may be reluctant to talk about them. Assure them you only want to supportâ€¦

You've Been Downsized. Now What?
As unemployment figures have risen during the recent downturn, have you found yourself wondering, “What would I do if I lost my job?”â€¦