Avoiding Tax Return Identity Theft

Avoiding Tax Return Identity Theft

Now that tax-time is just around the corner, the IRS offers several warning signs that you may be a victim of tax-related identity theft and what to do about them: Your attempt to file your tax return electronically is rejected. You get a message saying a return with a duplicate Social Security number has been…
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Time To Worry About Underfunded Pensions?

I recently attended a seminar about public pension reform led by Chuck Reed, formerly mayor of San Jose and currently board member of the Retirement Security Initiative. As you probably recall, Reed led the effort to pass a pension reform measure for San Jose in 2012.  Here are some of the implications of the underfunded…
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Cost of Long Term Care in the Bay Area

Genworth, one of the larger long term care insurers, recently released their 2016 cost of healthcare data. It is based on surveys or interviews with over 3800 licensed home healthcare providers, 1400 adult day health facilities, 6200 assisted living facilities, and 3600 nursing homes across the U.S.  What’s especially useful is the breakdown of costs…
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Leading Causes of Death

I know this is a rather grim topic. But the fact is there are numerous risks we all face living in our society, and many people are reluctant to think about, let alone take action on, what’s needed to protect oneself. Here are the top ten causes of death in the U.S. in 2013, as…
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Three Reasons for Retiree Life Insurance

As is probably well-understood, one of the most valuable benefits of life insurance is income replacement should the breadwinner(s) in a family unexpectedly pass away. For this reason alone, just about everyone supporting a family should have some amount and some type of life insurance during their working years.  It’s less clear, however, whether or…
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How to Avoid the Next Financial Emergency

At a speech in Washington a few weeks ago Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen declared that a large number of American families are “extraordinarily vulnerable” to financial setbacks because they have few assets to fall back on.  To them, a financial crisis is a month or two without a paycheck.  By contrast, she went on…
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