Are You Confused About Investment Costs? Part 2: Custodian/Brokerage Costs

In our last piece, we covered fund management costs. Next, let’s take a step back from the mutual funds, ETFs, or other holdings you decide to invest in. Where do these holdings live—and what does it cost to buy,...

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Are You Confused About Investment Costs? Part 1: Fund Management Fees

What are your investments really costing you? If you’re not sure, you’re not alone. It’s not like you’re handed a menu of charges to choose from when it’s time to place your order. Even when you know where to...

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Tax Planning: Tax-Wise Financial Planning

In our last two pieces, we covered some tools of the tax-planning trade, as well as how to deploy them for tax-efficient investing. But tax planning isn’t just for your investments. Life happens. Often, we cannot predict its next moves....

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Tax Planning: Tax-Wise Investing

In our last piece, we introduced some of the tools of the tax-planning trade. These include tax-sheltered accounts for saving toward retirement, healthcare, and education, as well as tax-efficient tools for charitable giving, emergency spending, and estate planning. It’s one...

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Tax Planning: Common Tax Saving Tools

Whether you’re saving, investing, spending, bequeathing, or receiving wealth, there’s scarcely a move you can make without considering how taxes might influence the outcome. No wonder people get nervous when there’s lots of talk about higher taxes, but little...

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What Is Asset Location?

You’re probably already familiar with the three most important factors in real estate: location, location, and location. Asset location is a similarly important, if less familiar best practice for keeping as much of your wealth as possible – after...

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Understanding Inflation and how Deal with it

What Is Inflation? Inflation is the rate at which a currency loses its purchasing power as prices increase over time. So, say a cup of coffee cost $1.00 twenty years ago. If the average annual inflation rate had been 2%...

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Dimensional at 40: Timeless Lessons from My Decades in Finance

By David Booth, Executive Chairman and Founder Early in my career, I was lucky enough to work on one of the first index funds. It was an incredibly exciting time, because before that the only equity option for investors was to...

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The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021: Understanding The 2021 Recovery Rebate Stimulus Payments

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 is now a done deal. Among the items of greatest interest to most Americans is a third round of stimulus checks—or IRS “recovery rebates”—of up to $1,400 for every “eligible individual.” That’s the quick take. But what’s...

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Understanding Cryptocurrency

It’s hard to scan the financial headlines these days and not spot at least one call to action related to Bitcoin’s latest moves. Has all the attention given you cryptocurrency fever, or are you at least wondering what it’s...

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