Harbor Financial Group’s most recent newsletter is now available. Inside this quarter’s issue, we have articles on the 2012 economic outlook, favorite smartphone apps, 2012 IRA contribution limits, and more!
Please contact us with any topics you would like to see in future issues.
Best wishes for the New Year from all of us at Harbor Financial Group!
When you open a 401(k) or IRA account, you will be asked on the application to designate beneficiaries for that account. In the event of your death, the account beneficiary or beneficiaries will inherit the account despite anything that might be in your will to the contrary. It is important, therefore, to consider carefully who you designate and to review those designations on a regular basis.
For a 401(k), ERISA rules stipulate that a spousal waiver must be obtained if you want to designate anyone but your spouse as the beneficiary and courts are upholding the spouse’s right to the 401(k) funds even in the case of a recent marriage (less than one year) where the children of a previous marriage of the deceased account owner are the listed beneficiaries on the 401(k). If you would like to name anyone besides your spouse as the beneficiary for your 401(k) retirement assets you must obtain a spousal waiver if you are currently married. If you are not presently married, you might consider moving some or all of the funds to an IRA where the account owner has full discretion to name his or her beneficiaries as desired.
If you are like most of us, you are continually signing up for yet another online account. From email to on-line banking, shopping sites to social media, site after site demands a username and password. The simple solution is to have one password for everything. However, this is an incredibly large security risk. A single data breach could completely destroy your online privacy. But trying to remember numerous complex usernames and passwords just isn’t feasible. A password manager is a very good solution to this problem.
Password managers are services that allow you to securely save all your passwords using a master, ultra-strong password. While having a master password may seem like it defeats the purpose of having multiple passwords, consider this: if one of your accounts gets hacked and you have one password for everything, you will have to change your password for everything. However, if one of your accounts is compromised and you have a different password for all of your other sites, you just have to change that one password. It’s easy to change your master password frequently to keep it safe rather than changing all of your passwords on a regular basis.
Password security is crucial. Having a strong and secure password is more important than ever. It is advised to have a password that is 9 characters or more in length and include an uppercase letter, a number and a symbol.
There are many different password managers available, so take some time to research before signing up for one. This is going to hold all of your passwords to some very important information, so it’s good to make sure that you choose a reliable company and that will be around for some time to come.
We are currently looking into password manager software for our office. If you are interested in knowing what service we choose, let us know. We would be happy to share our recommendation.
Thanks again to those of you who were able to join us on our recent fly fishing trip! We had a great time on the scenic South Platte River near Deckers and everyone managed to get into some nice fish.
Nymphing was the order of the day with breezy conditions and an incoming cold front, but the novices in the group quickly caught on to the new technique and the more seasoned anglers worked on perfecting their presentation.
We all agreed that this was an event worth repeating, so stay tuned for next year!
To satisfy your appetite until next year as another season begins to draw to a close, here is a short clip (Orvis approved!) of the quest for greenback cutthroat trout, the Colorado state fish, in our local high country. Keep a sharp eye out, it features a few Harbor staffers in front of and behind the camera.
Our latest edition of The Harbor Advisor is now available for your reading enjoyment.
If you would like to join our email list to receive a copy each quarter, please sign up or contact us.
Please join us on Thursday, October 20th at 12:15 pm for our fourth and final quarterly conference call of 2011.
Elyse D. Foster, CFP® , Karen Didde, CFP® and Jordan Kunz, CFA will review third quarter portfolio performance and discuss our current market outlook. Q&A will follow the presentation.
Register at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/242053898
Elyse D. Foster of Harbor Financial Group, Inc. was recognized as a NABCAP Premier Advisor, published in the September 30, 2011 Denver Business Journal. The full article is available here.
This exclusive group of Colorado wealth management firms met an objective standard of excellence, focusing on a wide range of criteria including experience, planning and investment philosophy, credentials and customer service.
Harbor is an independent wealth management firm in Boulder, CO that has provided highly personalized financial planning and results-focused investment strategies since 1988.
Jordan Kunz recently passed the Level III exam of the Chartered Financial Analyst program and earned the right to use the Chartered Financial Analyst designation. Jordan is Harbor’s first CFA charterholder.
The Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charter is a globally respected, graduate-level investment credential established in 1962 and awarded by CFA Institute — the largest global association of investment professionals.
There are currently more than 90,000 CFA charterholders working in 134 countries. To earn the CFA charter, candidates must: 1) pass three sequential, six-hour examinations; 2) have at least four years of qualified professional investment experience; 3) join CFA Institute as members; and 4) commit to abide by, and annually reaffirm, their adherence to the CFA Institute Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct.
As a Wealth Manager, Jordan is responsible for managing client portfolios, economic and investment research, and financial planning analysis. He also handles many of our in-house technological initiatives.
Please join us in congratulating Jordan on this significant accomplishment!
Each year thousands of dollars are turned over to states for safekeeping because the owners of the property or funds cannot be located. Unclaimed property can include savings accounts, checking accounts, stocks, uncashed checks, insurance claim payments, safe deposit box contents and the like.
The national database www.missingmoney.com was created in 1999 and contains unclaimed property records to assist the participating states’ outreach efforts in locating the owners of the lost cash and property that they are holding. All but 11 of the 50 states are currently participating. Non-participating states generally also have their own individual searchable databases which may be found by a general search on ‘unclaimed property’ and the state name or by going to www.unclaimed.org, which has links to all of the state databases.
Searches are free of charge, as is filing a claim should you find evidence of missing funds. If your name appears in a search, the web site generally directs the searcher to the individual state’s unclaimed property database for more information and a claim form. Filing a claim involves filling in some paperwork with personal information and attaching copies of documents, generally your driver’s license and social security card. Once you file a claim, you should receive your property within a few weeks.