Rick Brooks
Rick Brooks's Latest Posts
Retiring in San Diego – What about Taxes?
Retirement for most people is a significant milestone. Some can’t bring themselves to stop working, but for others it represents a significant change in both income and lifestyle. Living in a high-cost area like San Diego can bring unique challenges, particularly regarding taxes. It’s essential for retirees — or those on the cusp of retirement […]
Six Common Mistakes Trustees Make
Planning for the distribution of your estate is complex. There are so many variables to consider, like family dynamics, changing values and ever-changing tax rules. It can be easy to simply ignore the planning, but that just leaves your heirs to clean up a huge mess and often causes strife trying to figure out what […]
How Presidential Policy Choices will Affect Inflation
The average inflation (annual change in prices) has been about three percent since the end of World War II. There have been occasional spikes, but we got used to very low inflation since the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, averaging about 1.5 percent from 2008 to 2020. COVID changed that. With the economy shutting down […]
Your Car is Watching You
By Rick Brooks Have you read the terms and conditions of the applications installed on your car? Or your phone, for that matter, but let’s focus on your car for now. A couple of weeks ago, Kashmir Hill at the “New York Times” reported that users of General Motors OnStar services (including myBuick, myGMC, myChevrolet […]
SEO Scams Can Lead You Astray
As if there wasn’t enough to worry about online, another scam has become increasingly common and a growing concern for financial institutions. SEO scams hijack your search results and take you to websites that look like familiar (especially financial institutions) sites but aren’t. For example, Charles Schwab recently notified advisors who work with them that […]
So You’re Thinking About an ADU
With San Diego’s aggressive promotion of Auxiliary Dwelling Units (ADUs), the topic of owning rental properties has come up a lot recently. Besides the need for additional housing here (and just about every other major metropolitan area in the country), there are some key advantages to owning rental properties, namely: That said, owning and renting […]
How to Get Money Out of Your 401(K) Plan
If you are like most working Americans today, you probably have been contributing to a company retirement plan (like a 401(k), 403(b) or SEP IRA, or other plan) for a few years. One question that comes up regularly is: “How (and when) can I get my money out of my retirement plan?” Most often, that […]
Update on California Homeowners Insurance
According to CalFire, roughly 1.6 million acres have burned over the past five years in California. As a result of mounting losses from the increasing wildfire risk, many property insurers have either stopped renewing policies or are limiting their new policies to lower risk areas. Even homeowners in areas rated moderate fire risk have found […]
Using A Donor Advised Fund for Your Charitable Gifting
A change in the tax code in 2017 made Donor Advised Funds a lot more attractive to the merely affluent Americans, not just the wealthiest. A Donor Advised Fund basically functions like a charitable foundation for the not yet uber-rich. The reason this vehicle became more attractive is that the limits imposed on itemized deductions […]
