There are a lot of headlines out there questioning the safety and liquidity of our banking system after the recent failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

Executive compensation is the combination of salary, benefits and bonuses offered to executives and other top management in exchange for their efforts on behalf of an employer.

In 2022, there were nearly 7.8 million reports of suspicious activities related to taxpayer returns according to the Identity Theft Tax Refund Fraud Information Sharing Mission & Analysis Center, a partnership between the IRS, companies and states. Most of these suspicious activities related to online tax fraud.

Is “rothification” even a word? Probably not, but to me it seems a fitting term to describe several of the changes in store for retirement plans as a result of new legislation signed by Congress at the end of 2022.

Retirement is an ongoing process of emotional adjustments.

With the capital markets closed in observance of Presidents’ Day, we created a day for our teammates to give back to the communities in which we live, work, and play. We call this day our Day of Caring.

Our national debt has garnered a lot of attention this year, both for its absolute size and for the possibility that our elected friends in Washington might fail to raise its ceiling.

Most estate plans skip the idea of using incentive distribution provisions to induce behavioral changes in the estate beneficiaries. A common estate distribution regime uses milestone ages, e.g., 25% at age 25, 50% at age 30, and the balance to be distributed at age 35.

Behavioral biases are beliefs or behaviors that can unconsciously influence our financial decision-making. One example is loss aversion, where the pain of losing (money) is more powerful than the pleasure of gaining.

On December 29, 2022, President Biden signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023. The legislation contains significant retirement provisions in what is called the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 (“the Act”).

Cross-testing is a calculation method used for allocating employer discretionary profit-sharing contributions. This is often used alongside 401(k) and safe harbor contributions to maximize annual contribution limits (usually targeted to owners or highly compensated employees) at the lowest overall cost to the company.

Please join me in welcoming our newest teammate back home to Birmingham, Michigan. Bill Feldmaier has recently joined Greenleaf Trust as our new Managing Director of our southeast Michigan market and will be located in our Birmingham office.

We’re off to a good start in 2023. If you believe the notion that ‘as goes January, so goes the year,’ the so-called January Barometer suggests we may be in for a positive year in the stock market.

US equities have historically generated outstanding returns for long-term investors. Notwithstanding numerous recessions, market panics, wars, and a global pandemic, the S&P 500 has increased in value from 17 in 1927 to nearly 4,000 in 2022, equating to an annualized total return of nearly 10%.

The term hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, was created in the early 1970’s when behavioral economics came onto the scene combining psychology and economic behavior.

Individual retirement accounts (IRAs) comprised over an estimated $13.9 trillion of assets as of 2021 per the Investment Company Institute. IRA balances have risen significantly over time as companies moved away from pension plans and baby boomers gathered assets for retirement.

The year end has passed and business leaders and office personnel have been working diligently on closing the books for the year end 2022. This process can be time consuming and stressful.

One of the things that makes us unique is our talented team. They are deeply committed to the work they do for our clients and deserve meaningful recognition for their achievements. At the end of the year, we announced the following 29 promotions. These were teammates from throughout the organization that successfully executed customized purposeful growth plans with their coaches. Promotions are always based on merit and impact at Greenleaf Trust, not time in role. Needless to say, I am extremely proud to recognize these teammates and share their new titles with you.

The year 2022 ushered in significant events in the industry in many areas. Some were more impactful than others, but a few are worthy of review.

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In order to serve from generation to generation, it’s important that we continue to grow purposefully in size. There are risks to growing too quickly, and risks to growing too slowly. Purposeful Growth involves growing deeper and broader in our capabilities at a designed pace in order to serve existing and prospective clients better.

Capital gain taxes, as the name implies, are taxes collected on the gains realized from the sale of an investment. In a year of volatile and downward-trending markets, some may assume that no capital gains could have been realized over the course of the year and thus there will be little to no capital gain distributions. This assumption, while understandable, is incorrect.

In their ongoing pursuit of your money and identity, criminals are constantly coming up with new cons. When shopping online during the holiday season – or any other time of the year — there are plenty of opportunities for bad actors to take advantage of busy and distracted online shoppers. Here are a couple of […]

At many times and for many estates, we regret that we were never afforded the opportunity to connect during the person’s lifetime and never learned in their own words what they planned for their legacy.
But what does it mean to plan for your legacy?

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recently announced the increase to the maximum retirement plan benefit and contribution limits for 2023. Employee contributions to 401(k), 403(b), most 457 plans and the federal government’s Thrift Savings Plan will rise to $22,500 – a $2,000 increase from the $20,500 cap for 2022. Plan participants age 50 and older in 2023 can contribute an additional $7,500 for a maximum of $30,000, up $1,000 from this year.

Following extremely robust market returns in 2021, and new all-time highs the first week of this year, 2022 has proven to be a challenging year for investors to date. While up from its mid-October lows, the S&P 500 index registered an intra-year drawdown of approximately 25%, while the aggregate bond market didn’t fare much better […]

Receiving an award can be quite gratifying especially if it validates your hard work on something you are passionate about. We are passionate about and work hard on our culture. The culture at Greenleaf Trust is an expression of our core values and a big part of what differentiates us in the marketplace. Beginning in […]

Russia and Ukraine are significant producers of crude oil and natural gas commodities essential to the energy industry. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused significant disruptions in these energy sources, particularly for Europe. With winter around the corner, now is an appropriate time to provide a primer on the situation. This article will focus […]

Often an individual will say that they are too old to engage in a Roth IRA conversion. Their fear is that the tax-free benefits of owning a Roth IRA with a shortened life expectancy will be outweighed by the up-front income tax cost that comes with the Roth conversion. The reality is that an individual […]

Although the majority of private sector qualified retirement plans are now defined contribution (DC) type plans (i.e. 401(k), 403(b), profit sharing etc.), there are still some legacy defined benefit (DB) pension plans being maintained by employers. It has long been known that these pension plans can become a runaway train of costs and corporate liabilities […]

Over the past decade, we have become accustomed to a low interest rate environment which has favored certain estate planning techniques and wealth transfer strategies. A number of these strategies use interest rates which are published monthly by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS); the Applicable Federal Rate (AFR) reflects the minimum interest rate that the […]

When Congress enacted the SECURE Act in 2019, one of the noteworthy changes related to the period over which beneficiaries were required to take IRA distributions. Before the SECURE Act, beneficiaries of inherited IRAs could “stretch” the required minimum distributions (RMDs) over their entire life expectancies. The stretch period could be decades for younger beneficiaries, […]

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When the financial crisis and resulting severe recession took place in 2008, we offered that the recovery would be long in duration and reflected in incremental progress along the way. The essential reason for that observation was the knowledge that the recession of 2008 was not a typical business cycle recession, but rather one that […]

With market volatility persisting throughout the year, investors have become more interested in alternative investments. Some of these investments, such as hedge funds, private equity, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and others incur large income distributions. For those in the top tax bracket that can mean income taxes near 45%, whether or not that income […]

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It’s almost Halloween, and there are spooky things everywhere you look. Though this time of year is often intentionally scary, don’t let fear control you, especially when it comes to your finances. Sometimes fear of what’s waiting around the corner, or the big scary unknown, can stop us dead in our tracks and keep us […]

The Department of Labor’s Electronic Disclosure Rule has simplified the delivery of retirement plan information to participants. This rule allows retirement plan administrators to satisfy their information disclosure requirements under ERISA (The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974) by making required notices and disclosures available to employees electronically under a “notice-and-access” method. The new […]

Participating in an Ironman race requires months, if not years, of rigorous training, discipline and mental dexterity. Preparation is not limited to purely triathlon training, but crosses over into the efficiency of navigating the transition zones (from swimming to biking, and from biking to running). Successful triathlon participants train their bodies to perform these transition […]

Current economic data and news seems mostly positive, and yet there are those who are uneasy about the near-term future and seem increasingly convinced that a recession is not far off. Why is there seemingly a disconnect between the current condition and what lies ahead of us? In this month’s article, we will try to […]

This article continues our annual summer tradition of evaluating the health of the Michigan economy. In this article, we will cover (1) the labor market, (2) the auto industry, and (3) home prices. Last year, we wrote about the robust recovery underway in the labor market, projected stability in the auto industry, and accelerating home […]

I think we can all agree that the crisis we find ourselves in does not come with a step-by-step instruction book of solutions. The way out is complicated, includes self-sacrifice, social order of the highest degree, individual and societal self-discipline and the abandonment of political self-interests. You may observe this list of requirements and say, […]