This Week: Indispensable Financial Planning Practices

The Most Popular Tax Preparation Services Used by AAII Members

With the personal federal income tax filing deadline less than a month away, we highlight the tax preparation services favored by AAII members—TurboTax, H&R Block and TaxAct—and the key features each provides.

Using Beneficiary-Directed Trusts to Protect Your Heirs

Beneficiary-directed trusts can protect a beneficiary from losing inherited trust assets to creditors, claimants and divorcing spouses. These trusts continue for the lifetime of the beneficiary and protect them from losing the inherited trust assets to creditors and claimants even after the beneficiary takes over control of the trust.

Dera Johnsen-Tracy

Knowledge of Social Security Spousal Benefits Is Low

Knowledge about spousal and survivor benefits is low among those who have yet to start receiving Social Security benefits, putting individuals at risk for making suboptimal claiming decisions.

Maintaining Your Personal Financial Files

Everyone needs to keep certain personal financial files more or less permanently. But which files should you keep, and why do you need to keep them? How long should you keep them and in what format? This post serves as a brief guide to organizing your personal paperwork.

Our Member Question for this week is:

Would you be willing to share more personal data—location data, lifestyle information, etc.—with financial institutions in exchange for lower pricing on products and services or other benefits?

Vote to answer this week’s Special Question:
What steps do you take to protect your personal data?

Last Week’s Results:

How much do you use technical analysis as part of your overall investment analysis strategy?

I do not use technical analysis at all: 45%

I look at charts and simple indicators such as moving averages: 36%

I use more complex indicators such as MACD, stochastics and relative strength index: 14%

I use technical trading systems to time when I buy and sell: 5%

Poll results are as of 9 a.m. (Central) on Monday. 1,566 respondents.
 

AAII Survey: Investors’ Views on Technical Analysis

Technical analysis is the study of historical price and volume data to try and identify future price trends. Our latest member survey asked whether or not readers use technical analysis. As a follow-up, last week’s special question asked why our members don’t use technical analysis.

Financial Planning Resources From AAII

The Financial Planning section of AAII.com focuses on the all-important element of personal finance. When most people think of financial planning, they automatically focus on retirement planning. While this is an important aspect of financial planning, it is not the only component. The Financial Planning area includes two useful guides: Lifetime Investment Strategy and AAII’s Tax Guide. These guides, as benefits of AAII membership, help you master the guidelines for long-term successful portfolio management as well as help you assess your current tax situation and plan for any changes. There is also a collection of must-read articles devoted to the topic of financial planning to assist you in achieving your financial goals.

The AAII Weekly Digest is one of the many benefits of AAII membership. To learn more, consider a 30-day Trial AAII Membership to start becoming an effective manager of your own assets.