Rounds Online

Ok, here’s the hot scoop from the National Academy of Sciences. The Ashkenazi Jewish community, which is known for its disproportionately large number of centenarians, appears to be blessed with longer telomeres and with a mutant enzyme that keeps their telomeres longer…for longer…much longer. Scientists seem to think that longer telomeres may be one of the reasons that these folks live so long.

I’ve always suspected that size really does matter but I never thought to put a tape measure to my Telomeres. Actually, I’d never heard of telomeres. It simply hadn’t come up in date night small talk. So, I went to my trusty computer and Googled telomeres and discovered that they are actually relatively short sections of DNA at the end of our chromosomes. A BBC science writer compared them to the plastic tips of a shoe lace that keep the laces from unraveling. Leave it to the Brits to come up with an imaginative analogy. (continue reading…)

by Brian Picariello, CPA/PFS, CFA, Traust Sollus Wealth Management, 609-779-6700, bpicariello@tswealth.com

A doctor’s chief occupation is helping to cure the sick. Answering this calling, however, does not preclude the desire or the need for a doctor to earn a good living whether she works on staff at a hospital or ultimately owns her own practice. In my financial planning work at my wealth management firm I quickly found that while most doctors, once established, do earn a good salary, as a whole they are usually too busy to sit down and plan for their financial futures. However, they do want to have greater control over their financial health.

Doctors who are new, who work at a hospital or are employed by a practice, also need to look ahead at the fast-approaching future. While planning their professional lives new doctors should not neglect their personal finances. Not having a sound personal financial plan can impact such important milestones as their ability to buy a home, to educate their children and to have a happy retirement. While establishing and following a personal financial plan early is the best prescription for good financial health, the good news is that during a working life it is never too late to begin.

As a doctor in your own practice, which means your own small business, you want to be in a position where the decisions you make about running and growing your business have a direct impact on the lifestyle you create for yourself and your loved ones.

As you have undoubtedly learned, being a small business owner isn’t easy. Most of us start out with great expertise in our professions or industries; we soon learn that we also need to become experts at managing a business’s finances. Without this added skill, your business will never generate maximum returns, and your personal wealth will be limited as a result. (continue reading…)

As young, graduating residents and fellows prepare to move from abject poverty to relative prosperity with a new employment contract and a respectable salary, their thoughts often turn to establishing a residence, getting married, starting a family and buying many of those deferred “things” that they could not afford as medical students. Before you get started down the road of the American Dream, stop and get some advice.

I cannot over stress the importance of sound legal advice for any professional embarking on a new career. Good advice is available from any number of quarters including the family attorney and other family members and friends who are older and wiser. But there are those whose job is dispensing financial advice. They are called, not surprisingly, Financial Advisors. And, of course, as in other professions, there are advisors and then there are advisors. (continue reading…)

I recently provided an example of how much a trillion dollars was. I was prompted to this nonsensical task by an article that listed not only our current national debt but the trillions of dollars in personal debt we are all carrying. Our national debt is growing at a rate of about 1.4 billion dollars a day and already amounts to $9.13 trillion. It occurred to me this morning, as I was enjoying my cup of coffee, that I don’t know what comes after a trillion. I mean I know it isn’t a gazillion.

So I gave a friend of mine who recently completed her masters in math a call. She is serving hamburgers at a Red Robin restaurant near here and I caught her between shifts. After I asked how her career was going and she inquired about my literary ambitions, she informed me that after a trillion comes a quadrillion. So I started to worry. Is it possible in my life time to see our country’s debt grow to a quadrillion dollars? It certainly didn’t take very long to go from the billions to the trillions after all. (continue reading…)

If you knew that you were ten times more likely to get Alzheimer’s than the average person but could do nothing about it…would you want to know? If you knew that your brother was at 100 times the average risk of dieing of a heart attack but there was nothing he could do to change those risks…would you tell him?

Well, the day is fast approaching when you will be to afford to have your genome mapped out and delivered into your hands in a nice neat report. Why would anyone not be interested in such a valuable database of information? There are actually a number of very valid reasons.

First of all, the report is going to basically be nothing but bad news. After all, there is no link to genetics that will predict wealth, happiness, talent or success. What it can do is list all of the genes that have the potential to make you sick. And in most cases, there is probably little that you can do to change the future with that knowledge. (continue reading…)

Guest Contributor: Mark Maurer, President, PhysicianInsure

When most people think of life insurance, they think of it as something they need in their personal lives. But the benefits of life insurance extend way beyond the family unit into protection for businesses and key employees.

Of course, life insurance is a valuable personal tool for income replacement to provide money for loved ones in case you die and cannot earn an income, for income creation to provide cash needed for final expenses at death, and for asset preservation to pay for estate taxes or to equalize the amount of an estate for multiple dependents.

However, as a physician, life insurance has many business-related practical uses and beneficial impacts for you. You must consider not only your personal financial needs, but also the needs of your practice. After all, you are both a physician and a businessperson. (continue reading…)

Well, the tentacles of government continue to wrap themselves around our day to day life…and death…in increasingly tight coils. Here is the latest “initiative.” It would seem that New York assemblyman, Richard Brodsky, D – Westchester, has decided that organ donations are not meeting demand and the government needs to step in and right this wrong.

His 18 year old daughter received two kidney transplants and owes her life to the donors. I am happy for his family. As an Illinois resident, I have noted on my driver’s license that I wish to be an organ donor in the event of my untimely death. I have also made my wishes known to my family. But I also recognize that not everyone takes these simple steps and the wait for an organ can run to years.

But the legislation that Assemblyman Brodsky is proposing gives me pause. He wants New York to become the first state in the nation to enact a “presumed consent” law. Under this controversial concept, a hospital would require no prior authorization to harvest organs from a deceased patient. Family members would no longer be able to override their loved ones affirmative prior consent to organ donation. But more importantly, a hospital would presume the deceased’s consent to donate their organs unless they have left specific written instructions to the contrary. You die…they harvest…no appeal…no delay. (continue reading…)

Insurance companies are businesses. They are for the most part corporations. Corporations are owned by stock holders. Stockholders hold stock because they expect that the company will be run intelligently and make money, thus providing a return on their investment. If there is no profit, there will be no stockholders and the company will cease to exist.

Most companies are allowed to ply their trade without much fan fair or government interference. Unless of course one considers the enormous taxes most have to pay to a wide array of government entities. But the more successful a business becomes, the larger it grows. Until you have massive corporations like General Motors, General Electric, Boeing and Citi Group.

The nation’s insurance companies have become very large, very powerful and very profitable. If you set aside for the moment the issue of profit in a capitalist society, one is left with the question of how these companies became so large and how they run their businesses and remain profitable.

Many people in this country do not understand that the insurance companies do not make their profits from the premiums that their customers pay to them. The national average of payout to premium for health insurance is 99% or premiums collected. Insurance companies make their money by investing cash reserves. So, how do insurance companies make sure that they do not actually pay out more in claims than they receive in premiums? (continue reading…)

By Stacy Francis, Francis Financial, Inc., www.FrancisFinancial.com

While donating money to worthy causes is something we think is great; gifting to charities can be greater still when you donate appreciated stock instead of cash. The tax advantages can be worth it. That’s because as long as you have held the shares for twelve months, you can take a deduction worth their current market value. Let’s explain how this works.

Writing a Check to Your Favorite Charity

Consider this, you bought 1,000 shares of stock ten years ago with a cost basis of just about nil. If you sell the stock for $200,000 and give the proceeds to charity after paying the capital-gains taxes (15%), the charity gets only about $170,000, and you get a $170,000 tax deduction. Not bad, but we can do even better.

Gifting the Stock Outright to Your Favorite Charity

If you give the stock to the charity, which is tax-exempt, it can sell the shares and keep the whole $200,000. And you get a $200,000 deduction. This is what we call a win-win situation.

Typically, selling an appreciated stock triggers a tax on the realized gain, the difference between what you paid to purchase the stock and its current value. When you make a gift of appreciated stock directly to your favorite charity and the charity sells the stock, the taxable event and the fees are avoided because the charity is tax-exempt. Plus, you can take a sizeable charitable deduction on your taxes.

How It’s Done

To donate stock, you just have to transfer ownership of the shares. That may be easier said than done, but don’t become discouraged. We at Francis Financial, Inc., can do this for you, making everything as effortless as possible.

You might also consider using a Charitable Trust. These gift trusts allow you to transfer the stock to the trust and take the appropriate deduction for the appreciated value of the shares. The trust then writes a check to the charity for the donation amount that you would like to make.

Using a gift trust is especially helpful when you are donating a significant amount of stock or if you have a number of charities to which you want to make a charitable contribution.

Gifts of Stock Are Popular for Donors of All Ages
• The young donor saves through both the charitable deduction and the hard cash he or she is freeing up.
• The middle-aged donor can create a charitable remainder trust (CRT) with donated stock and with the income received from such a CRT is able to fund his or her child’s or grandchild’s education.

Which Stocks to Give?

If you’re planning to donate stock, choose carefully which shares you give. First, make sure that you have held the shares for at least one year. Next, review how much the shares increased in value. If the stock actually dropped below the price at which it was initially purchased, it is better to sell the stock. Once you sell the shares you can take a capital loss on your tax return and donate the proceeds directly to your favorite charity.

We believe that charitable giving is just another part of a rich life. Give to your favorite charity, feel good about yourself, and save tax dollars at the same time.

Stacy Francis, Francis Financial, Inc.
111 John Street, Suite 240, New York, NY 10038
Phone: 212-374-9008 Fax: 646-219-6799
Stacy@FrancisFinancial.com

Do you remember those B grade sci-fi movies where aliens visit the earth and take on the appearance of normal human beings? At some point in the flick, an unsuspecting citizen surprises the alien while they are removing their human skin and get a glimpse of the monster beneath.

Well, I don’t want to get carried away here, but I believe I just got a glimpse of the creature beneath the skin of our president. And the view was not pleasant. I stumbled across vidio from a recent visit by President Barack Obama to the Illinois community of Quincy to give a speech promoting his financial reform legislation. Nothing new or unusual here. He seems always to be on the stump.

And his message was the usual pabulum praising the passage of health care reform and financial reform legislation. “I just want people to be able to not go bankrupt and lose their house when they get sick,” the President stated reasonably. “We need good old, common sense, Wall Street reform.”

Now, his idea of good old common sense and mine differ a bit. But I’ll agree that common sense is a pretty good starting point. It was at this point that the President made an unscripted comment and to at least some of us, we got a glimpse of his true political philosophy. “We’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned.” (continue reading…)