David Justin Urbas - Tax Benefits of Real Estate Investment Properties(IRS Rules Explained)

Renting versus buying can be a difficult choice. Still, according to The Wall Street Journal, almost two-thirds of American households own homes. Many more own rental properties or second vacation homes. By contrast, a Gallup Poll found that only one-half of Americans own stocks.

Home equity is the foundation of personal wealth in the United States, representing about two-thirds of net worth for most American households, per Bloomberg. The expansion of home ownership has been stimulated by government programs and tax advantages to incentivize the purchase of houses. According to a study in Social Forces, home ownership leads to “a stronger economy, better schools, and an invested, proactive citizenry.” Homeowners have higher voting rates and are more involved in civic organizations.

Owning real estate has some unique financial advantages. For example, homeowners can deduct their mortgage interest, mortgage insurance premiums, and property taxes from ordinary income. Also, proceeds from the sale of a house are treated as capital gains for taxes – up to $250,000 of the gain can be excluded from income for a single taxpayer or $500,000 for a couple filing a joint return.

More at: http://www.moneycrashers.com/tax-benefits-real-estate-investment-properties/

Understanding Wealth Management: How to Make it Work

Whether you’re saving for the future, want to buy something big like a new house or just want to live a more luxurious life, managing your money is a must. This is where wealth management comes into its own, but how does it work?

Wealth management applies to many different areas of finance. It can concern any investments you have in stocks and shares, your savings, your properties and even your basic current account. Tax, legal planning and even your will are covered by this catch-all term as well.

Why it’s important

Should you have a goal in mind, such as wanting financial security, you’ll need some sort of wealth management in place. This can come in the form of advice from a qualified financial professional or through seeing where your money goes through a variety of channels such as taxation and investments.

More at: http://financialadvicenow.co.uk/understanding-wealth-management-make-work/

Financial Advisor Banned For Cheating Dallas Cowboys QB And MLB Players

The reason so many pro athletes go bust not long after their playing careers are over isn't always because they are spendthrifts. Sometimes--far too often it seems--they are simply cheated out of their money.

Latest example: Ash Narayan, the former managing director of the Orange County, California office of RGT Capital Management, will be barred from associating with any broker-dealer or adviser for steering millions of dollars entrusted to him by pro-athletes into unsuitable investments that would benefit him personally and falsely claiming to be a CPA, according to the SEC.

Narayan, an adviser to Mark Sanchez, a quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, and baseball pitchers Jake Peavy of the San Francisco Giants and Roy Oswalt of the Colorado Rockies, as well as other pro athletes, ran into trouble when he began funneling his clients' funds into the Ticket Reserve, a fledgling online sports entertainment and ticketing firm that counted Narayan as a board member, according to the SEC.

More at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2016/12/21/financial-advisor-banned-for-cheating-dallas-cowboys-qb-and-mlb-players/#7c36d3333e89

David Justin Urbas - How to Choose the Best Financial Adviser?

Wealth generation requires specialized skills, which a financial adviser possesses. However, not all financial planners exhibit the same level of expertise. You need to choose a professional like David Justin Urbas who can frame the best investment strategies to fulfill your wealth creation goals. Follow these tips.

Finding Financial Adviser

First, you need to identify your financial requirements and then start looking a financial adviser. You can ask your family, friends, colleagues or lawyers for the recommendations. You can also approach industry associations for finding a financial adviser in your area. As per David Justin Urbas most of the associations direct their members to follow a code of conduct and participate in ongoing training sessions. Once you have chosen a financial planner, you need to check the educational qualifications, experience and other details, so that you get the best service.

Checking Educational Qualification

You need to check whether your preferred financial adviser possesses the right educational qualifications to assist you in attaining your financial goals. A financial adviser should have the capability for offering you advice after undergoing basic training sessions. In order to raise your chances of receiving advice, which is right for you, you need to search for an adviser who has completed a degree, advanced diploma or diploma in accounting, financial planning, economics or finance.

Ask Regarding the Experience

While choosing your financial adviser, you should clearly ask about some clients whom he or she has served in the past. This will help you in determining whether the financial planner has successfully sufficed requirements of clients whose goals match yours.

You should also check that the adviser offers advice on the financial products, which you possess currently. This is important when you maintain the super fund. You should be careful with dealing with advisers who sell only one investment product as this may not suffice your financial objective.

While selecting a financial adviser, always verify educational and experience. Hiring experts like, David Justin Urbas can help grow your financial portfolio smartly and safely.

Take the Help of a Financial Services Guide

To choose the best financial adviser, you can read the financial services guides, provided by different advisers. Such a guide can help you in knowing about the following things -

• How the adviser charges and whether he or she receives any additional payment benefit
• What are the services offered by the adviser
• Whether he or she has any link to fund managers, such as life insurance companies, banks or other product providers, as this can affect the services or products offered
• His or her license number
• Who is the owner of the company where the financial adviser works

Go for Financial Services Offered by Lawyers

There are many lawyers who also work as financial advisers. If you take personal financial advice from a lawyer, make sure he or she has the proper license necessary for providing such service.

These are some of the tips on choosing a financial adviser. So, if you want help in forming investment strategies and planning finances, follow these tips and find the best adviser for yourself. 

David Justin Urbas - How To Get Past The Resistance To Hire A Financial Advisor

If you own a car, chances are you don’t wait until the engine explodes to maintain it.  If you own a home, you likely attend to normal maintenance and repairs rather than waiting until the paint has peeled off the walls or you can see the sky through your roof before taking action.  Yet, when it comes to your financial life (and I am talking about the entire scope of life goals planning, cash flow management, risk management, retirement planning, investments, college planning, estate planning and tax planning) you hide your head in the sand and avoid the “scary” stuff at all costs.  And why not? These topics likely aren’t within the scope of your personal expertise. Believe me, I get it!

In Part 1 of “I Would Hire A Financial Advisor, But…”http://bit.ly/2gEHYQJ   I explored some of the reasons why too many people do not actively seek out help in areas where they lack the appropriate expertise and experience to make consistently informed and appropriate decisions. When it comes to getting financial help, many people are raised with the idea that talking about money is big “no-no.”  In addition to that internal messaging, there is fear and confusion about whom to trust, levels of intimidation due to lack of comfort or knowledge and ego.

More at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkay/2016/12/20/getting-past-resistance-to-hire-a-financial-advisor/#7e8ef28f52c9

David Justin Urbas - How To Recover From An Accident At Work

Accidents can happen everywhere, but it’s always worse when they happen at work. Of course, when they do, it’s hard to think straight. Your priorities, hopefully, are to get better before anything else. They should be, at least. Depending on the severity of the injury, and the time required for recovery, this might mean weeks off work or it might mean a rapid return to top form. Either way, in such a situation, our personal health is often at the forefront of our minds. An unexpected injury can be quite a shocking experience for friends, family and colleagues, especially if it occurs through quite a severe, painful ordeal. But what should you do next?

However bad your work-based injury, the looming thought of what to do next can be quite worrying for some people. You don’t want to suffer twice; first physically and then financially. If you so much as say the wrong thing to the wrong person in your workplace, you could end up being blamed for your own accident, which isn’t fair at all. So what do you do? Well, we have some advice to help get you back on your feet and avoid pointing fingers at work.

More at: http://financewand.com/how-to-recover-from-an-accident-at-work

David Justin Urbas - All the financial advice you’ll ever need fits on a single index card

At first glance, fiscal planning can seem more complex and time-consuming than it’s worth. But according to Professor Harold Pollack of the University of Chicago, you can fit all the financial advice you’ll ever really need on a single index card. Economics correspondent Paul Solman takes a look at Pollack’s ten easy tips for simple and sensible money management.

David Justin Urbas - 7 Stores With Price Match Guarantees

Comparison shopping used to mean going to different stores, checking prices, and purchasing from the retailer with the best price. That took a lot of time and didn’t make sense for something small, like a pound of hamburger.

Today, you can save hundreds of dollars with little effort. You just need to know how.

Thanks to smartphones and the Internet, you can check competing prices anytime, even in-store. If you find a lower price, you don’t always have to go to the other store to get it – some stores allow you to show the lower price offer at the register, and they’ll match it.

Major chain retailers, such as Target and Walmart, offer price-matching policies as a way to attract more shoppers. This can be a great way to save both money and time on grocery shopping. Instead of running around town for the best deals, you can go to just one store and get the best price on everything.

More at: http://www.moneycrashers.com/stores-competitor-price-match-guarantee/

David Justin Urbas - I Would Hire A Financial Advisor, But...

This is the first in a three-part series.

As a consumer, you may be left in a quandary. You know intellectually that you need and value help in getting your financial life in order, but there's a laundry list of reasons why you don't do it. Do any of the following sound familiar?

1. “I don’t have time.”
2. “I don’t know who to trust.”
3. “I’m embarrassed for anyone to see how little I really know about financial matters.”
4. “I feel intimidated.”
5. “I don’t want my spouse to find out that I’ve been faking it.”

More at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkay/2016/11/29/i-would-hire-a-financial-advisor-but-part-1/#4327621b2b0f

David Justin Urbas - Understanding The Different Types Of Financial Advisors Available

Are you in search of a reliable financial advisor to let your decision-making capability improve? Look into the market and there are hundreds of private advisors available to offer you service. But how reliable are they to approach?

If you are a regular follower of David Justin Urbas blogs, you would probably know that registered investment advisors (RIA) are only available in minor percentages. According to State and Federal Law, only RIAs are marked as Fiduciary Standard professionals. You will also find a lot of self-proclaimed financial advisors who are not at all registered. They can be best described as broker-dealers. They are held to a very minor standard of diligence level on behalf of the clients they handle.

If you want to judge the Fiduciary Standard of the Financial Advisor being hired, the best way to do so is figure out how the professional is compensated.

The Financial Industry primarily revolves around 2 major payment structures 

Fee-Only Compensation

This structure basically minimizes any interest conflicts. In this process, clients are directly charged by the Financial Advisor for the services being offered. There are no other kinds of financial rewards included in this process. Everything is money-centric.  Any Financial Advisor with Fee-Only Compensation facility deals with only one thing: selling their knowledge.

Fee-Based Compensation

Although this process sounds similar to Fee-Only compensation, but there is a stark dissimilarity. In this process, Financial Advisors would be paid not only his/her fee but also a part of commission or some kind of discounts from the client’s business services.  This format is often considered a confusing one.

David Justin Urbas mentions that there is also a certain category of Financial Advisors who don’t come with any specific fee structure for their services. Rather, they are paid compensations through commission being earned through business transaction.

David Justin Urbas - The Secret Graph Your Financial Advisor Isn't Showing You

As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. But that actually might depend on the picture.

For instance, if you were to take a snapshot of your financial portfolio, what would it look like? Most financial advisors provide their clients with a pie chart, which assigns a color to each of your assets. It’s useful information, but it’s static. This picture only tells you what you own right now without shedding any insight into the different decisions you may have made over the past weeks, months, or even years to arrive at where you are today.

That’s why we provide our clients with a much more powerful and insightful picture: a graph of their asset allocation over time.

More at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/advisor/2016/12/05/asset-allocation-over-time-graph/#13fca95641ea

David Justin Urbas - Figuring Out The Perfect Financial Advisor To Handle Your Situation

Choosing a financial advisor can be tricky. You need to figure out the right professional expert as per your situation. While looking for a financial expert, you need to understand how often do they meet their clients. Once your personal situation starts changing, you would want to ensure that the financial advisor expert is willing to meet you in order to update your investment portfolio as a response to your changes.  It is crucial for the advisors to meet with their clients at different frequencies.

A financial advisor who would be meet you rarely may not be the right choice for you. Again, if you are planning to meet the professional once a year at your propose timing to discuss your financial situation with them, would they make themselves available before you. At the same time, you would also want your financial advisor to work on your present condition through latest strategies and requirements. In case your situation never changes even after continuous interaction with the advisor, you need to communicate with the professional to understand the situation while focusing on different crucial aspects.

According to David Justin Urbas, you need to ask for the financial plan being prepared by the advisor for their earlier clients. You must understand the consequences of working with the advisor. Are you comfortable with their working procedure? You must focus on the kind of information that the advisor is going to offer you. You must be able to figure out whether the information being offered is fully comprehensive and usable or in non-furnished stage.  This would also help you in understanding their basic work procedures in order to make the clients reach their goals.  You would also be able to figure out their ways of measuring and tracking the results while determining if the results are perfectly in line with the client’s goals and objectives.

Tips from Financial Advisors on Saving Money

Do you want to start saving money for your future? If yes, you must know that it can be a difficult task. Saving money looks easy only from a distance. In reality, it involves various details. Therefore, you have to be very careful, if you want to indulge in effective savings. In this, you may also need help from experienced financial advisors.

In this write-up, we are going to discuss some of the essential advises that financial advisors have for those who want to save money.

# Opt for automatic deposits - If you really want to save, you must have a budget for your  expenses. Within the budget, you can involve both long-term and short-term goals. To save the money, which is not a part of your budget, you must opt for automatic deposits into savings accounts and investments. This money can go to your investments or savings account, either from your checking account or paycheck.

According to financial advisor David Justin Urbas, different technologies can help you in automatically depositing the money, which you want to save. Such technological tools can also tell you how much you can afford to save in a given month or week, by calculating your income and expenditure.

# Keep a track of your expenditure - Many experienced financial advisors are of the opinion that if you keep a track of your income and expenses, you can save better. Once you start tracking your expenses, you can cut down the expenses that are not necessary.

You can also sync technological tools with your financial accounts, so that you can track your expenses. Making separate lists for your subscriptions and one-time expenses is also important in efficient tracking.

These tips from financial advisors can be very useful for you. Use these tips in saving money, so that you can have enough savings for the future.