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Do I Need Life Insurance?

Do I Need Life Insurance?

If you are a provider to a family and your existing assets are not adequate to provide for them after your death, and you would like to make sure they are taken care of, then, yes, you need life insurance. If you have no dependents but you want to make sure a charity you support receives an endowment in your name, then life insurance may again be the tool to use. There may also be benefits to you while alive if you do not have many options for tax-deferred savings. Continue reading...

What is Form 1099-R?

IRS Link to Form — Found Here Sources of retirement plan income, such as pensions, annuities, and IRAs, will be associated with a 1099-R filing. The form is filed by the company making the distribution. The taxpayer uses the information on it for when filing income taxes. The IRS receives Form 1099-R from the companies making distributions from retirement plans. They have categorized all annuity contracts as retirement plans by default, so those are included, as are pensions, profit sharing plans, other forms of employer-sponsored retirement plans, cash-value life insurance distributions, and individual retirement accounts (IRAs). The company making the distribution sends the 1099-R to the IRS and the account owner. Continue reading...

What is an Accelerative Endowment?

What is an Accelerative Endowment?

Cash-value life policies can be structured for certain endowment ages, and dividends from the company can accelerate the endowment age. Traditional life insurance policies, especially older ones always had an “endowment age,” which meant that if the insured reached that age, their death benefit would be paid out in one lump sum, to be used however the insured wanted. The endowment age used to be about 95 or 100 years old, but in the last few years most companies have moved the age of endowment back to about age 120, since people are living longer and longer, and it looked like they were going to be paying out too many contracts at endowment age instead of at time of death in the future. Continue reading...

What is Mortgage Modification?

Mortgage modifications are arrangements agreed to by the lender that are outside of the contractual mortgage agreement, in instances where the borrower experiences unique circumstances or hardship. An example of a mortgage modification is a loan forbearance, which is when a lender agrees to let the borrower temporarily stop payments for an agreed-upon span of time, before resuming payments with an added repayment stipulation for the time spent not paying. Continue reading...

What is an Abandonment Clause?

An Abandonment Clause primarily refers to maritime insurance contracts in which a lost vessel can be replaced without the expectation of recovery or salvage, or the terms by which a construction contract or lease agreement can be dissolved. This is not to be confused with an Abandonment Option contract between a financial advisor and his or her client. It can also refer to a frequently used clause in construction law, in which the contractors define an abandoned project and give their counter-parties the right to move on and find another contractor to finish the job. Continue reading...

What are forward contracts?

What are forward contracts?

Forward contracts are agreements to exchange specific assets on a specific date, at a price determined at the outset. Forward contracts are similar to futures contracts, but they are over-the-counter private contracts drafted for specific purposes, quantities, and dates that satisfy the specific needs of the counter-parties. These contracts are mostly entered into by institutional investors seeking a hedge against risks such as interest rates and exchange rates. Continue reading...

What are Accelerated Benefits?

What are Accelerated Benefits?

Some life insurance policies allow for death benefits to be accelerated as living benefits under certain conditions. Accelerated benefits are often included in life insurance contracts, but it is possible that they can also be added as Riders for an additional fee. Riders are addendum to a contract that contain additional contractual provisions. What an accelerated benefits rider stipulates is that if certain conditions are met, a portion of the death benefits on a life insurance policy can be paid to the insured person during their lifetime. These conditions may be that the insured person has been diagnosed with less than 12 months to live, or that they have another serious health condition which is covered. Sometimes this includes the payment of monthly benefits if a person requires long-term care. Continue reading...

What is a Buying Hedge?

Hedging against future price risk was the main reason Futures contracts came into being. If an investor or a business knows that they need to acquire an asset or security at a future date, they might go ahead and agree to a price and have it in writing on a Futures contract. A futures contract means that an item has been sold at a stated price, and only awaits settlement at a future date. This will protect them from the risk that the price will move unfavorably in the future, and it will allow them to balance books and plan a budget with more certainty. Futures contracts are standardized and traded on exchanges. Continue reading...

What are currency futures?

What are currency futures?

Currency futures are derivative contracts that trade on regulated exchanges around the world. Like forward contracts, they name a specific amount of one currency which is to be exchanged for a specific amount of another currency at a future date. Futures name a specific amount of one currency which will be exchanged for a specific amount of another currency at a future date. Like other derivative contracts that trade on exchanges (e.g., options), futures are transferable and are traded as the market calls for up until their expiration. Investors can short them (sell to open) and hold them long (buy to open), and can close their positions as they see fit without riding out the contract to the expiration date. Continue reading...

What is a Mortgage Short Sale?

A mortgage short sale occurs when a borrower and a lender settle for less than is owed on a mortgage because changes to the housing market or financial status has made it impossible to continue the arrangement. Lenders would rather take what they can get, while they still can, in this sort of situation. An example of a short sale would be an older couple reaching retirement age with a house that is bigger than they need in a neighborhood that has seen the property values decrease, and due to pension cuts they will have hard time affording the house in retirement. The lender would settle short to avoid having to go through a foreclosure and all that it implies. Continue reading...

What is Adjusted Gross Income?

For tax purposes, Adjusted Gross Income is the basis of an individual’s income tax calculations, before “below the line” deductions. Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) is Gross Income (all of an individual’s earnings for the year) minus above-the-line deductions such as retirement plan contributions, education and medical expenses, Health Savings Accounts, alimony, military exemptions, and so on. After these adjustments, a person can take the standard federal deduction or itemize their other deductions. These are known as below-the-line deductions. Continue reading...

What is a credit rating?

What is a credit rating?

A credit rating is given to a company or debt issue after a disinterested third party evaluates the strength of the business or cash flow and rates its ability to pay all of its liabilities. Third-party institutions such as Standard & Poor’s (S&P), Moody’s, and Fitch will conduct research in order to give investors an idea of how likely a business, bond issue, or insurance company can pay all of its obligations. Continue reading...

What is commodity pice risk?

What is commodity pice risk?

Agricultural and mining businesses are exposed to commodity price risk, which is the possibility that the price of the commodity will change unfavorably by the time the commodity is ready to be delivered. They avoid unnecessary risk by using futures contracts, forward contracts, and possibly other derivative instruments. Commodity price risk means that an agricultural or mining business might not be able to predict the revenue that they can generate from the production or extraction of commodities. Continue reading...

What is currency risk?

What is currency risk?

Countries, investors, and international businesses have to frequently assess currency risk, which is the chance that exchange rates will change unfavorably at inopportune times. An investment in a foreign security or company, or income payments coming from foreign sources, can be at risk for exchange rate changes. If an investor or company has financial interests which are based in another currency, or if the investor engages in Forex trading, currency risk looms over the future value of the holdings, on top of any typical market risk. Continue reading...

What is Ethereum?

What is Ethereum?

Ethereum is an open-source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform. Ethereum provides a cryptocurrency known as ether. Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs what are known as “smart contracts.” Smart contracts are applications that run on custom built blockchain, which functions on its own accord through rules programmed into the protocol, and which also makes decisions and keeps records based on consensus throughout a peer-to-peer network. A blockchain oversees its own activities without requiring any trust in a central authority or the other parties involved. Continue reading...

What is a foreign currency swap?

What is a foreign currency swap?

These are generally referred to as currency swaps or cross-currency swaps , since “foreign” is a little redundant (currencies are from different countries anyway). Central banks and large institutions sometimes swap principal amounts and loan interest in their domestic currency in exchange for a foreign currency, to provide liquidity and a hedge. Currency swaps are where banking institutions, particularly central banks, exchange a loan in one currency for a loan in another currency. Continue reading...

What Part of the Contribution into My IRA is Tax-Deductible?

Traditional IRAs can get interesting if you or a spouse is covered by a qualified plan at work. You are able to deduct all of your contributions into a Traditional IRA as long as you (or your spouse) are not a participant in an employer-sponsored retirement program. If either of you are, there are certain regulations you should be aware of. The amount of your contribution that can be tax-deductible is determined by your (and your spouse’s) modified adjustable gross income (MAGI). Continue reading...

What Can a Blockchain Do?

What Can a Blockchain Do?

Blockchain technology is already being used and developed for many important and impressive applications, and much more is yet to be discovered. Blockchains use distributed work to obtain consensus for changes to a distributed ledger.  Because of their nature, blockchains are incredibly powerful tools that can be used in many realms and applications. They offer security in that they are almost unhackable; any attempted unauthorized changes to the system are immediately obvious to the entire system because it is built on agreement and consensus among its many nodes. Because this structure gives each addition to the ledger, and the record in the ledger, a high degree of integrity and security, future applications of blockchains are being researched in various fields around the world. Continue reading...

What is currency exchange?

What is currency exchange?

Currencies can be exchanged for other currencies, and there are more reasons to do this than most people realize. People are familiar with the currency exchange in the context of tourists stopping by a currency exchange kiosk so that they can buy trinkets at the local tourist traps, but the Foreign Exchange (Forex) market, where currencies are traded, is the largest market in the world by far. Currencies are exchanged for each other on a massive scale on the international Forex market. Thousands of banks connect through electronic trading systems which are part of the interbank forex market. Millions of smaller-scale traders and individuals also engage in Forex trading, either over-the-counter or on regulated international exchanges. Continue reading...

What is the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP)?

In 2009 the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) commissioned the HARP program to help Americans upside-down on mortgages to get approved for mortgage refinancing. This is only available to people whose mortgages are already owned by Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac. Many Americans find themselves upside-down, or underwater, on their home mortgages, particularly after the housing bubble popped in 2008. To be underwater means that there is more owed on the loan than the home can serve as collateral for. Continue reading...