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    Tax

    Live Webinar: Tax-Efficient Planning for Baby Boomers

    Sequence of Withdrawals: Tax-Efficient Planning for Baby Boomers Covisum® is hosting a free webinar on Wednesday, March 20 at 11:00 a.m. Central Time. Advisors will learn how to identify which accounts clients should withdraw from, and when, in order to make better retirement strategy decisions.
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    In The News

    Hidden Value: Tax-Savvy Tactics for Retirement Cash Flow

    Hidden Value is a column in ThinkAdvisor where Joe Elsasser, CFP®, answers common questions with insights advisors and their clients may not have considered. This week he takes a closer look at the tax implications and the hidden tax-efficient planning opportunities created through interactions between various cash sources.
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    In The News

    Announcing Covisum's Newest Financial Planning Tool, Income InSight

    The deeply-integrated fintech solution you've been looking for has arrived: Income InSight™. The new retirement planning platform quickly and easily shows the impact of different decisions within a client’s financial plan.
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    In The News

    4 Ways Financial Advisors Can Have a Tax-Efficient Planning Tax Season

    Tax Day is rapidly approaching, and there are a few ways that financial advisors can be really helpful during this stressful time of year. Many financial advisors know that taxes have a significant impact on their clients, however potential compliance issues often lead to reluctance to talk about taxes. Lumping anything tax-related into "tax advice," is a disservice to your clients. Advisors have a duty to understand, consider and explain the tax consequences of various strategies. To talk tax-efficient planning with clients you don’t have to know all of the complicated interactions between different tax provisions and different types of income. Here are a few ways to can help your clients make retirement strategy decisions in the most tax-efficient way this tax season.
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    In The News

    Schedule Annual Client Review Meetings

    We are well into February, and we’ve reached the perfect time of year to schedule annual reviews for your clients who are still working. There are some opportunities for clients with earned income to clean-up before April 15. One of the most basic ways is through IRA contributions. You can use Tax Clarity® to identify opportunities where IRA contributions can be used to reduce the amount of taxable capital gains.
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    In The News

    Hidden Value: How to Put the Brakes on Out-of-Control Spenders

    Hidden Value is a column in ThinkAdvisor where Joe Elsasser, CFP®, answers common questions with insights advisors and their clients may not have considered. This week he discusses clients who overspend. Clients who overspend are among the most difficult clients to work with, however they arguably need your advice the most. In this week's column, Joe takes a closer look at the early warning signs and the best ways to combat overspending.
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    In The News

    Hidden Value: Roth IRA Conversions, How Much Is Too Much?

    Hidden Value is a column in ThinkAdvisor where Joe Elsasser, CFP®, answers common questions with insights advisors and their clients may not have considered. This week he highlights the importance of evaluating Medicare surcharges and beneficiaries' future tax brackets when considering a Roth IRA conversion.
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    Marketing

    Kitces Nerd's Eye View: How To Better Attract Your Ideal Clients

    In a recent guest post for Michael Kitces' blog, Nerd's Eye View, Covisum's Director of Sales and Marketing, Katie Godbout, offered an in-depth look at crafting and using a client persona to generate leads. Finding prospective clients can be difficult for many financial advisors. The marketing process can seem overwhelming, and unfortunately the solution is often to cast a wide net to try to attract anyone. However, when you try to market to everyone, it becomes incredibly difficult to differentiate yourself. You can overcome these issues by focusing in a specific and narrow target market. A client persona is a detailed description of your ideal client. "The key to marketing financial services is resonance. If the messages you’re putting out aren’t relevant and don’t resonate with the prospective clients you’re trying to reach, they won’t work. And if you try to create a message that resonates with everybody, it won’t work because nothing is going to resonate with everyone at the same time." "This means the first step to effectively marketing your practice for growth is to narrow your focus and pick which specific prospective clients you want to target. Then you can create marketing that resonates with those particular people."
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    In The News

    Forbes Finance Council: Is Working With a Robo-Advisor Right For You?

    In a recent article for Forbes, Covisum Founder and President Joe Elsasser, CFP®, outlined the benefits and shortcomings of robo-advisors. For many people, it is worth at least considering a robo-advisor. For a relatively low price, robo-advisors are reasonably good at managing asset allocation for a given risk level. However, there are a few situations where relying on a person as your financial advisor is a preferable option. For instance, robo-advisors can't pick up on the changes in your life that impact how you're going to use your money, like a long-term medical need or an unexpected death of a loved one.
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