Sometimes I wish summer had 8 days of the week! To be clear, I want the eighth day to be another Saturday, NOT another Monday. I also wish I got a “summer raise” every year, where I get paid more every summer to cover the expenses of all the exciting extra adventures that always seem [...]

By: Kelly M. Lewis, CFP®, JD, LLM   “They don’t need any more money; they do just fine on their own.” This is an answer I occasionally hear in my job when beginning the estate planning and wealth transfer discussion. What does it mean? When I ask clients what their goals are for their money [...]

By: Kelly M. Lewis, CFP®, JD, LLM I’m sure you have all seen the “new year, new you” blog posts on anything and everything; finances, weight loss, exercise, travel, career goals, etc. In fact, I think it was just last year at about this time that I wrote a similar blog for everyone to read. [...]

Written by: Kelly M. Lewis, CFP®, JD, LLM While most of us are thinking of pumpkin spice, apple cider, leaf peeping, sweaters, Ugg® boots, and Halloween, we should not forget that many of us have an open enrollment period upon us. During this period, employees can enroll in any number of benefits offered through their [...]

By Amanda L. Herrick Smith, CFP®   Have the holidays ever snuck up on you and you realized your bank account just cannot sustain the impact of gift giving? Up goes the credit card balances and in comes the final squeeze of the cash flow! Year after year I continued to see this ongoing pattern [...]

Written by: Kelly M. Lewis, CFP®, JD, LLM Yes, I used the word “post-pandemic” even though the pandemic is not over yet. While about 30% of the United States population is fully vaccinated and mask mandates and social distancing seem to be disappearing, we are all still being cautious. What I wanted to talk about [...]

Written by: Amanda L. Herrick Smith, CFP® As we go into spring and the flowers begin to bloom and we have a bit more warmth and sunshine, the housing market begins to take hold in upstate New York. Being a homeowner was something that was very important to me at a young age. I grew [...]

Written by: Elizabeth K.B. DiPietrantonio, J.D. The pandemic has changed absolutely everything. Including the way we hold meetings, the way we work, live, communicate, travel, educate children and even for many the way we get married. A lot of people have cast aside the lavish celebrations for simple intimate gatherings, others wait -deposits on hold, [...]

Written by: Kelly M. Lewis, CFP®, JD, LLM Did you ever read that article about a couple who almost cancelled their wedding because the future husband secretly spent over $5,000 (from his own savings) on surgery for his dog, and the future bride was furious because that meant she was going to have to downsize [...]