This post really hits home for me right now. My wife is due any day with our first child and we’re currently balancing our New York City apartment with a new home which we bought and are renovating in the suburbs.

This post includes a list of recent articles which are suggested reading from First Allied Asset Management, my broker/dealer firm. You will find a link to each article followed by a brief synposis of what the article is about. If these headlines and others don’t look all that optimistic, that would certainly be a reflection of the current economy and investor sentiment.

There was another great article in Financial Advisor magazine this month which highlights the sort of fears and concerns that plague many generations of today’s investors, specifically those nearing retirement who are trying to better preserve capital.

There was an article in Financial Advisor magazine this month which talked about how much money people ought to save if they wish to retire comfortably. I’ve found people enjoy these simplified, rule-of- thumb type systems as they allow people to break down complex, hard-to-reach goals into smaller, more manageable pieces.

Clients and advisors alike are wondering what will happen to the favorable tax rates that are set to expire at the end of this year. One consideration within this broader discussion involves the expected changes to wealth transfer rules. If Congress doesn’t act in the next few months, transfer tax rates will revert back to 55% and the lifetime exclusion for an individual will move from $5.12M down to $1M for individuals and $10.24 down to $2M for couples.

On January 31st, FINRA put out a publication intending to highlight new and continuing areas of significance to their regulatory program. As an advisor, I can see why some of these areas may be of concern to regulators as opportunities to either overuse or misuse these products does exist.

In the world of small business retirement plans, there are many options. Some plans give the employer sole authority to make contributions, others are contributed to by employees only, and some are a hybrid of the two in which employees make contributions and employers can make matching payments or make random contributions to the plan.

I don’t usually blog about my press mentions, but this month I had a pretty cool feature in one of my industry’s most prominent publications. Financial Advisor Magazine interviewed me for a story on social media and how advisors are dealing with the opportunities and challenges it presents.

I’ve been in the business for a while at this point. I’ve heard many stories from financial advisors about how they lead initial consultations and what the different methods are which they use to extract vital information from clients.

At this point most people in sales and relationship-oriented businesses realize that social media IS the future when it comes to improving brand image and marketing products and services.