How Much Are You Paying For Your 529 Plan? You Might Be Surprised.

James Rooney hadn’t planned on carving out a niche working with deaf clients. But nearly 30 years after his first encounter with a deaf client, he has become Morgan Stanley’s go-to adviser for this unique community of clients.

“If a deaf client were to walk into any Morgan Stanley office anywhere in the country, they will find me,” he said.

Mr. Rooney, who is based in West Hartford, Conn., and has been an adviser at Morgan Stanley for 20 years, was with Merrill Lynch in Long Island, N. Y., in the early 1990s when he noticed the receptionist struggling to communicate with a deaf client.

“I walked over and started talking to the person in sign language,” Mr. Rooney recalls. “Within six months, I probably got a dozen or more unsolicited walk-in deaf clients.”

Mr. Rooney, who now has 225 deaf clients, learned sign language as a child growing up in a household with two deaf parents.

Even though he and his team also work with about 1,000 other clients without hearing impairments, he considers his work with deaf clients as a “way to honor my parents.”

“I have grown my client base of deaf people every year and it’s mostly word-of-mouth referrals,” he said.

There are an estimated 2.2 million deaf people living in the United States, a number that is shrinking as a result of medical and technological advancements. But financial advisers who work with one or several deaf clients uniformly agree that it is an underserved market.

It was less than two years ago that wealth adviser Matthew Phillips had his first encounter with a deaf prospective client who emailed him at Trilogy Financial and closed with the explanation, “we are deaf.”

Mr. Phillips, who had studied sign language in college but didn’t consider himself fluent, wasn’t sure how to proceed.

“I reached out to our team to ask how we should handle this, and nobody had any idea,” he said. “I started to realize no one at Trilogy [which has 150 advisors in 10 offices] has dealt with this before.”

Mr. Phillips, who now works with 20 deaf clients, contacted his former sign language instructor at California Baptist University for some advice.

The instructor, W. Daniel Blair, organized a tutorial for a half dozen Trilogy advisors.

One of the challenges when it comes to providing financial advice to a deaf person is clear communication. With technology and creative determination, the communication can be managed even if the adviser isn’t fluent in sign language. But even being fluent in sign language doesn’t guarantee perfect communication.

“There’s so much in the financial world that doesn’t exist in sign language,” Mr. Blair said.

Not only does sign language differ by region, similar to regional accents, but he said some words just don’t exist in sign language.

“Take compound interest, for example, which I don’t think most hearing people even understand, but there’s just no way to interpret that in sign language,” Mr. Blair said.

In another example, he recalls watching a certified American Sign Language interpreter signing for the word investment in a way Mr. Blair said he would have signed for the word contribute.

“And what I was signing for investment, the interpreter was using for saving,” Mr. Blair said.

Mr. Rooney of Morgan Stanley has had similar experiences trying to employ words and phrases that did not yet exist in sign language.

“There’s a sign for interest and most everyone understands that, but I found there was not a sign for dividend, which is similar to interest,” he said. “So I decided to make a sign for dividend, and now I see other signers using it. That’s exactly the way it works. Sign language, like all language, evolves.”

Of course, many financial advisors don’t even have a foundation in sign language to start with. But that hasn’t prevented John Cooper, private client advisor at Greenwood Capital, from working with a deaf client for the past 10 years.

“We meet in person once a year, and I give him a notepad and I have a notepad, and that’s how we communicate,” Mr. Cooper said. “Let’s just say there’s not a lot of small talk.”

Technology, including the internet and smartphones, has made communication a lot easier than with the early teletype phone communication of decades ago when deaf people would have to type messages to a hearing operator, who would act as translator.

Mr. Rooney said he now has a video phone in his office that enables him to sign with his deaf clients in real-time.

For advisors who are interested in working with deaf clients, or who might be having trouble communicating with current clients who are deaf, Mr. Rooney said it’s important to make eye contact and remember always to face the deaf person.

“They may be able to read lips, so be sure to enunciate properly, maybe even over-enunciate,” he said. “And be patient. I find it much more frustrating for me not being able to get my ideas across than they were with me because they couldn’t understand what I was trying to say.”

Click here to read full story.

Written by: Dan Rafter

You’ve worked hard to build your own business, and you love the perk of being your own boss. But going solo does come with one big challenge: It can be tough to save enough for retirement.

When you work for a company, you often have access to a 401(k) plan in which you can automatically deposit money for your retirement. It’s not as simple when you’re self-employed. When you’re working for yourself, you need to develop a retirement plan and stick to it. Otherwise, you may face a long, stressful retirement, worried you won’t have enough money to pay for the lifestyle you want.

Here are some tips for building a retirement nest egg even when you’re self-employed.

Budget with Goals in Mind

Kevin Gallegos, senior vice president of client enrollment in the Phoenix office of Freedom Debt Relief, said the biggest challenge self-employed people face when saving for retirement is that their monthly income fluctuates so often.

It’s hard to save when your income soars to $10,000 one month but then crashes to $4,000 the next.

“Income that fluctuates from month to month does make it harder to establish any regular budgeting and savings, but it is doable with a different approach,” Gallegos said.

That different approach? Gallegos recommends that those who are self-employed create a budget that’s based not only on dollars and cents, but on goals, too.

These goals may include being able to retire at a certain age, taking regular vacations, buying a new car or just having the time to take a daily walk. Once you write down these objectives, you can build your budget with them in mind, Gallegos said.

What a Budget Should Include

Your budget should list your mandatory expenses each month – everything from your mortgage payment to your car loan to the minimum you need to pay each month on your credit cards. It should also record those regular monthly costs that fluctuate: items such as your utility bill, groceries and transportation. Estimate what these are, and don’t forget to factor in the money you spend on discretionary expenses, such as eating out and entertainment. Finally, your budget should include your regular monthly income.

When you look at your income and your goals, you might decide it’s time to make changes. You may have to scale back some of your loftier ambitions.

“It might mean modifying the hoped-for China vacation to, say, San Francisco’s Chinatown,” Gallegos said. “But whatever happens, you’ll find that you will be spending smartly and getting where you want to go.”

Work into your budget a line item for retirement savings in your expenses area. Gallegos recommends you choose a percent of your monthly income to designate for savings. Take a portion of that amount and save it in an IRA or other retirement savings vehicle to help steadily build your reserve.

Make It Automatic

Tommy Valmeyer, chief executive officer of San Francisco-based digital marketing company OpenKit.io, said the biggest challenge for the self-employed is remembering to contribute to a retirement fund at all.

“When you have a standard 9-to-5 with a company, they can automatically contribute a portion of your paycheck to retirement,” Valmeyer said. “This is not the case for the self-employed.”

The best solution? Valmeyer recommends that self-employed individuals find a checking account that allows them to automatically submit a certain amount of money each month to a retirement account. The key is to make the commitment to this deposit, and to keep it going even when your business might not be booming.

Consider a “Solo” 401(k)

Howard Dvorkin, a certified public accountant and chairman of Debt.com, said self-employed individuals need to consider all their options when it comes to saving dollars for retirement.

“Being your own boss is awesome, but being your own retirement savings plan can be a real downer,” he said.

If you work for yourself, you probably already know of traditional and Roth IRAs. But Dvorkin said many who are self-employed don’t know about the benefits of a “solo” 401(k) account.

This type of retirement savings vehicle, also known as a Self-Employed 401(k) or Individual 401(k), was designed for employers who have no full-time employees other than themselves and their spouse. In other words, it’s designed for people who work for themselves.

This 401(k) plan offers the same benefits as traditional versions. You can contribute up to $19,000 in your solo 401(k) plan in 2019 when contributing as an employee or up to $24,500 if you are 50 or older. When contributing as an employer, you can contribute up to 25% of your compensation. The total amount you can contribute to your individual 401(k) account, not counting catch-up contributions if you are 50 or older, is $55,000 in 2019.

If you are contributing as an employer, your contributions to the 401(k) plan are tax-deductible. If you are contributing as the employee, your contributions will reduce your taxable income.

Find the Right Savings Vehicle

Windus Fernandez Brinkkord, managing vice president in the San Diego office of Trilogy Financial, said self-employed people have several options when it comes to retirement savings vehicles.

Those who aren’t going to save more than $5,500 in a year will do well with a traditional IRA, Brinkkord said. Once these individuals are ready to save more money, though, Brinkkord recommends they invest in an individual 401(k) plan.

“Self-employed people often put so much back into their business they forget to save for their own retirement,” Brinkkord said. “In many cases, the business is them and, therefore, not sellable. Be cognizant of saving for yourself.”

Click here to read the full story.