Laurel Terrace Finance, LLC

07/22/2024

Loan payments under the SAVE Plan placed on interest-free forbearance

The U.S. Department of Education says it will pause millions of student loan borrowers payments while it defends its SAVE repayment plan against legal challenges.

04/02/2024

New Home Prices.

After rallying 60% from April 2020 through October 2022, the median sale price of a new home in the US has now fallen 19.4% from $497k down to $400.5k as of February 2024. (Source: US Census Bureau)

03/28/2024

Have You Filed?

The most recent version of the US Federal tax code (as of 4/12/23) totals 4,138,788 words. That’s over five times longer than the King James Bible and more than seven times longer than War and Peace. Even the entire Harry Potter series comes in at slightly more than a million words. (Source: National Taxpayers Union Foundation, Tax Foundation)

03/25/2024

Financial Illiteracy. 15- to 18-year-olds taking a test on financial literacy scored an average of 64% (passing = 70), and 51.3% of participants failed. States with the lowest financial literacy scores were DE, AR, NV, and AZ, while the highest scores were among teens in WV, HA, NM, and MA. (Source: National Financial Educators Council)

Retirement Illiteracy. The American College of Financial Services found that just 31% of pre-retirees and retirees were considered financially literate regarding income in retirement. ChatGPT didn’t fare much better; it was only able to correctly answer 45% of the 36 questions in the test. The highest percentage of financially literate participants was those with assets of $1.5 million or more (50%). (Source: Financial Advisor)

03/25/2024

401(k) Millionaires. The number of 401(k) accounts worth $1+ million at Fidelity jumped 41% in 2023 from 299,000 to 422,000. The average 401(k) millionaire at Fidelity is 59 years old and has been saving for 26 years. (Source: Fidelity, Yahoo! Finance)

03/21/2024

Parent Providers: A new report by Savings.com found that 47% of parents with a child older than 18 provide them with some form of financial support, averaging roughly $1,384/month. 58% of parents said supporting their adult children was a sacrifice to their own financial security. (Source: CNBC)

03/14/2024

33% of US adults say they do not feel financially secure which ranks as the highest level of insecurity since at least 2012. The top factors cited as reasons for the high level of insecurity were inflation (51%), the economy (43%), and lack of savings (31%). (Source: Northwester Mutual)

03/13/2024

The Most Important Class You Will Take. The lifetime benefit of high school students taking a financial literacy class is estimated to exceed $100,000. Despite the importance of these lessons on future financial well-being, less than one in four high school students graduating in 2023 completed a personal finance class. (Source: Tyton Partners)

09/11/2023

Excited to be recognized!

Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Laurel Terrace Finance, LLC Receives 2023 Best of Studio City Award

Studio City Award Program Honors the Achievement

STUDIO CITY September 4, 2023 -- Laurel Terrace Finance, LLC has been selected for the 2023 Best of Studio City Award in the Financial consultant category by the Studio City Award Program.

Each year, the Studio City Award Program identifies companies that we believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and our community. These exceptional companies help make the Studio City area a great place to live, work and play.

Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2023 Studio City Award Program focuses on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the Studio City Award Program and data provided by third parties.

About Studio City Award Program

The Studio City Award Program is an annual awards program honoring the achievements and accomplishments of local businesses throughout the Studio City area. Recognition is given to those companies that have shown the ability to use their best practices and implemented programs to generate competitive advantages and long-term value.

The Studio City Award Program was established to recognize the best of local businesses in our community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission is to recognize the small business community's contributions to the U.S. economy.

SOURCE: Studio City Award Program

CONTACT:
Studio City Award Program
Email: [email protected]
URL: http://www.businessesregional.com

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12/09/2022

Top five regrets of retirees:

1. The No. 1 financial regret of older Americans, shared by a thumping 57%, was not having saved more for their retirement during their working years. And while you can’t save more if you don’t earn more, those looking back with regret also blamed themselves for “not planning ahead” and “living day to day.”

2. Second on the list, surprisingly: Not buying long-term-care insurance, to pay for a nursing home or similar. This was a regret by 40% of those polled. There is a widespread misapprehension, especially among non-retirees, that Medicare will pay for your stay in a nursing home. It won’t (except in narrow and quite brief exceptions). You’ll have to pay for it yourself. Medicaid will step in, but only when you have run out of money.

3. and 5. Third on the list, 37% of older Americans regret not working longer, while 23% regret claiming Social Security too early—that is fifth on the list.

You can start claiming at 62, and many do. But if you wait you will get more each month. Someone waiting till they are 70 to start claiming will end up getting checks that are nearly 80% bigger.

The two most powerful levers you can pull to improve your retirement prospects, even as late as your 60s, is to keep working for longer and to delay taking Social Security as long as possible.

4. No. 4, a remarkable 33% of older Americans regretted not investing more in a lifetime annuity or similar product that would produce a guaranteed income for life.

11/22/2022

The White House pushed backed the date for student loan payments to restart from Jan. 1 to June 30.

10/19/2022

If you’re traveling for the holidays, buy your airfare as soon as possible. “The best time to have booked those Thanksgiving and Christmas flights was June and July,” says Scott Keyes, the founder of Scott’s Cheap Flights. “And the second best is basically now.”

That’s one of the tips from The Times’s new guide to holiday travel. Domestic travel will be particularly pricey this year — it costs more to book Thanksgiving flights to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, than to go to Lisbon around the same time. But there are ways to save money. The guide includes some of the cheapest days to fly, many of which fall on Mondays.