The P&A Blog
Ship Medicare Minute – May 2023
P&A will be posting articles of interest and Medicare-related documents to our blog. You can find these on the blog page by selecting from the Categories drop-down menu and choosing ‘Medicare’. Click here for the May edition of the Nebraska SHIP Medicare Minute....
The debt ceiling debate
In what has become perennial political theater, Congress is now negotiating an increase to the debt ceiling, which is on track to be exceeded as early as June or July. (Spoiler alert: The U.S. actually hit the debt ceiling in January 2023. Since then, the Treasury...
April 2023 Market Recap
Highlights Mega-cap stocks carried the major benchmarks during the month. Smaller stocks have lagged in recent months. While the Fed was expected to raise rates at their May meeting, longer-term rates continue to portend cuts in the back half of 2023. Company earnings...
I bonds rate set to drop by 38% on May 1st
(This article was updated 5/1/23 from its original version to reflect the change made to the fixed rate component from 0.4% to 0.9%. Further information about this change can be found here.) We first wrote about I bonds in June 2022 (“Everyone’s talking about I...
2023 retirement plan eligibility and contribution limits
As the month of April concludes, tax season is behind us for another year, which means it’s a good time to plan for tax year 2023. One of the most basic, yet often overlooked items, is taking full advantage of the various retirement accounts available to you. In...
Meet ChatGPT
As technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly prevalent in our daily lives. One example of this is ChatGPT, an AI language model that has been tried out by over 100 million people. For those who haven't yet...
2023 – 1st Quarter Letter – Dividends, Buybacks, & Change
The latest P&A quarterly letter to clients is available in PDF form. You can download it here.
5 reasons to use your P&A portal
Here at P&A, we believe having online access to your investment accounts is a top priority. Though we fully understand the thought of having to remember another password seems dreadful, we want our clients to have full access to the accounts they have trusted us...
How to support Give to Lincoln Day with IRA distributions
Since many of our clients have ties to Lincoln, we are passing along information about Give to Lincoln Day and how to utilize an IRA to fund your gifts to this event. We’ll also touch on two additional ways to support Give to Lincoln Day. What is Give to Lincoln Day?...
March 2023 Market Recap
Highlights Markets were on edge during the month of March following high profile bank failures in the United States and Europe. Despite those concerns, the S&P and NASDAQ were both up for the month. Small- and midcap stocks fell. Interest rate volatility was at...
P&A Spotlight: A.J. Natter
Questions and Answers with A.J. Natter Where are you originally from? I was born in raised in Milton, Wisconsin (about 30 minutes south of Madison). I attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and then worked professionally in Minneapolis for 5 years before recently...
When to claim Social Security retirement benefits
One of the key decisions a retiree will face—and one of the most common questions we receive from clients—is when to claim Social Security retirement benefits. There are several schools of thought regarding this decision, so we’ll dive into the factors to consider...
SVB failure
Clients and friends of P&A, In light of events unfolding over the weekend regarding the financial system, we’ve been fielding questions about what happened and what it means for your money under our care. This letter will focus on the latter, not because we don’t...
February 2023 Market Recap
Highlights The S&P 500 gave back some of the gains from January while the NASDAQ and Russell 2000 were flat for the month. Rates ticked back up. The 10-year US Treasury yield rose ~40 basis points. Fixed income performance was flat to down for February. Hotter...
Creating a retirement paycheck
Learning to live without a paycheck is one of the challenges soon-to-be retirees and the newly retired must come to terms with. But what if I told you we can create a retirement paycheck for you from your investment and retirement accounts? Would you be interested...
Flipping the switch
Last month, we received an email from a client who had just returned to the U.S. after an overseas trip. She wanted to thank us for encouraging her to go and admitted, if we hadn’t nudged her, she would have missed out on the trip of a lifetime. Needing a nudge isn’t...
Ship Medicare Minute – March 2023
P&A will be posting articles of interest and Medicare-related documents to our blog. You can find these on the blog page by selecting from the Categories drop-down menu and choosing ‘Medicare Minute’. Click here for the March edition of the Nebraska SHIP Medicare...
January 2023 Market Recap
Highlights The S&P 500 rose by 6.28% in the month of January, while non-US stocks, represented by the MSCI EAFE index, rose by 8.1%. Bonds were also up for the month with the Bloomberg US Aggregate Index rising by 3.08%. Inflation was 6.4% in December, as measured...