Firm:
Sullivan Financial Planning, LLC
Job Title:
Owner
Biography:
Kristi Sullivan has been helping people achieve financial security since 1996.
After graduating with a B.S. in Business from Colorado State University, Kristi worked for Great-West Life in the employee benefits department for three years. This experience gave her a strong background in employer retirement plans, Flexible Benefit Accounts, and group medical plans.
Departing for Fidelity Investments in 1998 gave Kristi the chance to learn more about financial planning on a personal level. In her nine years at Fidelity, my duties included operations, compliance, financial planning, and teaching investment classes.
Sullivan Financial Planning, LLC was formed in 2007 with the goal of providing clients exactly the type of help they needed, without the pressure of corporate quotas or sales numbers directing the recommendations.
Kristi holds the Certified Financial Planner™ designation and the Series 65 and Colorado Life & Health Insurance Licenses. She is a member of the Financial Planning Association, The Alliance of Professional Women, The Women’s Estate Planning Council, and the Denver Alumnae of Chi Omega.
She is proud to have been a volunteer speaker for the non-profit Evelyn Brust Foundation. As a speaker for the Brust Foundation, she presented on achieving financial security at public libraries for the purpose of providing the general public an education without a sales pitch.
In Kristi's down time is spent with her husband and two sons. She is always up for a ski day, travel, seeing plays, and reading a good book.
Education:
BS, Business, Colorado State University
Fee Structure:
Fee-Only
CRD Number:
2704767
A UGMA/UTMA (your state will dictate which one it is) is a good solution. The money is an irrevocable gift to the child and must be turned over to her at age 21. In the meantime, the money can be used for any benefit to that child from summer camp to music lessons, and yes, college. Setting up a trust would be expensive and probably more trouble than it's worth.
Yes, this is possible, but you will need to work with an estate planning attorney to create a trust with these instructions. Also, a trustee will have to be appointed to carry out your wishes through the decades. This could be a family member or a friend (whom the trust should pay for their efforts) or a hired corporate trustee. This could be an expensive proposition to plan and carry out, so decide how important it is to you to direct these assets from beyond the grave and then move forward with your attorney.
I like your half and half idea for the inheritance. Having no house payment is great and can free up money for more future investing. Plus, you'd have that great feeling of lowered fixed expenses. You don't say how old you are, but entering retirement without a house payment or rent is ideal. You still would have money left to invest a nice amount immediately, too.
Congratulations on you positive cash flow! An easy way to decrease your taxable income is to invest more into your workplace retirement accounts. At your age, you can put up to $18,500 away pre-tax. However, before you do that, make sure you have an emergency fund in a savings account of at least 3 month's bills (rent, loans, utilities, taxes, food, insurance).
You are asking a good question! Mutual funds and ETFs share many similarities, so you may not need to change all of your holdings. Some things to keep in mind:
ETFs are not always cheaper to hold than simlarly indexed mutual funds. Check the expense ratios on both before you make a change.
ETFs trade like stocks, so are subject to stock trading fees every time you buy or sell. If you are regularly dollar cost averaging or adding to your investments, a mutual fund could be the better option.
ETFs are typically index driven as you say, but not always. There are actively managed ETFs out there and their fees are comparable to mutual funds. Also, an index may not always be the appropriate vehicle depending on the area of the market where you are investing. For example, I would rather have an active manager picking emerging market stocks based on research and analysis than have an index of all emerging market stocks available.
Tax efficiency doesn't make a difference in your IRA accounts, but lower expenses do.
What you call "converting" mutual funds to ETFs is simply selling the mutual funds and then using the proceeds to buy ETFs. In your IRA and Roth, this will not incur taxes, but in your brokerage account, you could be paying capital gains taxes on the mutual funds you sell.
Hope that helps!