We are officially opening the search for a new Administrative Assistant. We need your help keeping an eye out for someone exceptional who might be a good fit for our team. Interested in learning more? Watch this video for some thoughts on our culture at Hill Investment Group and then contact me for a job description. We hope to identify the ideal candidate within the first quarter of 2015.

Want to know what others in our industry say about how much impact the ideal assistant can make? Click here to read this story from ThinkAdvisor…

I attended the CFA Society of Houston’s Rice Wealth Management Symposium entitled “Putting Investors First” this month, where I heard Sharon Carson of J.P. Morgan discuss her Guide to Retirement. Investors often struggle with understanding which aspects of their retirement and investment planning they can actually control. Sharon shared this graphic, which clearly depicts the four areas of planning where you have some measure of control—and the two where you have none.

For the final post in our tax management series, we’ll take a look at asset location. Everybody knows the three rules of real estate, but most don’t know that the same rule also applies to investment portfolio construction.

Asset location is the practice of positioning tax-inefficient assets in tax-advantaged accounts. For example, fixed income and REITs should first be held in tax-deferred accounts like an IRA, 401(k), or 403(b) while tax-free municipal bonds and equities should be positioned in taxable accounts.

A recent study by Vanguard estimated that professional advisors can add up to .75% annually to investment returns by utilizing proper asset location in client accounts. It is all too frequent that we find new clients coming on board with poor use of asset location, but with a few simple tweaks we can align your investments to maximize your after-tax return.