Financial Planning

It is common to parody accountants as tightly wrapped number-crunchers oriented more toward dollars than human emotions, religious beliefs, moral debates and political controversies.

For regular income tax purposes, qualified residence interest is deductible as an itemized deduction in computing taxable income.

A majority of Californians believe that they can do a better job of investing a portion of their Social Security payments than the government can -- even though 80 percent admit that they have little or no investing experience, according to a recent poll.

The Financial Planning Association filed a petition in a District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals challenging a Securities and Exchange Commission rule exempting certain broker/dealers from the requirements of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940.

The American Institute of CPAs, the AICPA Foundation, the National Endowment for Financial Education and the American Red Cross have launched a new, broad-based disaster preparedness and planning guide for consumers.

The American College, based here, and the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors have partnered to create the Financial Services Specialist designation, a new financial planning credential.

Employers and their advisors are still trying to puzzle through the creation of health savings accounts.

Sherman Hanna is a professor of consumer sciences at Ohio State University. He is also the co-author of a new measure that he says is a better way to calculate how much risk people are willing to take in their investments. It has an interesting twist.

FIDELITY, AICPA EXTEND PARTNERSHIP PACT: Financial services conglomerate Fidelity Investments has extended its partnership with the American Institute of CPAs to assist CPAs in establishing investment advisory practices.

CPAs advertising their services used to be against the rules, until regulators began loosening those restrictions about 25 years ago.