Personal Bookkeeping

Your Financial Planner

Let Summerville & Associates be your financial planner with the same financial accounting and bookkeeping services we offer to our business clients with the same goal in mind; to reduce your tax liabilities and maximize your assets. Life can, at times, be more complicated than business when it comes to personal accounting and taxes, and the laws are constantly changing.

You need a qualified financial advisor to be sure your personal accounting is sound and that you are claiming all the tax benefits you can! Our team of experts is here to assist you through the many financial accounting stages and transitions of your life and ensure the security of your financial future.

Financial Accounting & Stages of Life We all enter adulthood as single people with little concern for financial accounting. Age varies for singles, as do life situations; some may even have dependent children to consider. Everything from life after college to making choices regarding job related tax issues can have a big impact on your end of the year tax bill, as well as your retirement plans that you’re not even thinking about yet. For those still in school, saving for their children’s college funds or paying for child care all have tax incentives that can have an impact on their tax liability. Our financial advisors can help you get on track with strong personal accounting plans that will help you now and in the future.

When the time comes, there is more to planning your wedding than picking out rings and which caterer to use, there is the financial side of your partnership to consider too. Joining together, a whole new world of financial options and responsibilities are gifted to you. Having the experience of a professional financial planner by your side will help you both make sound decisions and provide you with the confidence you need to begin building a solid future together.

What if you choose not to marry? Life partners include gay and lesbian couples and couples of any age who choose not to get married. These couples face unique financial challenges because the IRS does not allow them to file joint tax returns. Some issues include; who claims the children, who should own the home, how to split income and how you should apply for financing of any type. Our qualified financial advisors understand these issues and can help you work through them for the greatest benefit.

Once you have settled into your life, families have a long life cycle. There are many financial planning opportunities over the years. These opportunities can involve income shifting, saving for college, tax credits, estate planning, succession and dependency exemption issues, to name a few. Obviously, the ins and outs of all of these issues can be very complex. A Summerville & Associate financial planner can help you make sense of it all and move forward confidently!

Events you may need a Financial Advisor for Life will inevitably be full of situations that require you to make decisions regarding your personal accounting. Some of them planned and expected, some not. Summerville & Associates can help you plan and prepare for all of them!

Divorce – Property settlements, who owns family home, tax basis of property transferred, payment of medical expenses, payment of children education, filing MFJ vs. MFS tax returns, alimony vs. child support, recapture of alimony, deductibility of legal fees, paying estimated taxes, innocent spouse relief. Death – Separating income between deceased and estate, filing individual tax return of decedent, filing fiduciary trust return for estate or trusts, signing tax returns on behalf of deceased, basis of inherited property, surviving spouse status

Illness or Disability – Medicaid benefits, safeguarding assets, deductibility of at home care, nursing home deductions, dependency issues Relocation – Moving expenses, selling home, buying home, taxability of employer relocation packages, multiple state tax returns, paying too much social security tax. Retirement – Gift giving, long term health care options, standard vs. itemized deduction, selling home, buying vacation property, early retirement, taxability of pension income. Personal Financial Statements – Why do you need them? Whenever you begin any new venture, whether it’s losing 5 pounds or running a marathon, you need to have a starting point, a point of reference, which lets you know how far you’ve come and how far you have to go. This is true with your financial situation as well. If you want to become wealthier than you are, you need to have current financial statements to have a tracking system.

Personal financial statements can be as simple as a monthly analysis of income and expenses used by an individual to answer questions like: Did I make enough income to cover my expenses this month? What am I spending money on and should I try to reduce/increase any of those areas? Is my net worth increasing? Am I taking on good debt (such as loans to buy houses that pay me each month) as opposed to bad debt (like extra cars, boats and vacation homes which cost me money each month)? Once a personal financial statement is compiled, these statements can be used to plan for retirement, secure loans and invest.

Building wealth takes a different mindset, one that presents a view that YOU are a business. You have Accounts Receivable (money in) and you have Accounts Payable (money out), you have Assets (things that you own) and Liabilities (things that you owe). And, like a business you need a way to measure progress and compare what is working for you and what is not. Summerville & Associates has a solution to help you keep more of the money that you make and turn those dollars saved into assets! We will help you implement a system designed to measure your results as well as help you understand the reports and what they mean to you.