The second quarter of 2019 ended about the same way it started, with positive returns across the financial markets. Let’s recap what happened, what we learned and where we go from here.

I recently attended the American Institute of CPA’s’ (AICPA) annual mega conference ENGAGE, which is a consolidation of several different technical conferences. My focus is always on the Advanced Personal Financial Planning track, but with sessions on Advanced Estate Planning and Tax Strategies for High-Income Individuals, there is an incredible amount of high quality content crammed into just a few days. Much of that content is technical in nature and more suited to practitioners, but I had a number of takeaways to share

Given the sharp political divide in our country right now, it's rare to see legislation that enjoys widespread bipartisan support. Yet in May, the House voted on a bill that would make substantial changes to our retirement system, and it received near unanimous support. The SECURE (Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement) Act of 2019 passed in the House of Representatives in a 417-3 vote, but the bill has stalled in the Senate as legislators debate some of the key provisions.

In recent years, we have had the opportunity to travel to some amazing parts of the world. From the Seregenti in Tanzania, the Bocas del Toro Islands in Panama, and the Lofoten Islands in Arctic Norway, there seems to be a direct correlation between the level of difficulty to get to a destination and the perspective that destination provides. We recently spent a week in the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador, one of those places that takes a lot of travel to get to, but which affords an incredible perspective on life once you are there.

I grew up around horses. My grandparents owned a horse farm and my uncle trained and rode horses. I’ve been going to horse races since I was born and the third weekend in May is always blocked off on my calendar for Preakness.

Tax season is always a challenging time. We have a significant amount of work to do in a very limited amount of time. This year felt like one of the more difficult filing deadlines we’ve had in recent memory. There were two big factors that contributed to this...