Is all investment advice equal? Seems like an easy question to answer, right? We assume that someone who is providing financial advice knows what they’re talking about. The problem is that isn’t always the case. In fact, there is no educational requirement for those who...
Online banking has been growing for years, but local bankers say the coronavirus pandemic has turbocharged the trend. They’ve seen customers rapidly moving to a variety of digital banking applications, including online check depositing, electronic signatures for loan documents and digital wallets, which store credit and...
by Amy Lane Chocolate maker. Alpaca farm. Experiential bookstore. Winery. Preschool center. Kombucha company. Differing businesses, all challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic. And all helped by a local fund offering aid to the smallest of the small: Businesses with nine or fewer employees. Borne to help businesses that are...
[caption id="attachment_42426" align="alignright" width="439"] Dennis Prout, Shea Petaja and Heidi Thompson. Photo by Michael Poehlman Photography[/caption] Every week, Dennis Prout hops behind a microphone at WTCM in downtown Traverse City for New Retirement Radio, a one-hour program on NewsTalk 580 that’s made him a little bit...
Healthy Start Child Care has been providing much-needed day care for families in the Traverse City area for a quarter of a century. But the coronavirus epidemic, which prompted Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to order the temporary closure of most day care operations, threatened to shut the...
Local business leaders have high hopes that an unconventional, little-known federal tax incentive could pump millions of dollars of new commercial and residential investment into a low-income section of Grand Traverse County. A 6.2 square-mile swath of land including a large area of Garfield Township and...
One financial advisor manages more than $600 million in investments for his wealthy northern Michigan clients. Another handles a celebrity's stock portfolio, among others. Though there is no public, empirical data available ranking financial advisors by dollars under management, many sources like WealthMinder consistently point...
Hiring a full-time, in-house CFO is an expensive proposition, especially for small or mid-sized businesses without a lot of capital to burn. Perhaps not surprisingly, accounting firms and other businesses are filling the void by offering a service that frees businesses from needing a full-time CFO. These...
Financial institutions have long competed for deposits using a variety of lures, including promotional interest rates, tote bags and toasters. Frankfort-based State Savings Bank, which entered the Traverse City market last year, even offers a free pie to anyone who switches a checking account from another...
The numbers don’t lie: Unconventional mortgage loans are making a comeback. In 2018, unconventional mortgage lending hit its highest rate since before the subprime mortgage crisis and the ensuing Great Recession. Whether or not you’re involved in the financial industry, that statement may worry you, since...
