J.J. Feldman, co-head of wealth management, Helium Advisors

 J.J. Feldman, co-head of wealth management, Helium Advisors: A lot of our clients are in California, so on the cash-management side we’re using a lot of Treasury bills, which are paying over 5% and are state-income-tax free. And you can use ETFs as well, as the tax treatment flows through. One we like is the Goldman Sachs Treasury bill ETF, GBIL.

For their businesses, a lot of our clients have used one bank or credit union. So essentially if a client’s business has $2.5 million dollars, it’s all in one bank. We work with a program called Cantor Cash, where your money is spread out between multiple banks, with yields in the 4% to 5% range, and total deposits up to $25 million are covered under FDIC insurance. It’s almost like a fintech, where it looks to you like it’s just one balance. We also have some clients who are on the board of nonprofits and with last year’s bank scare, they said, “hey, our nonprofit has $5 million in one bank, we’re worried.” Their yield was about 50 basis points, and we’ve got them now to 4%-plus, and we’ve got it all FDIC insured under one platform.

Credit card interest rates have gone up dramatically, from about 15% to 25%. Some clients with large balances have come to us asking for the best solution. One of those clients had a life insurance policy with a cash value that was more than enough to pay off the credit cards. We borrowed from the policy, which had a borrowing rate of 5% but where the borrowed money still earns interest from the dividends from the life insurance company. So it was essentially a 0% loan to themselves, and they were able to pay off the credit card.