As a child, I always wondered why my siblings and I and all of my friends had summer or fall birthdays ranging from July 4 through Thanksgiving. We could never figure it out! As an adult, I now completely understand – within each calendar year, there’s a social season and stay-in-and-cuddle season. For all of you with birthdays in that range, trust me, you’ll never look at birthdays the same. Our parents were Netflix-and-chilling before there was Netflix.
With inflation at all-time highs these days, many people are feeling the pinch in their budgets, and are looking for ways to cut costs, tighten the belt, and find a little extra cash. Refinancing your mortgage could still be a way to mitigate those daily effects on your budget. True, rates aren’t at the historic lows we saw last year, but you could still save some money.
t’s the most wonderful time of the year, and no, I’m not talking about the chill in the air – I’m talking about that time of year when we all get to file our taxes with Uncle Sam. Now, I know many of you hear “taxes” and clinch up in fear of this year’s bill, but this week, I’m going to focus more on how things work behind the scenes in our office.
World War Three. There, I said it. People have nightmares about this stuff. People make movies about this stuff. People write fiction and sci-fi about this stuff. People look at the First World War, they look at the Second World War, and say, “No, we’ll never have World War Three because now we have so many nukes between the US and Russia, our mutual destruction would be guaranteed.”
When it comes to the markets and how your investments perform over the course of your career, there isn’t much we can say for certain. Markets are hard to predict! But one thing we can say is this: if the basics of saving aren’t there, it doesn’t matter how well investments are performing. You have to build that base.
As I was preparing to write this article, I mentioned in the office that I was going to be focusing on saving and debt. I got a puzzled look from a team member. “Um, Dave, it’s the month of Valentine’s Day. Are you sure you want to talk about death?”
We had a good laugh, and while it’s true that you’ll save money and yes, eventually die, there’re are quite a few places in between where you’ll likely take on some debt to help you move through life.
After two decades in this business, one of the most common questions I hear is, why should someone hire a financial advisor? Why should someone pay for this service that my team provides? These questions frequently come from DIY investors who work part-time as their own advisor, whether or not that’s something they’re trained for (it never is).
When it comes to how much you should save up in your emergency fund, there’s all kinds of advice available out there about this topic. We’re not going to waste either of our time – go ahead and Google it! I guarantee you that, based on that search and how conservative you are or aren’t, the answer to that question is going to be different. That’s the beauty of Google – they learn the personality of the person searching and give you the information you want to hear.
Before I start on my comments about what’s been going on, I want you to know that I’ve been working on what to say for the last 30 days. Now that we’re a month into the year, I can add some color to what we’re seeing.
We’ve been talking this month about investing in yourself, your family and your home, and one thing we notice when talking with clients is that people have a tendency to focus on the here-and-now. They don’t think about all the ways they can invest in their future on a daily basis right now.
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