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Financial Planning

Take Time to Review Life Changes

In the coming weeks, depending on what state you live in and who your governor is, you may or may not be making plans to gather with family during this holiday season. Regardless of whether you’re staying home or heading to see loved ones for a little Christmas cheer, this is a perfect time to review the beneficiaries named on your accounts. (You know, in case of any bad thanksgiving turkey…) It’s also never a bad idea to think about and review any changes in your life that might trigger the need to update your legal documents, life insurance coverage or retirement accounts.

Gratitude for What We Can Control

To say 2020 has been a record year of people saying “I can’t believe that just happened!” would be an understatement. I think we can all agree on that! But the feeling I get from conversations these days that there’s a lot of uncertainty out there. With my OCD personality, when things get uncertain, I tend to hunker down and focus on what I can control.

Employee Benefits: Could you save money?

Labor Day typically cues up the start of the fall work season at the Family Financial Partners office, as we review the performance of financial plans and portfolios for our client families. In addition, this is the time when we review employee benefits with our client families, as many of you are receiving your renewal packets. If you’re self-employed and think this newsletter isn’t for you, simply skip down to where you see “self-employed” in bold.

How Much Should I Save?

Well, that was a heck of a Derby! I have to say, never before can I recall a 10-day period where I got to watch pro soccer, pro baseball, the NBA playoffs, the start of college football, the Kentucky Derby and tonight, the start of NFL football!

Stock Splits: A History Lesson

This week, I want to talk about stock splits, as I’ve been getting a few questions about what this means. Apple recently split their stock four-for-one, and Tesla split five-for-one. That means that if you used to own one share of Tesla worth, say, $2,000, you now have five shares worth $400 each. Stock splits certainly aren’t anything new, and were common during the late 1990s tech boom (more on that later). The split does not change the value of Tesla.

Change is the Only Certainty

The Smyth boys are back in school, and in the Smyth household it looked like this: One freaked out because he couldn’t find the Zoom login information for his very first class. After the freakout was over, he did manage to find the credentials with two minutes to spare. Crisis averted.

Mid-year Financial Checklist

We’re more than half-way through the crazy year that is 2020, and despite the unpredictable nature of everything we’ve experienced, it’s still important to check in with your goals and progress as we had into the latter part of 2020. Life may look a little different, but life is going on, one way or another.

Hitting the Reset Button

It seems to me like the whole world has just hit the reset button, sort of like when your computer is acting weird, so you just hit restart, hoping to smooth things out a little. We’ve looked for answers in Netflix. We’ve set up creative home offices. We’ve bought masks bearing the logos of our favorite sports teams while wondering when we’ll get to see them play again. We’ve accepted (some of) the things we can’t change, and we’re adjusting accordingly as best we can.

4 Ways the World has Changed

As we’re slowly coming out of the lockdown and things are settling into a new normal, I’ve been noticing changes around me in how the world works and how we humans are interacting with that world, and with each other. Today I wanted to share some of my observations, and also hear from you about the changes you’re observing.

It’s Clear: Communication is Key

One of the most interesting things about my job as a financial planner is that in the conversations I have with clients, I get to look in through the proverbial kitchen window and see how couples communicate. Now, I make it a practice never to throw any of my clients under the bus in my weekly newsletter. But there’s nothing that says I can’t throw my parents under the bus!

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