Blending Hope & Reality
Happy New Year!
First of all, Happy New Year to everyone! I hope you had a great break and you were able to relax and enjoy some time with your family.
As we roll into a new year, there’s always some excitement surrounding what’s possible. Whether it be new year’s resolutions, the prospect of growing your family, or the thought of finally taking that leap and starting your own business, the beginning of a new year brings with it a sense of hope.
Throughout this quarter, we want to help harness that hope and share some ways to help steer it in the direction you want to go.
First Things First
The first thing we would recommend doing is taking some time to assess how you did in 2021. This process will look different for everyone, but we broke this down into two categories/life stages; pre-retirement and in retirement.
Pre-Retirement
We fully understand that this stage of life is very broad. This could include a young person fresh out of college with a lot of debt, a middle-aged person with a family and growing career, as well as empty nesters with retirement right on the horizon.
With that being said, we want to lay out some questions we believe would be helpful to ask yourself for most people who fall in this category.
- How much did you save last year?
- We believe asking this as a percentage of your income is the best way to answer this question.
- A good goal is to be saving 15-20% of your income.
- Are you putting your money towards the best (most efficient and/or most important) thing?
- Are you saving a lot for retirement, but carrying a bunch of high interest credit card debt?
- Is travel with your family important to you, but you’re not saving for that?
- If you have a financial plan, how are you tracking towards your goals?
- Retirement, kid’s college, vacation home, travel…etc?
- Do you need to make adjustments to your saving, spending, or your goals?
Retirement
Just like people working towards retirement, we understand having retirement as a category/life stage is broad as well. This could include someone who retired yesterday as well as someone who has been retired for thirty years and anywhere in between.
We believe the following questions can be helpful for most who fall into the category of retired.
- How much did you spend last year?
- Was it more or less than you projected?
- If it was significantly different, why? Was this because of a one time expense or something that will continue?
- Are you doing the things that make you happy?
- Are you doing the traveling you’d hoped to do?
- Are you getting to spend the time you’d hoped for with your family? If not, is there something you can do to change this?
- Are there any hobbies you thought you’d be doing, but aren’t? Any that you started, but aren’t what you’d hoped?
- Are you volunteering in a way that fills you up?
- Did anything happen in the past year that has changed how you see your future going?
- New family member (grandchild or great-grandchild)?
- Health issue for you or your spouse?
- A new need to provide help for another family member (parent, child, grandchild…etc)
There are other questions that can be asked in both life stages as well, but this is a good starting place.
What’s Next?
Now that you’ve taken the time to thoughtfully consider your previous year, it’s time to shift your focus to this year.
Based on the same two life stages, below are some questions to think through as you begin to plan for this upcoming year.
Pre-Retirement
- What would make this year great?
- This could be financial, but I like to think about things that are most important to me like my family and how I spend my time.
- Where is the best place to put your money?
- Pay off debt? Save for retirement? Save for another goal?
- Do you have any big planned expenses coming up this year?
- Wedding? Having a baby? Big trip? Planned debt payoff?
- How much do you need to be saving to reach your goals?
- Followed by how much can you afford to bump up your monthly saving?
Retirement
- What would make this year great?
- This could be financial, but I like to think about things that are most important to me like my family and how I spend my time.
- How do you want to spend your money?
- After your fixed, necessary spending it’s a good idea to prioritize the things that are most important to you and spend your money on them.
- Do you need to make any changes to your estate plan?
- This is something we recommend looking at every 2-3 years regardless.
- Do you have any changes to your medical directives? Any legacy plan changes?
- How do you want to spend your time?
- What do you enjoy doing? Is there a cause you want to spend more time supporting? Do you want to travel more?
Monthly Minute
Be on the lookout this quarter for more helpful information on how to get your year off to a good start in our upcoming Monthly Minute releases.
Get to Know Our Team
Both the Hyde and Ray families also enjoyed the Christmas break. It was extra special for Kyle and Genna as they got to see Christmas through Blair’s eyes for the first time!
The Hyde’s also got to celebrate two birthdays last quarter as Charlotte turned 8 and Noah turned 4.
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