Scary Financial Things

Halloween can be pretty scary – but not as scary as Open Enrollment for health coverage! Dates for open enrollment typically go from November 1st to December 15th for coverage starting January 1st of the coming year. Enrolling for healthcare (Flexible Spending, Dental, Health Savings Accounts or Medicare, among others) can scare the living daylights out of even the smartest, strongest people. We are presently in or near the “Open Enrollment for Healthcare” season.

Hitting the “Enroll” button is an action that people put off, sometimes even missing the deadline.  Don’t miss the deadline. 

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2020 Year End Tax Planning Tips

As we approach the end of the weirdest year ever, nearly everyone wants 2020 to be O-V-E-R (unless you love birthdays, and your birthday is between now and December 31st).

The year-end countdown has begun, and soon it will be too late to make certain positive changes to your 2020 tax situation.  Several of these items, if addressed now, could make a big or small difference to your 2020 tax filing, AND add to your savings.

Several of these items, if addressed now, could make a big or small difference to your 2020 tax filing, AND add to your savings. Photo by Thirdman on Pexels.com

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The Biggest Winners

It is only fair that if there was an edition two weeks ago titled “Biggest Losers” there be an accompanying edition, “Biggest Winners.” Because there are A LOT of winners out there. But the financial and news media do not sell advertising talking about winners.

Here are the most obvious Winners, especially financially speaking:

Several of my clients and I painfully combed through their spending as part of the financial planning process. In most cases, these people came out with a greater awareness of who and what is most important to them.

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Politics, Grief & Money

Is it just me or has the election season and political climate made it feel like someone died? In fact, in the case that someone actually has died in the past 8-12 months we have not even been able to grieve in a healthy way.

What a topic for a Friday! And why am I bringing it up? This topic could take far more than 2 minutes to cover (don’t worry, I’ll keep it short).

Unfortunately, people do pass away. I have experienced both tragic and sudden death in my family. Death is a terrible and sad topic, but certain aspects of death need to be addressed within the concept of money – as harsh as that sounds. Grief is part of the topic too.

Find someone to trust to walk alongside you in times of grief so that your money and financial life are the crutch you can lean on to get you through to the other side of grief and hard times.

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Biggest Losers

Upon recently personally experiencing the multiple shocks of:

  • Minimal amounts of people at rush hour in one of the typically busiest cities and train stations in the world,
  • Open parking spaces and empty parking lots at one of the busiest train lines in the world,
  • No lines at Starbucks in the typically busiest city in the world…

… I started thinking bigger-picture about who will be most deeply affected in the intermediate-term by the virus pandemic and the resulting slow-downs, shut-downs, cuts, and service eliminations. Near the top of the list of business types and job types negatively affected are (obviously),

  • Restaurants and their owners
  • Airlines
  • Commercial real estate property owners
  • Business conference managers
  • …the list goes on.
New York Penn Station at the morning “rush hour”, October 2, 2020.ation at “rush hour”

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