…And so it begins – another school year, and another fall season.
As you recover from a busy summer and prepare for fall, and all the images that term evokes, I want to ask you how you’re doing with your own financial goals for the year.
Surely you have them, and I really hope you’re on track to beat them. There’s one thing, though: Regardless of whether you hit or miss them, how will that impact not only your taxes, but also, your savings and any purchase goals you’ve set.
Interest rates, for example, continue to rise, and despite the White House failing to mention “inflation” or attempting to redefine it, it simply costs more to buy things that it did two years ago – in some cases, IF you can find those things.
The house a young couple could swing four years ago is far larger than that same couple can buy today. The same goes for anything that would be purchased on credit today.
Still, there are ways to mitigate that, and most of them start with your income – more specifically, how you manage your income and how you protect it from the tax man. No, you can’t avoid paying taxes, but putting your money in the right places – both pre- and post-tax – can help to keep you in control of more of it.
Is it easy to talk about money after doing back-to-school shopping? Hardly! Every year it seems to cost far more than it did before, and the lists of what’s needed just for class (to say nothing of being “cool”) is almost outrageously long.
In the end, though, you still have a responsibility to yourself and your family, and that’s what this is really about. In many instances, my team and I can look at – and give you – strategies to tweak income. Sometimes, it puts more money in your pocket, in others, it allows you to save it into retirement accounts for use later.
…And then there’s this: while the strategies we can put into play might make a small difference, you can control the biggest ones:
How much your time is worth. What you’re willing to work for. How much (or where) you choose to live and what expenses you deem appropriate.
Sometimes – and we see this happen a LOT – good people make buying decisions based on the status quo, and when that changes, or things like inflation or interest rates rise, it can catch us off guard. In some cases, it becomes smarter to create a plan to get out of a scenario rather than trying to simply bootstrap your way through it. We can help you work through those types of conversations, too.
Give us a call and let’s talk about where you want to go and how we can get you there.
All the best,
Sincerely,
