Your Financial Calendar
by SGL Financial
Our 2 Cents – Episode #242
Your Financial Calendar
We’re ready to roll on this episode of Our 2 Cents! On today’s show, the Lewits close out January with a timely discussion on financial wellness—plus a clear roadmap to help you set your financial course for the year ahead. Tune in using the link below!
- Gabriel’s Quick Hits:
- Just a little Fed update…
- What do Americans think about the morals and ethical standards of these professions?
- January is Financial Wellness Month:
- What is financial wellness, and what does it mean for your financial future?
- Annual Financial Planning Calendar:
- Here’s your month-by-month guide designed to help you stay organized and confident throughout the year.
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Podcast Transcript
Announcer: You’re listening to Our 2 Cents with the team from SGL Financial, Building Wealth for Life. Steve Lewit is the President of SGL Financial and Gabriel Lewit is the CEO. They’re here to discuss all the latest and financial news, trends, strategies, and more.
Gabriel Lewit: All right, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Our 2 Cents with Gabriel Lewit here and Steve Lewit, joining you today from our lovely studio.
Steve Lewit: Continuing to play the role of this second penny.
Gabriel Lewit: There you go.
Steve Lewit: Very dramatic.
Gabriel Lewit: I’m glad you’re still excited to be the second penny.
Steve Lewit: I should write a book, The Second Penny.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, we’re excited to talk to you today. We’ve got, I think, a great lineup of topics ready to roll. Of course, we hope you’re staying warm. It’s been a brutally cold week this week.
Steve Lewit: I can’t warm up.
Gabriel Lewit: Every morning, I keep looking at the temperature thinking it’s going to warm up and it keeps saying zero degrees, one degree, two degrees. Yeah.
Steve Lewit: It also says warming trend coming and I’m like, “Well, where? Where are you?”
Gabriel Lewit: Well, one degree to five degrees is a warming trend.
Steve Lewit: Yes, that’s right. Yes, it is.
Gabriel Lewit: You got to look forward to something.
Steve Lewit: I’m looking forward to 20 now or 10.
Gabriel Lewit: It’s funny because I was thinking about going on a spring break trip with my kids and we were weighing this option of going somewhere to maybe go skiing. Right? They wanted to go skiing and my mom lives out in Park City.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: And then we had this cold spell, and I decided I will refuse to go somewhere cold for their spring break.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s like cold is cold enough.
Gabriel Lewit: I want to go somewhere warm. Yeah. So we’ll figure that out.
Steve Lewit: Yep.
Gabriel Lewit: But anyways, we hope you’re doing great. We’re going to jump in with a couple of just smaller topics to kick us off here for today. Just a quick touch on this because we don’t want to spend too much time. The Fed, the Federal Reserve, had its first meeting of the year.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. The “do nothing” Fed.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Well, they had been doing things last year.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, but not this year yet.
Gabriel Lewit: But so far this year, they decided to hold rates steady.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Now it’s funny because we saw an entire article on what to do when the Fed holds rates steady. Well, it’s not a lot to do.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. I’m wondering why we have this. You gave us …
Gabriel Lewit: We’re just updating people.
Steve Lewit: You gave us a one-minute position here.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, that’s about all I wanted to say is they held rates steady. We’ll keep an eye on it for you this year if there’s something meaningful that that means for you. We talked a bit about the economy last time. So we’re not going to dig too deep into that. Just something to keep on your radar. We like to keep track of these things for you.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. And the Fed is watching unemployment numbers and inflation numbers, and all of those are kind of steady within the norms so they decided not to do anything. And I haven’t heard any rhetoric from the president yet so we’ll see what that’s about.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. The one thing I thought was funny about this article is just it says, “Your checking accounts will still probably pay you about 0.07% interest.”
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Which if you’re not tracking, 0.07% is less than one-10th of 1%. So it’s pretty low. And you made it …
Steve Lewit: It’s like zero. It’s zero, folks.
Gabriel Lewit: I think I went into my checking account the other day and I was looking at transactions and I saw interest of 10 cents or something. I was like, “Yes.”
Steve Lewit: Yep. Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: “Big money.” Big money, right?
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Well, anywhos, that’s all we wanted to say about that.
Steve Lewit: With those earnings, you can fly first class.
Gabriel Lewit: You sure could. All right. So now, Steve came across a pretty interesting article and actually we’re just looking at the graph more than anything. We thought we would talk about it a little bit on the show. And the graph is titled here, or the chart, How Americans View the Morality of Various Professions.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay? And then the subtitle here says, “How would you rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in the following fields?” And the options, of course, are high/very high, average, no opinion, or low/very low. Okay? Now, Mr. And Mrs. Listener, what would you think is the number one item on the list here of the highest morality and ethical standards of any profession on the list?
Steve Lewit: Maybe we should give the in-between a little bit because there are so many.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I thought I’d start with what you might think the highest is, right? We’ll give you a little beat here to think about it. All right.
Steve Lewit: Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: There you go. You got a beat? Now the answer is, you may not be surprised to hear this, nurses.
Steve Lewit: Nurses are the most ethical and honest in the opinion of …
Gabriel Lewit: People.
Steve Lewit: People of all professions.
Gabriel Lewit: Of all professions. Yeah. Now interesting, this one, I’m not sure if it counts as a profession per se, but military veterans was second on the list.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. There’s a high trust of someone that’s been in the military through the wars and it’s like, “That’s a good person.”
Gabriel Lewit: Yep. The next, third on the list, is medical doctors.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. No, I was a little surprised at that.
Gabriel Lewit: Now at 57%, okay? Because nurses were 75%, so big drop off right there between …
Steve Lewit: Military.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Okay? And then you have, funny, I wouldn’t have guessed this, pharmacists at 53%.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Well, when I go to Walgreens and I go to the pharmacists, I’m like, “Yeah, they know what they’re talking about.” There’s immediate trust there.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: For some reason. I don’t know why, but there is.
Gabriel Lewit: And then we’ll round this out with the high school teachers at 50%, and then there’s a substantial drop-off there to the next one, which is accountants at 35%.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay?
Steve Lewit: But I am not surprised to see that funeral directors are high on the list.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I actually was going to say high is kind of relative. If only 32% of people have high confidence, that means 68% think they have average or low to very low or no opinion. There’s actually not a lot of no opinions on it.
Steve Lewit: But very low is only 8%.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: So, everything else was in-between. Yeah. I mean, it’s not great, but it still ranks pretty high in the relative hierarchy of morality.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Now rounding out the list here is police officers and clergy at 27%. And all of these have higher, positive high/very high scores than they do low/very low scores, meaning they’re net positive.
Steve Lewit: Right.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay?
Steve Lewit: Yep.
Gabriel Lewit: All the others that we’re going to get to here have higher negative scores. More people think that they’re very low or low on honesty and ethical standards than people think that they are high or very high.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay? So I’m going to flip this in reverse and give you a beat. I’m not going anywhere with this, but what do you think the lowest ranking one …
Steve Lewit: Profession.
Gabriel Lewit: Profession on the list …
Steve Lewit: What is the lowest ranking profession?
Gabriel Lewit: With the highest low/very low rating on honesty and ethical standards is?
Steve Lewit: Very high. 71% of people …
Gabriel Lewit: At a whopping 71%.
Steve Lewit: Think this profession is dishonest and unethical.
Gabriel Lewit: Yep. We have members of Congress.
Steve Lewit: Members of Congress, folks.
Gabriel Lewit: This is not about either side, by the way.
Steve Lewit: Right.
Gabriel Lewit: So, it’s kind of sad, but you can laugh about it, I guess. Next on the list is telemarketers …
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay? At 62%. I mean, I guess I just hate all telemarketers in general. Five people said that they think they’re high/very high. So you get that telemarketer on the phone and you’re like, “God, I really love this guy. They’re telling me the truth.”
Steve Lewit: 5%, yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: 5% of you out there. I don’t know who you are.
Steve Lewit: Who love telemarketers. Yeah, why?
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And then you got, no surprise on this one, car salesmen, or people because they could be a woman, at 50% basically unfavorable ratings on honesty and ethical standards. Only 7% as high, okay? High or very high. Now I think the reason you brought this up is because you talk a lot at your … If you listen to our show, Steve talks a lot at seminars. He talks a lot in general. And right now, he’s not talking at all because his microphone filter pop thing is 10 feet away from his microphone so he wouldn’t be able to hear himself so I was hoping he’ll fix that.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, you can hear. I got a voice that projects.
Gabriel Lewit: But I think you brought this up because there’s this unfortunate thing in our industry where people don’t really always trust the advice from their financial advisor.
Steve Lewit: Yes. Now this in particular, Gabriel …
Gabriel Lewit: Doesn’t say financial advisors.
Steve Lewit: It says stockbrokers and those are people that are very transactional and always trying to sell you something, so they should have another category in here of financial advisors. But stockbrokers, 41% of people distrust or don’t think they’re ethical or honest.
Gabriel Lewit: And 9% did.
Steve Lewit: Only 9% did. This is going to be terrible. What really disappointed me is the last time I saw this, which was about four years ago, lawyers were below stockbrokers and lawyers have climbed up there a little bit.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, I also like to point out we have accountants on staff too.
Steve Lewit: Oh, yes. That is true.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, so I think what this brings up, other than just being interesting, right? I thought this one was interesting. Building contractors, a good 50/50 split right down the middle. Okay? 21% of people thought they could be very honest and ethical. 22% of people thought they were very dishonest/unethical. If you’ve ever had a bad contractor experience, I know I have, it’s a challenge.
Steve Lewit: It is.
Gabriel Lewit: It’s a challenge out there.
Steve Lewit: They say a lot of promises and often very little delivery.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And so I think the idea here is if you’re out there, you’re looking for a new advisor, you’re looking for an accountant, a CPA, how do you find someone that you can trust? Because you always talk about this, Dad, that trust is really the foundation of the business that we’re in with working with people, helping people plan their retirements, their futures, their financial wellbeing, their lives. That’s paramount.
Steve Lewit: Doing what you say you’re going to do, answering phone calls, returning emails, all of those feed into a level of trust. And knowing your business.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And at least us here at SGL, we’re on a mission to change that number.
Steve Lewit: That would be we here at SGL.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Well, we’re on a mission to up that number substantially, okay? And obviously, it’s one client at a time and there’s tens of millions of people out there that we probably would never be able to even talk to just given how many hundreds of millions of people there are in the world.
Steve Lewit: For sure.
Gabriel Lewit: But that is always our goal, right? To provide trustworthy guidance, reliable guidance, an opinion you can feel confident in, give you transparency, pros and cons, a solid, sound financial planning, a roadmap for the future, and really give you the ability to not worry about the money side of things day in and day out.
Steve Lewit: That’s our goal. And it’s hard for you folks because our industry, now again we’re not stockbrokers, but the entire financial industry for the most part is not a very transparent industry. There are a lot of things going on below the surface that you don’t see that could affect you financially or emotionally. I don’t want to make this an advertisement, but what we try to do is just be upfront about everything. You can ask us any question about our business or fees or commissions or whatever it is and just tell you the way it is. And that’s the way we run our business.
Gabriel Lewit: Indeed. And we hope we’ll raise the bar.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Yep. So anyways, again, hope you thought that just was interesting in general. And if you have questions, of course, give us a call. 847-499-3330 or go to info@sglfinancial.com. Or I guess you can’t go there. You could email us at info@sglfinancial.com or go to our website at sglfinancial.com. That’s the cold seeping into my brain.
Steve Lewit: Right.
Gabriel Lewit: It’s frozen, I think.
Steve Lewit: And all I can say is us here will be waiting for your inquiry.
Gabriel Lewit: Us here will be.
Steve Lewit: Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes, indeed.
Steve Lewit: Yes, us will.
Gabriel Lewit: Exactly. Folks, if you haven’t noticed, if you listen to the show long enough, you’ll notice that my dad’s favorite thing to do is to correct my grammar as if he’s the perfect grammar man on every single thing he ever says.
Steve Lewit: That one thing has nothing to do with the other.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Well, let’s move on to our main topic for today, which I think I hinted at this last week.
Steve Lewit: You did.
Gabriel Lewit: And we are still in the month of January so we can still officially say that it’s Financial Wellness Month.
Steve Lewit: It still is.
Gabriel Lewit: Which January is the month of financial wellness.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Now first thing first to clarify any confusion that’s out there: There is such a thing as Financial Literacy Month that you might have heard of. This is different than Financial Wellness Month. Now I don’t know, and I’ve said this before, I don’t know who the person is that gets to create months like this.
Steve Lewit: I want my own month.
Gabriel Lewit: Right?
Steve Lewit: I’m going to create a month.
Gabriel Lewit: Can we create podcasts for Steve and Gabe Month?
Steve Lewit: Sure, sure. Why not?
Gabriel Lewit: You do whatever you want to, right?
Steve Lewit: Why not? Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: I don’t know how you get it out there though so it’s on these public domains, right? But yeah, so Financial Literacy Month is in April and Financial Wellness Month is in January and they do have different meanings. Okay, so Financial Wellness Month is focusing on a fresh start, right? Start of a new year.
Steve Lewit: Getting organized.
Gabriel Lewit: Habits, goals, overall financial wellbeing.
Steve Lewit: Budgets.
Gabriel Lewit: Kind of like the financial version of a resolution list, if you will.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: To some extent. Okay?
Steve Lewit: Good analogy.
Gabriel Lewit: And then Financial Literacy Month, which again is in April, prioritizes education, right? So the focus is on teaching and learning just general facts and skills behind smart money choices.
Steve Lewit: Yet part of financial wellness is financial literacy. So in Financial Wellness Month, you might consider taking a course in something like options or understanding budgets or investments or something like that.
Gabriel Lewit: Correct, yeah. And so the entire goal here is there’s, I think, a very sad statistic, just to add another statistic to our show here today, which is 43% of US adults say that money hurts their mental health, triggering stress, worry, lost sleep, and even depression. And then on the other side of that fence, when people feel financially stable, they sleep better and maintain better focus in their daily lives.
Steve Lewit: This was quite some time ago, but I read that 47%, something pretty high, over 40%, 50%, of divorces were related to finances.
Gabriel Lewit: I forget the statistic, but it’s something large like that.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes.
Steve Lewit: It’s big.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And so, okay, what do you do about this, right? Well, some employers and schools or community programs, they might offer tools and resources. A lot of people, for whatever reason, they don’t click on those, even if they have them. I’d say what else you could do? Listen consistently to a show like ours or another one, right? If they’re out there and you like it and you listen consistently, that could be your financial resolution or wellness goal for the year is to listen to something regularly that’s going to give you more knowledge because you never know what you’ll pick up on a show. All right? And then the other thing is just committing to learning, and that could be the goal for the year, right? Whatever format it takes, just say, “Hey, I’m going to learn something more about my finances this year to put myself on a better path.”
Steve Lewit: Yeah. And you might try … Audiobooks on finances are terrific. I listened to one a few months ago. I’m not a big audiobook fan because I’d rather read, but it was terrific.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. No, audiobooks are great. I have a, unfortunately … Well, I won’t say unfortunately. I have a five-minute commute. So about the time you’d even get started on an audiobook, you’d be pulling into the driveway so no audiobooks for me. But yeah, those are great for anyone that has a commute of 15, 20, 30 minutes or beyond.
Steve Lewit: For sure. Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: And if you have a two-hour commute to the city and back, maybe you’re audio-booking it up on the regular because that’s a long drive.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. I think the idea of wellness is to think of money, how it is integrated with your health because one thing affects the other. Your health affects your finances. In other words, if you’re running through a medical issue, then that affects your finances. And your finances, as Gabriel said, affects your emotions and peace of mind. So those two are very closely connected and oftentimes we divorce them. It’s natural to say, “Oh, money’s here and my emotions are there,” but that is not so.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Yeah, no. Exactly. And so with the spirit of Financial Wellness Month in mind, we are going to give you a brief review of an annual financial planning calendar, if you will. Okay? So this is typically something that I would say we don’t do all these things every month. Instead, we do these all throughout the year with our clients on various meeting schedules. But let’s say you’re working out there on your own, you’re investing on your own, you need some sort of system for how to navigate all this stuff. The challenge is doing all these things all at once on your own …
Steve Lewit: Impossible.
Gabriel Lewit: Can feel very overwhelming.
Steve Lewit: I think it’s impossible.
Gabriel Lewit: So, breaking things down, right? “Okay, I’ll do one thing this month. I’m going to do one thing next month, one thing in March, one thing in April.” That can sometimes really help to make this achievable.
Steve Lewit: It’s like the organizer that wants to organize your house. They say, “Hey, don’t tackle your entire house.”
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: “Do one closet, do a drawer, then do the living room, do the bathroom. Do it one at a time.” And then it’ll get done because it’s manageable. You like that.
Gabriel Lewit: No, I like how you say drawer.
Steve Lewit: Drawer.
Gabriel Lewit: You open the drawer.
Steve Lewit: Drawer. Drawer. Drawer. Hey, when you grow up in the South Bronx in New York …
Gabriel Lewit: You open the drawer.
Steve Lewit: When you open …
Gabriel Lewit: Say it again?
Steve Lewit: Drawer.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: Drawer.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. So you draw …
Steve Lewit: How would you say it?
Gabriel Lewit: Drawer.
Steve Lewit: Drawer. Drawer. All right. When you open your drawer … That’s my Bronx accent coming out.
Gabriel Lewit: I know. I just like to point it out when it comes out.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: It’s kind of fun.
Gabriel Lewit: I was watching a comedy special the other day and he’s Latin American and he has a Latin American accent by default. And he would periodically do an American accent and it’s just so mind-blowing to me to think about other people with their accents doing an American accent, but it’s always funny when you hear it.
Steve Lewit: It is funny. Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: All of a sudden, it’s like, “Whoa.” It kind of blows your mind. Anyways, yeah. Accents are fun. Okay, so let’s get into this annual financial planning calendar. And we’ll probably, of course, throughout the year this year, talk about more of these things. And perhaps even, I just had a, I don’t know, off-the-cuff idea with Producer Gabby. Maybe we actually take this calendar and once every month this year, the topic that I’m going to cover here, we could actually do a deeper dive on it. That would be kind of interesting.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. I like that.
Gabriel Lewit: We got to come up with some new ideas, fresh ideas for the show sometimes. Okay, so January, which I guess we’re already almost past, is review and reset. Okay? So review year-end account balances, compare how you did against where you wanted to be in your goals, evaluate your savings rate, right? “Last year, I wanted to max out my Roth IRA. Did I do that? Oops. I forgot to do that. Shoot.” For example, there’s still time to even do that, right? Assess your debt balances, update your retirement plan, try to automate your savings. And remember that you’ve got estimated tax payments due, which of course would have been January 15th, but that’s the general idea for January.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. It’s like at the end of a football game, what the coaches do is they get together their review and reset for the next football game. So each year kind of is like a football game.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: It’s challenging.
Gabriel Lewit: Or even a season, if you want to think of it that way, right? After the Bears have lost, unfortunately, this season, they’re probably thinking, “Okay, what can we do better next season?”
Steve Lewit: “Let’s take stock. What did we do well? What didn’t we do well?”
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. “Do we have the right personnel? Are we spending too much money?” Same thing.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Now let’s say you haven’t done that yet in January. You could of course get caught up there with that topic.
Steve Lewit: You’re allowed to do it in February.
Gabriel Lewit: Correct.
Steve Lewit: Yes, okay.
Gabriel Lewit: For February, you’ve got investment and tax readiness. Okay? So instead of just looking at your portfolio balance and how much you saved, take a look under the hood and say, “What is my portfolio’s asset allocation? Do I know what my asset allocation is?” which is your percentage of stocks and bonds, what holdings you have, alignment with your risk level? Has it drifted from your target? Do you even have a target? Okay. And check your diversification. And also, of course, start to gather your tax documents because it’ll be tax preparation season here, basically now through April 15th. So if you haven’t done that yet, try not to procrastinate. It’s easy to do. Get it done ahead of time and then you can sit there and smile and feel comfortable when everybody else is rushing for the last-minute deadlines.
Steve Lewit: Exactly. And this is where you can see did your portfolio kick out a lot of capital gains, for example, or dividends? Where did they come from? Were they intentional or were they the result of a mutual fund or something they did inside the mutual fund?
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Exactly. Now the next one for March is maximize your tax advantage account. So maybe we’ll do a topic where we just talk about different types of accounts and taxations and what to pick for what. But yeah, health savings accounts, IRAs, Roth IRAs. Now some of these you could still do for last year. Some of those you may not be able to, but you could be thinking about doing those for this year either way. And then also thinking about your workplace plans, right? “What type of account am I contributing to? Is it pre-tax? Is it Roth? Is it an after-tax non-deductible contribution?” There’s all these different types and we can get into which types of accounts you contribute to, not just, “Am I making the right amount of contributions?” Okay. April, we’ve got organization and compliance. Oh, that sounds fun.
Steve Lewit: Oh my gosh. Is that really on this list?
Gabriel Lewit: It is. Yeah. File your tax return. Make sure that gets done.
Steve Lewit: Organization and compliance.
Gabriel Lewit: Making sure you have all your … Let’s say you do these various things. Keep documentation.
Steve Lewit: I’ll see you in May.
Gabriel Lewit: Keep your records, right? Can you locate your old records? Can you locate your will and trust and files? Basically, are your financial files organized? Do you have a list of your accounts somewhere that somebody can find it? Have you shredded outdated paperwork? Okay? There’s a variety of things here under that organizational side of things that you could take some time and you could assess.
Steve Lewit: Sure. I had a client that just sold their home. In their basement was every tax return for the past 40 years.
Gabriel Lewit: Hey, that’s pretty good. They still had them.
Steve Lewit: They still had them.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: Do they need them? That’s another question.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: But they were organized. I actually saw this. It was like, “You’re amazing,” at how organized this was.
Gabriel Lewit: Not too bad. Okay. May, emergency and liquidity planning, right? Do you have enough emergency funds available? Do you have too much in an emergency fund available? Are your cash reserves actually earning interest in a high-yield savings or are they still sitting in, as we were talking about earlier, your 0.07% checking account earning you 10 cents of interest per month? And then of course, if you’re retired or not retired, that amount might change, but assessing your liquidity needs, assessing your emergency fund, maybe exploring cash alternatives, we have a variety of options there. Make your cash go to work for you better.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Because I think what happens, Gabriel, is that we just get used to doing what we’ve always done. And what this is pointing to is saying liquidity … It’ll take you half an hour to do this. Take a look and ask yourself, “Why do I have this amount in my checking account that’s not earning interest?” or, “Why do I have so much in cash? Do I really need it there?” Because in building wealth, you want all of these funds to work efficiently and that’s what this is pointing to.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes, indeed. Now June, we have clarify your investment strategy. So this is similar to maybe assessing your asset allocation, but actually deeper. So you might want to look at your overall financial plan and say, “Does this investment account and allocation align with my long-term planning goals?” Not just, “What is it and do I know what it is and is it rebalanced?” but, “Should I still have that?” Okay? “Does it fit with me in my time horizons and the expectations of the stock market? Should I change it based on what the market is or where I’m at in my life this year? If I’ve recently retired, should I adjust these things?” So it’s now looking at this more from a planning angle. That is the goal of June’s clarify your investment strategy month.
Steve Lewit: Now I’m curious, Gabby team and support team here, is there a financial planning month?
Gabriel Lewit: There might be.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: I think there is.
Steve Lewit: Let’s see if it coordinates with June.
Gabriel Lewit: I’m not so sure when the …
Steve Lewit: There’s got to be a financial planning month.
Gabriel Lewit: Probably.
Steve Lewit: We have a month for everything else.
Gabriel Lewit: October.
Steve Lewit: October.
Gabriel Lewit: So yes. Financial wellness, financial literacy, financial planning.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. So this is preparation for October.
Gabriel Lewit: Indeed. Okay. Now July, mid-year financial checkup. Right? If you’re looking for something to do this July, you can just assess how your plan’s done throughout the year. Should you make any changes based on what the market’s done? If you, again, had planned to save this year, did you do it so far?
Steve Lewit: It’s halftime.
Gabriel Lewit: Right, halftime.
Steve Lewit: You’ve got the first half in. Take a look at what you did well, what you didn’t do well, revise.
Gabriel Lewit: Now a new one for July would be have you actually assessed what you’re paying in fees for your accounts?
Steve Lewit: Oh, that’s a good one. Yeah, that’s a really good one.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay? Some people look at the allocation, the performance. They never even care or think to check what they’re paying in fees and costs.
Steve Lewit: Or can’t find it.
Gabriel Lewit: Or can’t find it or don’t know. So that’s a nice specific one, which we could talk a lot about in July for this year. And also, a good time to start thinking about yearly tax planning if you haven’t yet. Okay? “What should I do before the end of the year?” because you’re halfway there and maybe there’s things that you want to start keeping on the radar.
Steve Lewit: And time flies.
Gabriel Lewit: And time does fly.
Steve Lewit: Flies by.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. August, we’re going to bill here as estate and legacy planning month. Review your wills and trusts and powers of attorneys. So some people would skip this month too because they don’t like to think about these things.
Steve Lewit: I got three in my head that I think people are skipping.
Gabriel Lewit: Confirm your beneficiary designations. In other words, when did you last check that all your accounts are going to go to the people that you want them to go to? Right? So making sure we put that on the top of the list here. And then if you don’t have updated wills and trusts or documents or need them, it’s a good time to think about getting those in place.
Steve Lewit: Yep.
Gabriel Lewit: There’s more in there too. Some people even go the other step of … We know we had the organization month earlier in the year.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: You could take this and you can put it all in a digital vault. Okay? So it’s all online. It’s all accessible. Your loved ones, trustees, et cetera, all have access to this. So if something were to happen to you, everything you need is all in one spot with a single, easy login access.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Which is a great idea, by the way. Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Indeed. Okay. September, we’re going to bill as long-term care planning month.
Steve Lewit: Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: Which I actually think there is a long-term care month too, but I don’t know if it’s September. But either way, yeah. Have you thought about long-term care? And I’m also going to broaden it to just sort of do you have enough for long-term care, right? However, if you don’t buy insurance, do you have enough in your plan?
Steve Lewit: Yeah. This isn’t about buying insurance. This is about understanding that there are financial issues that pop up when health erodes and are you prepared for it?
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Now, if you’re pretty young, you might get an off month. If you’re 30 years old, you’re not going to be planning for long-term care. You get a little bit of a breather off the field for the game this year.
Steve Lewit: You get some oxygen.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay? And in reverse, October is going to be education and goal funding. So if you no longer have kids in college, they’re out of college, you don’t have grandkids at that stage yet, maybe you get to skip this month. That’s your breather. But if you’re in that mode where you’ve got kids or grandkids and you are trying to think about how to plan for college, October is a great month for that. Review your college savings, your 529s, your trajectories. Are you on track for how much you want, funding gaps, maybe adding more, getting parents and grandparents to contribute versus giving you toys, right? There’s all sorts of things we can do there for October.
Steve Lewit: And that gets you ready for your FAFSA submissions and applications for scholarships.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, and those happen at various times throughout the year. But yeah, just as far as being ready for the funding side of things. Okay? November, we’re going to bill here as insurance and tax awareness, okay? But more so insurance, right? Reviewing all your insurance benefits. You’ve got health. You’ve got auto. You’ve got home. You’ve got valuable property. You’ve got all these various insurances. When’s the last time you looked at them? Producer Katie, huh? When did you last look at yours, huh?
Steve Lewit: Yeah or shopped it around.
Gabriel Lewit: She’s looking at me sheepishly.
Steve Lewit: The rates are changing.
Gabriel Lewit: Exactly. Okay.
Steve Lewit: I shopped mine about a year ago.
Gabriel Lewit: Same with life insurance, disability insurance. There’s a lot of insurance that can be out there. Okay, let’s round out the year. December. Now we actually do this year-round, but it’s a good month. Of course, we talk about it a lot. Year-end tax planning and charitable giving. You can do a lot of things from a tax planning angle, tax loss harvesting, rebalancing, QCDs for RMDs. You can do gifting by year-end, HSA contributions, so many various things, RMDs. All these things have to be done by year-end. We actually talked about these last December so it is a great time of the year to, of course, do those things.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. So there’s a lot here, Gabriel. And the reason that it’s spread out over a calendar year is because, like we said earlier, if you try and tackle this all in a month or a week, or you go to your financial advisor and say, “I’d like to review my beneficiaries, my Roth conversions, my portfolio distribution, my asset allocation,” you can’t do it. It’s overwhelming. Now what you can do, folks, is if you don’t like calendars, you can create a checklist and just list these all and just check them off when you have time to do them, but just get them done.
Gabriel Lewit: Steve, that is a genius idea.
Steve Lewit: Of course. Of course.
Gabriel Lewit: Absolutely.
Steve Lewit: Of course.
Gabriel Lewit: Phenomenally genius.
Steve Lewit: Of course, of course. There are times that you and I really agree.
Gabriel Lewit: What a star. What a star. All right, folks. It is a long list. And just to go back and talk briefly about … We talked about the benefits of having a financial planner, working with a planner, and building trust. Our goal is that if you’re a client of ours, you can trust that we’ve got all these things covered for you.
Steve Lewit: Yes, we do.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay? We aim to be proactive. We aim to be thorough. We want to create all these things for you so you don’t have to worry about them. We build them into our client planning service models and objectives for the year. So that’s our hope is that you’re feeling in good hands, that you’ve got these things covered, and you have us here to help you do those heavy liftings on all these items.
Steve Lewit: And despite the fact that the month is over, Gabriel and I are wishing you a wonderful Financial Wellness Month.
Gabriel Lewit: Indeed. You still got time.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Make this day the greatest day ever.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, have a wonderful rest of your week or weekend. We’ll see you, of course, on the next show. If you have questions on this or want to call us, call us here, 847-499-3330. Email us, info@sglfinancial.com.
Steve Lewit: I thought you were going to say, “If you have a little bit of a financial cold and you’re not feeling so good or you got a few sneezes …”
Gabriel Lewit: Sure. Yeah, come on in.
Steve Lewit: “Come on in.”
Gabriel Lewit: Now next time, we do have some listener questions banked up. We will be doing those. So if you’re waiting for us to cover that, rest assured. It is on the way. And once again, have a wonderful rest of your week. We’ll talk to you on the next show.
Steve Lewit: Stay warm. Stay well.
Gabriel Lewit: Bye-bye.
Steve Lewit: Bye.
Announcer: Thanks for listening to Our 2 Cents with Steve and Gabriel Lewit. For any questions about your finances, give SGL a call at 847-499-3330 or visit us on the web at sglfinancial.com, and be sure to subscribe to join us on next week’s episode.
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