Retirement, Reflection, and the Close of 2025

Our 2 Cents – Episode #238

Retirement, Reflection, and the Close of 2025

From navigating new chapters in retirement, to looking back at the year behind us, Steve and Gabriel are covering it all in our last podcast episode of 2025! Listen in now using a link below.

1. Quotes of the Month:
   • “Aging seems to be the only way to live a long life.” — Kitty O’Neill Collins
   • “It’s better to live rich than to die rich.” — Samuel Johnson
2. Retirement, Reflection, and Relationships:
   • All the “firsts” in retirement can feel like a new journey. We’ll share ways to make your first retired holiday season merry and meaningful!
3. What Mattered for Your Money in 2025:
   • We’re giving you a 2025 Year-in-Review, breaking down the biggest headlines from the year and sharing how they may have impacted your financial planning.

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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: Well, welcome everybody, back to Our 2 Cents, and I believe this is, Mr. Steve, our last episode of the year.

Steve Lewit: Oh, it is. Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: Just based on, we’ve got Christmas week coming up next week, and then we’ve got the New Year’s week, Merry Christmas to all of you. Happy Hanukkah to all of you. Happy New Year’s to all of you.

Steve Lewit: Happy everything.

Gabriel Lewit: Happy everything.

Steve Lewit: Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: And I believe, just based on scheduling conflicts and some out of town and this and that, I believe this is going to be our last, so hopefully best show of the year for you folks.

Steve Lewit: It will be the premier supreme show of the year. Absolutely.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, now that we’ve built it up, we hopefully can deliver upon that promise.

Steve Lewit: Oh, my God. I feel pressure. Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, anytime I want to feel inspired for doing the show, I try to watch a Bulls game because my two favorite announcers speak for the Bulls. One is Stacey King.

Steve Lewit: Well, somebody needs to speak for the Bulls.

Gabriel Lewit: And the other is Adam Amin.

Steve Lewit: They lost eight out of nine. Did they win last night?

Gabriel Lewit: They did.

Steve Lewit: Oh.

Gabriel Lewit: I happened to tune in for the first game in a long time, and they happened to win against the Cavaliers. But I’m always reminded by just… They’re very good announcers by how good they are. And they tend to get a lot of national recognition for being very good announcers too. And so it gets me a little bit inspired for the show to up my game and to be a better show host for y’all out there.

Steve Lewit: I think you are an amazing announcer. I think you take control of this show. You set direction and I admire your capability.

Gabriel Lewit: Oh, my goodness.

Steve Lewit: And you should get national recognition.

Gabriel Lewit: My head won’t fit out the door here in 28 minutes.

Steve Lewit: No, you’re great. I love the way folks… What Gabriel does is he really organizes the show. And I follow in his wake and make jokes.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, to be fair, every show, usually you can only have one cook in the kitchen that truly leads it, although you do chime in on what we want to talk about.

Steve Lewit: Of course, of course.

Gabriel Lewit: But every show needs its other half, right? You typically don’t have one-man shows. You could, but I think they’re less entertaining. Get a little commentary from Papa Steve over here.

Steve Lewit: Papa Steve has something to say about, well, almost everything.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes. So all right. Well, we hope you’re doing great. Hopefully you’re almost done with your holiday shopping.

Steve Lewit: Enjoying the summer weather.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. I’ve warmed up a little bit here. But in the spirit of Christmas, we’re going to talk about essentially, basically what does Christmas look like the first year that you’re retired? What might change based on being retired versus if you’re still working? We’re also going to talk a little bit about some quotes of the month here just to kick things off. And then we’ll see where the show meanders after that.

Steve Lewit: All right. I love quotes of the month. Most of the people I know who are they who quoted and Gabriel says-

Gabriel Lewit: Again, we just focused on that. Yes, because I don’t know who this first one is. Kitty O’Neill Collins. Kaitlyn, Producer Katie, do you know who Kitty O’Neill Collins is? Well, anyways-

Steve Lewit: And I don’t.

Gabriel Lewit: Kitty says, “Aging seems to be the only way to live a long life.”

Steve Lewit: I love it. Kitty, good one. Good one.

Gabriel Lewit: So yes, once again, aging seems to be the only way to live a long life. What do you agree?

Steve Lewit: Oh, absolutely. But you know what we do? We get older and we complain about it, at least a lot of people my age. “Oh, I’m so my rickety and I don’t feel…” Man, you’re on the other side of the soil and that’s really a good thing. And there’s still lots of great things in life to enjoy.

Gabriel Lewit: Amen. Yeah. So I think it’s about establishing good perspective, right? That with aging comes, yes, a longer life, but taking advantage of that in all the ways that you can. And it does look like Kitty O’Neill here was apparently a renowned American stunt woman and professional skier.

Steve Lewit: Is she still alive or what?

Gabriel Lewit: It does say was, but I’m not sure.

Steve Lewit: Now I’m curious. At what age did she pass away?

Gabriel Lewit: 2018. 2018.

Steve Lewit: But how old was she? I hope she wasn’t young.

Gabriel Lewit: I can’t math this in my head, but 2018 minus 1946 is what, Steve? 70 something, right? Anyways, older. Long life is what it is.

Steve Lewit: Katie, you had a good life, maybe not that long.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, I-

Steve Lewit: 76 is long.

Gabriel Lewit: Now this next one I almost misread is Samuel Jackson, but it says Samuel Johnson, who I don’t know who Samuel Johnson is.

Steve Lewit: Yes, Sammy.

Gabriel Lewit: But it’s better to live rich than to die rich is what Samuel Johnson said.

Steve Lewit: Now, all you folks that are well-endowed and refuse to spend money because you think you’re going to go broke, and you know who I’m talking to, listen to… Say it again, Gabriel.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So it is better to live rich than to die rich.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. And he is a old looking writer. He looks like he’s from the 1700s.

Steve Lewit: Yes. I love his hair. His hair is great.

Gabriel Lewit: What a quote. Has aged well, I think.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We live once and on this Earth, and man, why not enjoy it?

Just break out of the old habits. And I was telling folks yesterday, I’m very fortunate. We’re fortunate, Gabriel, because we have a business and we earn a good living. And I’m not bragging about this, but I fly first class and I just spoil myself. But I remember, I was telling folks yesterday, because I grew up in the South Bronx with nothing, and I was telling folks the first time I flew first class, I could hear my mother screaming at me in the background, “What are you doing? How dare you spend so much money? What a waste of money.” And I had to get through that to enjoy myself. So folks, get rid of those old tapes. If you can afford it, go out and have some fun. There’s so much to do.

Gabriel Lewit: Living rich doesn’t necessarily mean spending all your money, but oftentimes it might go hand in hand.

Steve Lewit: Splurge, enjoy yourself.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. I think the goal is, as we always talk about on the show, make your money work for you, live a rich, happy, healthy, wealthy life. Don’t just hoard money for the sake of hoarding money if you can’t avoid it. Exactly.

All right. Well, hopefully those inspired you in one way, shape, form or another. Let’s go ahead and talk about your first Christmas in retirement, or we’ll kind of generalize that to holiday season in case you don’t celebrate Christmas.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. This is interesting. I never thought about you know, I just retired, and this is my first holiday season where I have nothing to do.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes.

Steve Lewit: Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So what might that look different, right? Or maybe these are ideas to motivate you, although the holiday season is right around the corner, you might have already made your plans. All right. But the first thing is there may be changes to your gift budget, your gifting budget. Okay? So if you were making more money in your earning years, perhaps you were a bit more liberal with the wallet on the gift spending. Well, when you get into retirement, if you’ve done a good plan, which we typically help you with, you’ll have a budget. One of the line items in that budget will be gifting.

Steve Lewit: That is correct.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. And so the question is, are you spending the same amount of money as before? Did you define a gift budget? Are you blowing through your target budget goals for the year to splurge on gifts? But it’s worth reconsidering, I think, at this new stage in life, what may change with your gifting budget?

Steve Lewit: Yeah, it’s so important because we retire and often folks who retire, the budget becomes, I don’t want to say less, but tighter or more limited. There’s less room for flex because you don’t have that paycheck coming in every month. So I think we talked about this one or two, or maybe I’m thinking about WGN, I’m not sure, but make a list of your gift giving, who you’re going to give to, and how much you’re going to spend, and then honor that list and compare it to what you said, Gabriel, to your, what is your budget for that period of time? The last thing you want to do is build a lot of credit card debt.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. No, don’t do that.

Steve Lewit: And instead of giving, you’re getting interest payments for another year.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, I think the typical thing I see is if this is your very first year being retired, you are going to be very cautious with how you spend your money.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: Right? And I use this analogy a lot. If you’ve ever taken a big rock and thrown it in a pond, have you ever done that?

Steve Lewit: How big is it?

Gabriel Lewit: A reasonable size rock.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: Not like a tiny pebble.

Steve Lewit: Not like a boulder.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay?

Steve Lewit: It could be a boulder. Well, a big rock. You can hold it in.

Gabriel Lewit: So, when you throw a big rock in the pond, what happens to the water?

Steve Lewit: It splashes up.

Gabriel Lewit: And then over enough time, what happens with the water?

Steve Lewit: There’s no more water.

Gabriel Lewit: No. For the pond to evaporate, that’s a different… No, that’s not what I… It settles down. The water settles back down. It gets really rocky, wavy, ripples, but eventually it settles back down.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. I wasn’t following you.

Gabriel Lewit: No, that’s okay. I was just seeing you-

Steve Lewit: It’s way above my head.

Gabriel Lewit: No, I was just going to see if you could guess it. So let’s see, when you first retire, I call it a giant rock in the pond. Okay? You’ve thrown a big rock into your budget. You’ve changed things, you’ve upended the apple cart, if you will. There’s a lot of ripples and waves. You typically might want to wait for that to settle back down to get a sense of where things really have settled.

Steve Lewit: Hey, that’s a great analogy.

Gabriel Lewit: And once you have that, so let’s say your first year, “Oh, I’m afraid to spend because I need my money to grow.” Well, within a year or so, you’ve seen your money grow. Another year you’ve seen it grow. You start to come to realize, yeah, if I don’t spend this money, lo and behold, it is going to keep growing. Sometimes people need a couple of years to reinforce that concept and then you might feel better about gifting. And I had a couple of clients this year that told me for the first time, they’re giving very generous gifts for the holidays, like $5,000 to each of their grandkids, stuff where you have to get a good sense of where your plan is, feel confident in that first, see where your money situation’s at, and then you can make those decisions more comfortably.

Steve Lewit: Absolutely. And the other part of this, Gabriel, is that when you retire, you have time on your hands and you can do more shopping. You can spend more time on Amazon, you can go walk through the stores-

Gabriel Lewit: You can hand it the sweaters.

Steve Lewit: Right. You got all this time and you have lots of time to buy things.

Gabriel Lewit: Oh, that reminded me of something I wanted to share. Just for no particular reason is that I bought a sewing kit the other day off of Amazon.

Steve Lewit: Oh, I’m so happy to hear this. Is this a new profession for you?

Gabriel Lewit: It was $16.

Steve Lewit: Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay? And it came with needles and thread and what are the thimbles? Is that a thimble?

Steve Lewit: Are you trying to tell me something here?

Gabriel Lewit: No. Well, because one of my kids’ stuffed animals got ripped and a leg got ripped off and this was very important to my son Nathan and he needed some help to sew it and I do not know how to sew. So speaking of learning new things, I bought a $16 sewing kit and I learned how to sew.

Steve Lewit: And you sewed.

Gabriel Lewit: I stitched it back together. It is not-

Steve Lewit: What a dad.

Gabriel Lewit: …as good as it was originally.

Steve Lewit: I’m so proud of you. So I need some buttons on my shirts. Can you help me there?

Gabriel Lewit: Anyways, just this idea of yes, maybe you’re going to sew a sweater for Christmas, but I did have a little bit of time on the holidays there over one of the weekends here recently to do that. So yeah, being retired might give you more time. Maybe you’ll learn a new hobby, sewing.

Steve Lewit: Learn a new hobby, but don’t use that time to spend more money.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, you could if you wanted to spend more money.

Steve Lewit: If you can.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes. All right. So the other thing is, so you’re retired. What can you do now? Well, you could travel without worrying about clocking PTO. All right. So in your working years, you’ve got this thing hanging over your head, which is your number of PTO days counting down. All right, got 20 days this year. I got 18 left, 16 left, 10 left, whatever. Wish I could go for two weeks, can’t only got six days of PTO left.

Steve Lewit: PTO is?

Gabriel Lewit: Paid time off.

Steve Lewit: Paid time off.

Gabriel Lewit: Yep.

Steve Lewit: Okay.

Gabriel Lewit: Through work. So there is no more PTO tracker. You’ve got unlimited PTO. And the question is, will you do anything different? Maybe you spend two weeks with your family instead of one, if they’ll have you. Maybe you’ll combine a travel trip with something else. You can use your imagination here to possibly change what your holiday plans might look like.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. Change the plans and change the content. You don’t get up in the morning and review all your emails. Instead of being on your phone half the day, checking text messages or emails, you listen to music.

Gabriel Lewit: You sure could.

Steve Lewit: Just change the way you’re being during that time because you don’t have to be as you were.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, and that leads to the next item, which is you can try to create new traditions. Maybe there’s something you always wanted to do. Maybe you wanted to do a holiday brunch with all your friends, but you were working and you couldn’t do that. Maybe you want to create those photo books for the year where you take all your photos and you make a collage of it. Whatever you didn’t have the time to do before, maybe it’s a good thing to start to create some new traditions and give you the time to think about it and come up with what those might be.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. So I think for me, Gabriel, what this boils down to is you retire, you have this festive season coming up and you have so much freedom. And in that freedom, you can really do whatever you want as long as it’s within your financial capability. And that’s a new thing. It’s a new sense. It’s like a new way of… It’s a new experience. I don’t know what it’s like to be retired, I can imagine, but it’s a sense of freedom that is new and needs to be discovered, which is why I think what you said earlier is let the dust settle, figure out what that is all about and what you’re going to do with that freedom.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, and keep in mind, retirement can be a new unsettling journey. I mean, way back in the day, Magellan or Christopher Columbus, right? They set sail off of a familiar shore into the unknown.

Steve Lewit: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait a second.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes.

Steve Lewit: You’re talking about retirement and Magellan and Christopher Columbus.

Gabriel Lewit: I am, yes.

Steve Lewit: In the same sentence.

Gabriel Lewit: Correct.

Steve Lewit: Okay. Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: All right.

Steve Lewit: Can you help me out here?

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So when you’re on the shores of Spain or wherever they originated from, do you remember producer Katie?

Steve Lewit: Spain.

Gabriel Lewit: Where did Christopher Columbus set sail from?

Steve Lewit: Let me help you here. Spain.

Gabriel Lewit: I think it was Spain.

Steve Lewit: Spain.

Gabriel Lewit: This would bring me back to like fourth, fifth grade or something.

Steve Lewit: You wanted to teach history too.

Gabriel Lewit: I can’t remember this. Southern Spain, yes. August 3rd, 1492. Okay. Oh yeah, the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. Yes. Yeah, I forgot about those.

Steve Lewit: So, the three boats that discovered the rock, Plymouth Rock.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. So when you’re setting sail off of familiar Spanish shores off west, there’s no map, there’s no GPS.

Steve Lewit: There’s nothing.

Gabriel Lewit: Where are you headed?

Steve Lewit: We don’t know.

Gabriel Lewit: Into the great unknown, right?

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: And the idea is that retirement, if you’ve never retired before-

Steve Lewit: Oh yeah, it’s a great unknown. I like it.

Gabriel Lewit: It can feel a lot like that.

Steve Lewit: Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay? And it is about new discoveries, new lands, new adventures, new traditions, new experiences. It is a whole new chapter for you to soak in and enjoy the horizons on the over the ocean.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, and that has two components to it. One is exciting. The others can be, people are afraid of the unknown.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, some people would never set foot on that boat out in the ocean and others couldn’t wait to look forward to it.

Steve Lewit: We have a client right now that wrote us. You got this email, Gabriel, just yesterday, that wrote us that, “Hey, I want to pull the trigger on retirement, but I’m afraid to do it. Who can I talk to? What can I do?” And that is exactly, you’ve got this freedom unknown in front of you and that can be scary because you don’t know what’s going to happen. We like to know what’s going… Look, everybody asks, “Is the market going to go up and go down?” Well, I don’t know.

Gabriel Lewit: Both.

Steve Lewit: Both, yeah. But we want to know, and that’s the way we’re built. We want to know the future and in retirement, you don’t know the future.

Gabriel Lewit: That’s true. That’s true. So it is your journey to discover here just like Magellan or Columbus and we’ll see where your ship takes you.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: You can always share with us if you’d like.

Steve Lewit: I wonder what retirement was like in 1492.

Gabriel Lewit: I don’t know if people had traditional retirements back.

Steve Lewit: I don’t think they lived. I think they lived till 50 years old.

Gabriel Lewit: And then died.

Steve Lewit: And then died.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. I don’t know if they had savings and investment accounts and no Roth IRAs.

Steve Lewit: No Roths. Oh, my gosh.

Gabriel Lewit: No bank accounts. Save your pennies or shekels or whatever people had back then. Okay. So how about just a quick interlude? If you’ve got questions, of course, on planning for your first retirement or maybe next year will be your first Christmas or holiday retirement. Give us a call 847-499-3330 or go to sglfinancial.com. Remember, you can always schedule a complimentary call with us or strategy session anytime or a free review of where things are so we can walk you through how we might be able to help you. And we would love to do those anytime you’d like.

Steve Lewit: Absolutely.

Gabriel Lewit: All right. Well, I thought this time we would talk about a couple of things depending on where the show took us.

I wanted to do a 2025 year in review. Now, I had this philosophical challenge. Do I want to do a year in review at the end of the year or a year in review at the start of the new year? And I chose this year to do a year in review at the end of the year on our last show, just to mix it up. Because I think last year we did a year in review in the following year, kick off the year.

Steve Lewit: Traditionally, we would do that in January.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. But I wanted to shake things up this year.

Steve Lewit: I feel shooken. Okay. I don’t know if that’s a word, but that’s how I feel.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Yeah. So yes, we had an interesting year.

Steve Lewit: Oh, my gosh.

Gabriel Lewit: Could you believe it’s coming to a close?

Steve Lewit: You think?

Gabriel Lewit: Other than the Bears being 11 and 4? What is their record? That’s a great way to end the year right there.

Steve Lewit: Let’s put it this way. Better than anyone-

Gabriel Lewit: 10 and 4. 10 and 4.

Steve Lewit: Better than anyone ever imagined it would be.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes. Actually, I read a statistic. I’m a Diehard Bears fan. If you’re a Packers fan, I apologize for me talking about them for a moment. We have a big game this weekend, and you already beat us once, maybe we’ll turn the tables back. But the Bears, I believe, only had seven winning seasons in the last 25 or something like that, or maybe even 30 since the 1985 Bears.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. The Bears and the Giants have been living together in Looseville.

Gabriel Lewit: So, my point is I deserve this for this year to finally have a winning run.

Steve Lewit: You do deserve it, because you’ve been an ardent-

Gabriel Lewit: Aren’t the Giants dead last?

Steve Lewit: Dead last.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes, I believe so.

Steve Lewit: Sorry about that.

Gabriel Lewit: I feel your pain. We were there the last few years. Yeah.

Steve Lewit: 2 and 12. What? Two wins.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, maybe you get a good draft pick. Okay. Most next year. Yeah, so Bears are doing great. What a year. But where did we start? Well, we started the year with new president.

Steve Lewit: Yep.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. If you recall, we had an election last year.

Steve Lewit: Doesn’t that seem like a long time ago?

Gabriel Lewit: It sure does. A year went by fast and slow. It feels like-

Steve Lewit: It’s 11 and a half months. I don’t know why, but it seems like a long time ago.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So we had a new president that started his second term in office, of course, Mr. Trump. We then had… I forgot that they called it this Liberation Day for tariffs. Where tariffs were announced in April, the market promptly plummeted and then promptly recovered from its plummet.

Steve Lewit: It went down pretty good too.

Gabriel Lewit: And of course, has roared back to have a very good year. But of course, tariffs has been then one of those themes that we’ve talked about throughout the show that’s still lingering.

Steve Lewit: And continues.

Gabriel Lewit: It’s still on the menu here for this year.

Steve Lewit: It is. Okay.

Gabriel Lewit: There’s been announcements, rollbacks, changes, and the ultimate effect of tariff related inflation is maybe starting to be felt but still pending the outcome of that.

Steve Lewit: I think we’ll know, next year, the result.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So I don’t know if you tucked tariffs in the back of your mind or you’re still thinking about them, but that was definitely one of the themes for this year, which leads us to another theme that has been on the list for quite a while now, which is inflation.

Steve Lewit: Yes. Okay.

Gabriel Lewit: We haven’t talked about it much because I think everyone’s inflation-ed out. How many times can you hear about that inflation’s going up? But of course, inflation was coming down, which doesn’t mean prices weren’t increasing. It just means they were increasing less.

Steve Lewit: At a lesser rate.

Gabriel Lewit: At a lesser rate. But they have, in recent months, started to climb again, which could be due to tariffs, of course, but will remain to be seen. So still a theme. I think this year, of course, and going into next year is going to be this inflationary pressure environment. And will that subside or will it continue to increase? All right. And not much more to say about that, of course. Of course, related to that was interest rate environments. So we’ve talked about that a couple of times throughout the year. Fed keeps cutting rates. Trump had, I guess, a speech last night, and he talked about something about maybe replacing the Fed share next year, which I don’t know if that will happen or not, but I know there’s been discussion around he wants to control interest rates more. The Fed, of course, is an independent body that typically controls interest rates. So that might be a theme going into next year about what will happen with interest rates.

Steve Lewit: Will absolutely be a theme next year.

Gabriel Lewit: I think so, yes. I think there will be much to say about that. It would be my prediction here going into 2026, but they did come down this year. So mortgage rates have started to come down. Credit cards not really. Bank account rates, they were at one point almost up to 5% now down to three and a half. So you’re going to continue to see that, I think, going into next year. I will also like to point out, we talked a lot about locking in higher rates before they come down. We haven’t talked about that in a while. That still applies. If you think rates are going to be lower next year, then you’d still potentially lock in more this year.

I had a client just last week came to me and said, “Should I lock in a 4%, four month CD?” And I said It’s not much of a lock. That’s not much of a lock, but just so you’re aware, when that renews, it’ll probably be three and a half percent. And she’s like, “So should I go for a long…” Well, yes, that’s the idea. You don’t need the money.

Steve Lewit: Well, for example, you could lock in well over 5% for five years right now, but next year that’ll probably be down to four.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So there’s still good rates to be had. If you have this excess cash you’d like to lock in, continue to think about that, okay? Let’s see here. We had, oh yeah, of course the one big beautiful bill act, the OB3 as it’s come to be known, that was pronounced or announced I guess in July. That was probably one of the bigger things this year that’s impacted people from a tax perspective or will impact you on a tax perspective. So that had things like permanently reducing tax rates that were previously set to sunset, senior deductions, changes to tips, wages, a bunch of changes that will all impact the tax code, and hopefully many of you will get a slightly larger refund next year as a result of the one big beautiful bill act, okay? And that really has come up in a lot of our tax planning.

Steve Lewit: Absolutely. Yeah. And the other thing that’s come up is this year, a battle on healthcare costs and that-

Gabriel Lewit: That’s relatively new.

Steve Lewit: And that continues today in the House and the State-

Gabriel Lewit: That will definitely be a theme I think going into next year. Pretty challenging one, I would say from a… We try not to get into too much political stuff here, but depending on where you stand there, you might have different perspectives on that. But the fact remains that insurance and healthcare costs are likely to be a substantial talking point next year as they are set to increase at a pretty high level.

Steve Lewit: Again, no politics involved. The data is very specific. All the healthcare costs have gone up substantially and a lot of people, if this bill doesn’t get passed, a lot of people will be without health insurance and that flows in, as you said, into the conversation for next year. What do we do for those people?

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So obviously part of that was the record-breaking 43-day shutdown, which you may have already forgotten about.

Steve Lewit: I did.

Gabriel Lewit: That was on the news cycles for about 43 days.

Steve Lewit: You know what? You know what’s interesting? I totally blanked that out of my mind.

Gabriel Lewit: It’s easy wonder just, yeah.

Steve Lewit: It’s like, really? Yes, that was 43 days of-

Gabriel Lewit: The air traffic controllers are back and-

Steve Lewit: Things are back to normal, sort of.

Gabriel Lewit: Things seem back to normal there from the government employment perspective. But yeah, that was a big talking point for the year. And then that was, of course, battling around the same healthcare thing we were talking about there. What else did we have this year? Gosh, what a year. Housing costs starting to cool a little, meaning they’re starting to come down. They, I think, peaked a little bit and they are starting to loosen just a little.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. And I think we’ll see more of that with lower interest rates. We’ll see the housing market perk up a little bit more.

Gabriel Lewit: Yep. So a couple other quick hits. Stock market, of course. Very good year. Terrific.

Steve Lewit: 15, 15%.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. I do think next year we’ll talk a little bit more on some of our kickoff items on the new year about markets and how they’ve done. I’ve got an idea for how we can weave some of this and continue to pick up on that. So we can still have a good kickoff topic of conversation. And of course we had unemployment is now a new kind of watch list item where it’s starting to rise a little bit.

Steve Lewit: It’s rising.

Gabriel Lewit: It is rising.

Steve Lewit: That’s not something we want to see. Now, part of that is because all of the layoffs in the government, and that’s a big contributor, but it’s still unemployment and the filings for unemployment are up. It’s at the highest level since COVID.

Gabriel Lewit: We have AI this year.

Steve Lewit: Big deal. That is a tremendous deal.

Gabriel Lewit: Big, big talking point this year, AI being everywhere.

Steve Lewit: And is there an AI bubble which is the hot topic? Every time we talk to a client, one of the questions that’s likely to come up is, when is the bubble going to burst?

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. It’s starting to feel pretty prominent that people are feeling that way. So gosh, there was a lot this year.

Steve Lewit: Plus, internationally, you have the wars, you have all the other stuff internationally, which we haven’t even talked about. So that’s a full meal. That’s eating a lot of food.

Gabriel Lewit: And we say this a lot, which is interesting about every year. I mean, every year, if you were to go back, there’s always a list like this. Every year. But the list is different.

Steve Lewit: It’s really…

Gabriel Lewit: Yes. Sometimes they’re the same, but they’re often different. And so yeah, that’s our list for this 2025. And as this year, interesting year, challenging year, good year, bad year, maybe all of the above comes to a close. I think it’s good to look back and be thankful for all the goods in our lives, right? Try to ignore all this noise. Not that it’s not relevant. It of course is, but imagine in a world where there’s no cell phones, iPhones, daily, 100 times a day, updated news cycles. We were back in the Magellan times to tie this all back together.

Steve Lewit: It wasn’t that far back, Gabriel.

Gabriel Lewit: 1492?

Steve Lewit: How about 1975?

Gabriel Lewit: Magellan?

Steve Lewit: No, phones and-

Gabriel Lewit: No, I’m talking about a time before phones, right? Where you wouldn’t know about all this real time.

Steve Lewit: Your idea of a phone is a cell phone. There were times when phones were plugged into the wall and you had a little TV set and you didn’t have all this noise.

Gabriel Lewit: You’re missing my point.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: I’m saying in a world where we weren’t bombarded by all this stuff all the time 24/7, we’d be able to ignore all it, live in our little bubbles and appreciate the things that we have.

Steve Lewit: More time and more space.

Gabriel Lewit: And I’m suggesting we all endeavor to do that this year, right? Spend time with our families, tune out the noise, tune out the news, tune out the stock market, focus on those things that are most meaningful and valuable, your friendships, your relationships, your family members, your kids, time together, laughter, all those various things that have nothing to do with money.

Steve Lewit: It’s very easy to get sucked into the noise.

Gabriel Lewit: And the problems with this.

Steve Lewit: Ad the problems, and this isn’t working out. I don’t like this and I like that. And forget that we have family and grandkids and kids and good health perhaps and all the good things we have in our lives.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, and that’s how I wanted to end the year on our last show of the year. I wanted to talk about the year and review. It’s a challenging year. There’s going to be challenges next year. We’re going to help you tackle those, but I wanted to end with a very thankful note.

Steve Lewit: This is a hard question. What are you most thankful for this year? It’s a hard one because there are so many things I’m thinking I’m really thankful for. What would be on the top of your list?

Gabriel Lewit: I’d probably put family. I’m thankful for my family and my kids and family members and good relationships. I look back and I try to… Every year I’m starting… One of my new traditions I’m attempting to start. I really do need to do it this year. It’s always a hard one, is to take my 2,598 photos for the year or whatever number you have.

Steve Lewit: You better retire.

Gabriel Lewit: And condense those down into a 30-page book so I can kind of get a best of… So I can encapsulate the year.

Steve Lewit: You’re really telling me you’re thinking of retiring so you can do that.

Gabriel Lewit: So I can scrap full time.

Steve Lewit: So you’ll be a crapper.

Gabriel Lewit: Oh, my. Well, I did this last year and I do look back now at this book. I’m like, oh, last year was a good year. And I think this year was a good year. It’s just hard to remember all the specifics. There’s so many, but we can boil that down, try to encapsulate that. I think this was a good year for just enjoying life and good business and good friendships. And yeah, just looking forward to another even better one in 2026.

Steve Lewit: Fantastic. Fantastic.

Gabriel Lewit: So, I know from Steve and I both here, we truly appreciate your listenership. We appreciate your support, your kindness, your questions, your feedback on the show. And we’re wishing you and all your family well for the holidays here. Happy New Year, Christmas, Hanukkah, and we’ll see you most likely in 2026.

Steve Lewit: Amen, everybody. You stay well. Be happy. Enjoy. Stay healthy.

Gabriel Lewit: See you later. Bye-bye.

Steve Lewit: Bye now.

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