• Stephen: Here we are again, we’ve made it to the end of the year and fortunately we’re all here together. So if you’ve been wondering, what are some of the items that you should put on your financial planning year-end checklist, then you’re gonna wanna watch the rest of this video.
• Welcome back, and thanks for tuning into another episode of the Smart Money Show. I’m your host, Stephen Rischall along with my co-host, Matt Stadelman, and today we’re gonna be talking about the important financial planning items that should be on your year end or maybe new year to-do list. So Matt, let’s dive right in when you think of the end of 2021 and the beginning here of 2022, what’s top of mind for you?
• Matt: Scams, that’s what’s on top of my mind, it just seems like it’s just been a crazy amount of activity with either scammy or spammy emails, phone calls, variety of different ways the crooks are trying to get at us. And I think one common theme that I’ve identified is that, you know, the really effective ones are probably the ones that have a level of urgency.
• They’re trying to get you to respond right now and trying to get you off your feet and off, you know not thinking straight to give some sort of sensitive information that’ll let them into your life further and take advantage of you. I think that’s one of the clear signs that everybody should listen to. If there’s a level of urgency, just end the call, regroup and you know, if you’re really sure you’d really unsure that it wasn’t your bank that was actually calling, certainly hang up the phone with that person.
• Don’t dial their number back, but call your bank at the number you know that you should call to confirm whether there really is a problem. One thing, other thing to note is that the IRS and social security administration, they do not call you. They will correspond, but with, by mail with you only. So if anybody calls saying they’re from the IRS or they’re from the social security administration, you can very easily hang up on them ’cause that’s a fake, that’s a fraud.
• Stephen: Definitely, I mean, that’s definitely good advice and keep in mind, right? Today and as these scams grow increasingly more complex, it’s on social media, it’s via text message. It’s in your email, maybe it’s in your fax machine if you still have a fax machine. So just be careful out there, and if you’ve got a gut feeling that something’s weird, probably don’t respond just like Matt said. And by the way, if unfortunately you have fallen victim to financial fraud or identity theft, be sure to let us know right away too, so we can just put an even heightened level of awareness and security across all of your accounts, better safe than sorry.
• You know, Matt, one of the things that sticks out to me at every financial year end is contribution deadline. So for things like making charitable contributions and donations, five to nine savings accounts for college, whether it’s for your children or nieces, nephews, whatever it may be. Even retirement plan contribution certain retirement accounts, not all of them, but certain retirement accounts definitely require that the contributions be made by the end of the year, so that’s December 31st.
• Oh, by the way, good news going into 2022, if you’re someone who likes to maximize your retirement contributions every year, the limits have increased for certain types of retirement accounts. So check and make sure that your monthly contributions, your annual contributions are back on track for 2022 to reach those maximum limits.
• Matt: Yeah, that’s good news for 2022. Another thing that I wanted to talk about today, we’ve been getting a lot of questions about I bonds, they’re bonds sold directly by the treasury. It’s a type of bond that you can’t purchase through someone like us, but there is a website that you can visit. It’s called treasurydirect.gov.
• And on that website, you can set up an account for yourself, for your spouse and you can even sign up a joint account, but they have limits as to how much you can purchase every year. There’s a $10,000 limit per person per year purchasing these types of I bonds, these types of bonds. What’s the attraction?
• Well, they’re indexed against inflation. And since inflation has been going up and up lately, you’re seeing a lot of news about this is getting a lot of press and publicity. And so people are interested in that because there’s this perception that you’re benefiting because of it being tied to inflation and its yield will, mirror or be affected by inflation as a tie.
• One caveat is that no one’s getting rich off of investing in I bonds, but when in inflationary periods this is a good part of your portfolio. So I think this is a very worthy thing to be investing in, but know all of the pros and the cons and the rules and regulations around owning them.
• Stephen: Yep, that makes a lot of sense. Like Matt said, make sure you go to treasurydirect.gov to buy those I bonds, because if you go anywhere else, if you click on a social media ad or anything else, that’s probably a scam. So treasurydirect.gov that’s the only place you should check out if you’re thinking of buying some of these I bonds.
• Inflation’s gone up a lot, but so has the market, so of asset prices in general. So another thing to do at the end of the year is just to check in on your portfolio. There’s a good chance that your target allocation, right? Your risk reward target, it might be out of whack, right?
• You see as the stock values have increased as real estate commodities, other of these growth assets have increased, that’s probably increased as a percentage of your portfolio and you might wanna rebalance your portfolio to get it back on track. In other years, you might be able to do things like tax loss, harvesting but hopefully just have a lot of gains this year. It might be hard to get some tax loss harvesting done, but these are all things to do with your portfolio and check-in definitely consider rebalancing whether at the end of this year or the beginning of next year, that’s definitely something that should be on your financial planning year-end checklist.
• Matt: That’s something we’re helping our clients with, we’ve rebalanced several many, many clients because their portfolios were way out of their allocation because their growth stocks or their stocks have grown so much that their allocations has changed accordingly. So it was important that we rebalance to get them back on their allocation target.
• Another thing I think segue into another item on the list is your state planning and revisiting your beneficiaries, lots of changes happening in life over the course of time and taking an annual check-in and particularly your retirement account, beneficiaries is an important thing to just revisit and make sure that they’re all according to what your wishes are, should you pass away? And the other thing is to review your will and trust and your health care directives. Again, life changes and you may now want to assign a different person to be your healthcare advocate for whatever reason. And those are the types of things that you should be mindful of at least annually and updating them as needed.
• Stephen: Yeah, that’s a really good one. Last, but certainly not least kind of ties in with that is just goal planning. Hopefully over the course of this past year, you’ve reached and achieved some of your goals. So be honest with yourself, check in on your progress towards your goals, your financial goals, your life goals, maybe some you did really well on.
• Maybe some you didn’t and it’s time to recalibrate and reset going into 2022. Maybe you thought that you do a little bit better with your spending goals, your savings goals this year. Maybe you intended to get your estate plan finished this year. Matt talked about that one super important. If you didn’t that’s okay, reset, get back on track and set yourself up for success right here as we start 2022.
• So, hey, if you learned something new from this video, you found this information helpful in getting you prepared for your end of year and your financial to-do list going into 2022, be sure to share this with friends and loved ones, because they might be thinking about some of the same things that you are too. Until next time, I’m Stephen Rischall, along with my co-host, Matt Stadelman and this is the Smart Money Show.