With Fall officially arriving, we are reminded once again that we are closer to the end of the year than we are to the beginning. Along with that comes the holiday season, family time, and last-minute shopping. And while we may not be able to assist with the cooking, cleaning, and shopping that’s just around the corner, we want to help in the best way we know how—making sure your end of year financial checklist is complete!

You've spent years planning for retirement. But now you're wondering if your retirement dollars will last through the ups and downs of the stock market.

At Creekmur Wealth Advisors, our job is to design unique strategies that help our clients reach their goals in the most efficient manner possible. However, despite our best efforts to plan for the future, sometimes life steps in and throws us a curveball. Experiencing a catastrophic life event could quickly derail an otherwise effective plan and leave us scrambling to pick up the pieces.

Much of the material available regarding personal finances is directed towards W-2 workers, or what we would consider a traditional “employee.” This makes sense, research from 2019 showed that roughly 72% of Americans are traditional employees.¹ But, the other 28% of our working population has some specific financial planning needs as well. Today we want to touch on a few tips to help self-employed workers keep their financial house in order.

Do you know someone that is retired and receiving a nice, predictable pension check every month? Maybe you're lucky enough to be covered by a pension plan—perhaps your benefit is still growing, maybe it’s frozen, or perhaps you are already receiving payments. While the word pension still means something in our vocabulary, more and more the pensions of old are going the way of the dinosaurs.

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” - Benjamin Franklin

Are you a risk-taker or do you play it safe? Do you jump out of airplanes for fun or is getting an extra serving of sprinkles on your soft serve your idea of risk? Each of us can look at our behaviors and determine whether the life we lead is high-flying risky or plain-vanilla safe. But can we do the same for our investments? Can you look at the stocks or funds you own and get a good idea of how risky your portfolio is? The answer is probably no.

Financial planning is a huge part of what we do here at Creekmur Wealth Advisors, so it's no surprise that tax planning is one area we spend a lot of time working in. When I talk about tax planning I am not talking about filling out and submitting your tax return every April 15^th. Filing your taxes is necessary, but it's reactive or backward-looking. Tax planning, on the other hand, is a forward-looking, comprehensive approach to reducing lifetime taxes and increasing overall after-tax wealth.

“Do I have enough?” This is a question we hear all the time during our meetings with clients and prospective clients. While this question is often asked about retirement, we have heard it posed about countless other objectives clients are dreaming of and working towards: