Happy New Year!
I hope you had a great holiday season and that you are looking forward to 2022! It's hard to believe that we're at the beginning of another year. For my annual "new year" blog, I have a couple of topics to discuss...
Do you remember back when you were in elementary school and someone would ask, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Back when I was in school, the kids would say, things like astronaut, police officer, or nurse. Every now and then a kid like me would say "baseball player"!The toy company Lego just released a survey of children between ages eight and twelve about what kids want to be today. And surprisingly, the number one future goal for kids today is to become a YouTube influencer! Kids are very aware that producing video content for a growing audience can be lucrative! Things have certainly changed since I was a kid!1
This year I decided to ask myself that question again at 52 years of age, "What do I want to do when I grow up?" When I sit in meetings with my clients sometimes that question comes up as part of the financial planning process - "What do you see yourself doing in five or ten or twenty years down the road?"
When we get right down to it, that's where planning begins. When we begin to make financial decisions like trying to decrease taxes or determine how to invest money while lowering risk - All of those decisions really begin with the goal in mind.
So, how do you picture your life in the future? What do you want your heritage to be for those that come behind you? Ask yourself those big questions and when we connect again, that's the starting point for our discussion as we continue to reshape the goals for your financial plan.
Each January we hear a lot of talk about where the stock market is going and what the bond markets and interest rates are going to be doing this year. After thirty-one years I've come to realize that predictions about what the market is going to do in twelve months are rarely close to accurate!
Although we don't know for sure what the future holds, we have seen that volatility has come back to the financial markets. And, it seems likely that volatility is going to be with us in 2022.
Why is that? Well, the stock market doesn't like uncertainty, and right now there's a lot of uncertainty with taxes, viruses, state control versus federal control, and the list goes on. This much uncertainty leads to volatility.
All of those year-end news shows are interesting, but my advice to you is to make investment decisions based upon the context of your goals. Not predictions about what may or may not happen in the next year.
After more than twenty-five years of working with hundreds of people on their financial plans, we have come to believe that everyone has huge goals and important things they want to accomplish. At Creekmur Wealth our goal is to help you accomplish those goals. To do whatever it is that you picture for your future.
So...What do you want to do? How do you picture your future? Let's connect to make sure that your financial plan is aligned with your future you have in mind.
