Retirement can be a very difficult transition. The primary challenge many focus on tends to be how to spend your time now if you are no longer working every day. However, as we help clients with their financial planning, we often find that an even bigger issue they are struggling with involves decisions around their residence. Where do they want to live once they stop working? Is it reasonable to grow old in their current home? Do they want to move to be near their children and grandchildren? If they are thinking of moving to a new area, should they rent first or just buy something? For many of our clients, these often tough and emotional decisions become some of the most important ones they make as they transition to retirement. All of these are issues we have discussed with clients in the past few months. Maybe you are thinking about them too! Here are some thoughts on issues we see clients facing and how to approach them.

I recently read a great article from the CFA Institute and I wanted to share it with our clients because I think it’s something we all struggle with. The title of the article is “Best Does Not Mean Optimal” and it discusses the neverending quest by portfolio managers to try to build the “optimal” portfolio for clients.

In November we introduced a new software called TaxCaddy to all of our tax clients. Now that tax filing season has begun, we thought it would be helpful to provide a few tips and tricks to using TaxCaddy to organize your tax information:

Fantasy football has been around for a long time now. I’ve been playing with friends since 2004, but there are leagues that go back even longer. If you’ve never played, it’s basically a way for you to try your luck as an NFL general manager and to build your own team of players. There is a draft where each team picks players in order to fill out a roster. Each week you put your best players in the starting lineup and you earn points based on how those players perform in their actual game that week.

It’s amazing what a difference a year can make. In our 2017 year-end market commentary we reflected on a year with positive returns and very low volatility across nearly every investment class. Now we look back on 2018, which saw negative returns in just about every asset class along with a significant increase in volatility.

December is always a busy time of year for us, even when we aren't anticipating a major tax reform bill like last year. We are working through a number of year-end planning items for our clients from tax projections to tax loss harvesting to required minimum distributions. As I work through these things for our clients I had a number of thoughts come to mind that I wanted to share.