Our Weekend Word

Pretty much everyone has noticed by now that you’re not getting paid very much by your bank account. Interest rates have been at historical lows since the financial crisis, but lately are finally on the rise.

Market drops are scary, especially when they come day after day. The decline on Monday, February 5, was particularly bad. In fact, it has been billed as the largest point drop ever for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Looking at that, it’s normal to think that the stock market is in a downward spiral. History shows, however, that this is often not the case. Although declines like we have seen in the past week are not fun, they generally are not reason to panic.

So, it’s that time of year again… tax time.  From all the calls we get, we can tell you’re all jumping for joy, shouting with glee and overall filled with exuberance.  Since that is out of the way we figured we would take the time to explain a bit about the tax forms you might be getting from us in this tax season.

We wrote a Weekend Word about 18 months ago about the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics and their impact.  With next week marking the start of the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea we thought we would revisit Rio, and take a quick look at PyeongChang. 

Along with the new year we have some new numbers that will affect Social Security benefits.

On December 22, 2017, President Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (the act or TCJA). The legislation makes significant changes to the Internal Revenue Code (IRC), including individual, corporate, and gift and estate taxation.

Well, it’s that time again; we’ve entered 2018 and we are quickly creeping up on The Weekend Word’s second birthday.  The last two years have been interesting from our standpoint.  In early 2015 we wanted to have an outlet to discuss topical information that wasn’t boring or dry.  We ended up borrowing the idea from a fellow advisor here in the office and ran with it.  Let me tell you, while its far from a complex idea, in practice it’s a little more complicated.  From the get go we struggled to find our niche, attempting to blend pertinent news, with our take on it which resulted in some bland, ill constructed articles (Thanks for sticking with us through our awkward years).  Over time, with your feedback we have turned this into something we’re quite proud of. 

I don’t know about everyone else, but I am scratching my head as to what happened to 2017.  It feels like just yesterday that we wrote the Weekend Word looking back on 2016. So, let’s take a little bit and recap 2017 as 2018 comes rolling in.

It’s that time of year again, the holidays are upon us.  We just had our first substantial snowfall, Christmas lights are everywhere, and the biggest indicator (at least for us) is the insane amount of traffic around the office caused by those last-minute shoppers.  Being that time of year, we didn’t want to pelt everyone with political ramblings, market watches or calls to arms, because you get enough of that everywhere else.  This week we wanted to take some time and share our plans for the holidays.

This article is geared toward your college kids coming home for the holidays, but can really apply to anyone.