Momentum - Business to Business Online Magazine MOMENTUM January 2019 | Page 31
Retirement & Financial Planning
Financial To-Do List to
Assist with New Year’s
Resolutions
By: Don Burrows
Hilltop Securities
[email protected]
Investing, saving, and budgeting are all great methods that
may help with your New Year’s resolution of organizing your
financial life. Let’s take a look at some quick tips that may be
helpful in 2019.
Investing can be intimidating so let’s start at the beginning!
Log in and take a look at your 401(k)/IRA. Are your
beneficiaries up-to-date? Have you recently had a life event
such as a birth, marriage or divorce? Each life event could
require you to make changes in your beneficiary allocation.
Also, review the asset allocations and current elections set
for your investments. Carefully review the allocations to
ensure they reflect your current life stages, such as,
investment strategies /objectives, risk tolerances, and time
horizon. Never hesitate to contact your financial advisory
team, if you need assistance reviewing your accounts or if
you have other questions or concerns. My team at Hilltop
Securities feels this is a vital first step into working with our
clients.
Secondly, saving and budgeting go hand-in-hand. Creating
a personal budget may help answer the question “Where
does all my money go?” An effective budget takes time and
patience. You can begin by reviewing your detailed
spending, and verify the amount currently budgeted, aligns
with the true expense. For example, you could budget $20
a month for daily coffee, but when you review the account,
you realize you spent closer to $50. You may want to adopt
a discipline to stick to a $20 monthly coffee budget and
consider reallocating the $30 difference to your savings
account, for example. Which brings us to our next tip,
reviewing your monthly memberships.
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This may seem like a small task, but most of us are guilty of
starting a membership or subscription service, and after a
month or two we stop using it, however, we continue to have
the monthly fee deducted from our account. Take the time to
review those automatic monthly transactions for services
such as, Spotify, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Apple Music,
and/or your gym membership, and ask yourself “Is this
membership or service worth keeping?”
Gaining an understanding of where your paycheck goes, and
prioritizing expenses can assist you in working towards your
savings and overall financial health goals.
Don Burrows is a registered representative and investment adviser
representative of Hilltop Securities Inc. (HTS), a registered broker-dealer and
registered investment adviser who doesn’t provide tax or legal advice. The
views/opinions expressed in this article are purely the author’s, and does not
necessarily reflect those of Hilltop Securities, Inc., its Management,
employees and/or affiliates. Information contained in this article should not
be relied upon as a substitute for legal, tax or accounting advice, if assistance
is needed, the reader is advised to engage the services of a competent
professional. HTS is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hilltop Holdings, Inc.
(NYSE: HTH) located at 1201 Elm Street, Suite 3500, Dallas, Texas 75270,
(214) 859-1800.