July 2018 Newsletter
July 6th, 2018 by Anchor Bay Capital's Investment TeamMid-Year Check In
At the beginning of this year, we posted an article titled: 5 Steps to Achieve Your Financial Goals in 2018. This article outlined an exercise to help someone get focused on what they want to accomplish financially and take action. Here we are at the mid-point of the year and now is a great time to take stock of the last six months and make sure that you are still on track to make progress in 2018. Here are 3 things you can do this month for a quick financial evaluation:
1. Review your Cash Flow Statement
Your finances start with good cash flow management. Since you have a full six months to view for 2018, you can evaluate your income year to date and examine where money was spent. If you are utilizing the Anchor Bay Capital Client Portal, you have a quick view of your cash flow history that looks like this:
A review of your cash flow statement will not only tell you your projected income and expenses for the year, but will also help you to see areas that may need to be adjusted. Make sure you pay special attention to your major expense areas. Are you spending the majority of your money in the areas that are a priority for you? Use this review to make adjustments as needed.
2. Review your investment performance and risk tolerance
It may not be wise to look at your investment accounts daily, but at least doing a six month review is a good practice. At the mid-year point, you should take the opportunity to review your investments to make sure they remain allocated appropriately for your goals. We provide several tools to help you with this evaluation. You can use our risk measurement tools to gauge your volatility tolerance for the next six months. Please see the image below. Once you have determined your volatility tolerance, you can also evaluate the risk score of your portfolio to determine if it is within your preferred risk score range. You can also login to the Anchor Bay Capital Client Portal to view your year to date performance compared to the market benchmark. Use this exercise to measure your progress toward your financial plan. Your financial plan should have key return assumptions. This performance review will help you evaluate if your return assumptions should be adjusted or maintained.
3. Check your progress in funding your financial goals.
This is a good time to check your paystubs to see how much you have contributed to your company retirement plan. You should also add up any contributions to personal savings plans like your emergency fund or college funds. Use your cash flow statement again to see if you are saving the right portion of your income. Are you on track to meet your savings goals? Will you have enough money to fund that large expense that you are planning on? Remember, this is just your mid-year check in, so you have six months to get on track or reallocate your savings to other goals! You also have the ability to add financial goals to your client portal and link these goals to your accounts so that your progress is automatically tracked. See the image below for an example of how the client portal tracks your financial goals.
Make sure to check in with us to assist with your financial goal planning and update your progress so that we can allocate your investments appropriately!
With Summer in full swing, we hope that you enjoy the weather and travel safely if you are taking any family vacations. We extend our gratitude to you for your continued confidence in us and look forward to a great second half of the year!