Anne Schutt’s latest November/December 2023 Construction Beauty
Festive Finances: Year-End Planning Recommendations for a Merry Christmas and Prosperous New Year
As the holiday season approaches, it’s time to embrace the spirit of giving, sharing, and celebrating with loved ones. While the holidays are a time of joy and merriment, they also coincide with the end of the fiscal year, making it the perfect opportunity to engage in some year-end financial planning. In this article, we’ll blend the festive cheer of Christmas with the practicality of finance, offering you recommendations to ensure a prosperous New Year. So, grab a cup of hot cocoa, settle by the fireplace, and let’s unwrap the gift of financial wisdom.
Anne Schutt’s September/October 2023 Construction Beauty
Unveiling the Hidden Financial Lessons in Fairytales
Fairytales have been a cherished part of our culture for generations, capturing our imaginations and imparting valuable life lessons (and maybe a bit of fear depending on the fairytale!). While we often focus on the magical elements and heroic journeys, these timeless tales also hold valuable insights into the world of finance. From wealth management to risk assessment, let's embark on a journey to explore the hidden financial wisdom embedded in our favorite fairytales.
Anne Schutt’s July/August 2023 Construction Beauty
Painting Your Retirement Masterpiece
Famous Impressionist artist, Claude Monet, said, “Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.” Many retirees can relate to Monet if their retirement income relies too heavily on the stock market. These retirees can find themselves obsessed with logging into their accounts and watching the constant dance between red, declining value, and green, increasing value, of their investments. The day the retirement cake was cut and the desk was packed and loaded into the car, was also the day the steady paycheck stopped being deposited into the bank account. This can be a scary time for many! When making this transition there are many layers and brushstrokes that need to be mastered to bring all the angles and colors together to create the retirement you have dreamed of.
Anne Schutt’s May/June 2023 Construction Beauty
What I Wish I Knew Then
That old saying, “Hindsight is 20/20”, has moved through many of our thoughts at some point in our lives. Standing in the future and looking back at the past is often the only way to have true clarity of a situation. That leaves us with needing to make many life decisions with large amounts of uncertainty. None of us have a crystal ball that can provide that clarity, but there are ways you can use the experiences of others to help make better decisions. As a financial planner, I work with clients from every stage in life. This creates a knowledge “crystal ball” that helps me guide clients through life decisions. While I may not personally experience the same situation, chances are one, or many, of my clients have. When discussing financial plans with more mature clients, I often hear, “I wish I knew then what I know now.” From those many conversations, I want to highlight the top few in hopes that the combined wisdom of many may help guide your decision making.
Anne Schutt’s March/April 2023 Construction Beauty
Are Your Surroundings Determining Your Financial Health?
Too often I hear people talking about how frustrated they feel about their credit card debt. They feel like they can never get ahead and, no matter what they do, seem to add to their already growing balance every month. While sometimes there are things that happen that are out of our control and we may need to temporarily depend on a credit card, often much of what has driven people into debt is avoidable.
Anne Schutt’s December 2022 Construction Beauty
Looking Back at Your Year, Was It Well-Lived?
December has always been a time of reflection for me. Usually, I have more time indoors, curled up with a warm mug in front of a fire, forced to slow down a bit. It is in these times of solitude that I like to look back on my year and reflect on the good times, the hard times and times that shaped me into what I will become in the next year. Will I become a better Mom, a better partner, a better co-worker? What did I learn and how have I grown over the last year? But most importantly, I like to use the time to do a bit of a gut-check. Was my life well-lived this last year? What does that even mean? Just like every snowflake is unique, what every person considers “well-lived” may be different.
Anne Schutt’s November 2022 Construction Beauty
It’s Important to Dream, but You Also Must Do!
The sun shines down, warming my skin as my toes sink deep into the cool, wet sand as I drift off to sleep to the sound of calming ocean waves. Is this how you envision spending your days in retirement? No rushing around, just time to relax and enjoy passing your time without a care in the world! What fun to dream about a day when every day could look like your best vacation. While dreaming is VERY important, it’s also important that you are also doing. What I mean is that these magical dreams don’t just come true without working towards them. Doing the things now that you need to do, will help make that dream a reality later.
Anne Schutt’s September 2022 Construction Beauty
Time: Your Best Friend or Worst Enemy when Seeking Financial Freedom
As you are flipping through this amazing magazine, I want you to think of something that you wish you could go back and tell your younger self. I think we all have those, “I wish I would have known then” moments in our lives! Maybe it is to stay, or don’t stay, with a certain romantic partner or take or leave a certain job. Unfortunately, time travel has not come to fruition. No blue police box is going to land outside your door (Dr. Who anyone?) and it is unlikely your new hot tub will portal you back to your younger years (yes, I did watch Hot Tub Time Machine, admit it, you did too!). Until we can lasso time and make it bend to our will, we have to understand the impact it can have on our lives.
Anne Schutt’s August 2022 Construction Beauty
Don’t Let the Little Things Hold You Back from Achieving Financial Freedom
I recently moved into a new home and, still acclimating to where everything is located at in the kitchen, I startled myself one morning when putting dishes away. Sleepy-eyed, I had wandered into the kitchen, and while the coffee was brewing, decided to knock out a chore and put the dishes away out of the dishwasher. I opened a high cabinet and began to push a glass tray onto the top shelf and BAM! It sounded like a bomb went off! By pushing that tray in the front of the cabinet, I didn’t realize it was pushing another glass tray out of the door on the back side of the cabinet. This beautiful, antique, amber glass egg tray shattered into a million little pieces all over the floor in my breakfast nook. One lesson should be to never attempt your chores until you have had at least one cup of coffee!
Anne Schutt’s July 2022 Construction Beauty
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Financial Happiness
Two-hundred forty-six years ago the thirteen British Colonies that dotted the Eastern seaboard of the New World finally had enough. They had had enough with taxes, limits on imports, restrictions on being able to move West and so many other oppressions King George had placed on them to try and keep control of them. In a unanimous decision, 56 representatives from the 13 colonies came together and declared their independence from British rule, the youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence was only 26 years old! It took great courage to finally draw a line in the sand and declare independence. Many of the signers went on to lose loved ones to the Revolutionary War and the country went through challenging times as it was officially being born free of England.
Anne Schutt’s June 2022 Construction Beauty
Enjoy Your Summer, Without Throwing Your Financial Goals Off-Track
How many of you were able to save money when the world was shut down due to the pandemic? So many have shared that, because everything was closed, they learned how to enjoy life in other ways and as a result saved money! As the world opens back up and summer vacations are getting planned, make sure that you don’t overextend yourself financially out of a driving desire to travel after being cooped up for 2 years!
Anne Schutt’s May 2022 Construction Beauty
A World in Transition
The last couple of years have been full of so many transitions for almost everyone on the planet! How many of you were very comfortable with life as you knew it and had your world rocked when all the sudden you had to work from home, supervise your children’s online learning and connect with others virtually instead of in person? Most of us! But the unexpected consequence of these major changes to our daily lives is that many people are choosing to make even more changes.
Anne Schutt’s April 2022 Construction Beauty
Planting the Seeds for Financial Success
A Chinese Proverb shares the wisdom, “All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today.” While many of our minds go directly to our gardens and has us thinking about the excitement of the first signs of green poking through the ground, I want to focus us on how this wisdom translates to other parts of our lives. Specifically, how this pertains to our financial life. Quite often I am in social conversations with people who find out I am a financial advisor, and they share how they have so much fear and anxiety around their finances that they just don’t even want to think about it. Think of their financial garden as an empty plot of land behind their home that they stare at every day.