Before the year ends, it’s important to take a look back and reflect on 2018. You can look at how your investments changed, review your portfolio and note any changes that happened in the past year that affected you financially. This can be as easy as taking 15 minutes to check-up on your portfolio and make sure that you are on the right track for 2019. By evaluating your accounts and investments before the year ends, you can be confident in your finances and feel ready to take on the new year.
You can start by checking your investments performance. Look at your retirement plans like 401(k)s and IRAs. You can go online to get your statements or look for a year-end statement in the mail. Once you have all of your paperwork, start evaluating. Compare your funds with indexes that include similar investments to yours. For example, you want to compare bond funds to bond funds, not bond funds to balanced funds. Also, while you’re getting your paperwork together, don’t forget these important retirement documents.
After looking over your performance, check out the fees that you paid in 2018. A goal that many people may have for the upcoming year is to lower fees. Since there are so many options for low-cost investments available, it should be wrong to pay high percentages in fees. But it’s important to talk any changes over with your financial advisor before you make decisions.
The last step in this 15-minute investment check should be to rebalance your portfolio. If some of your investments performed great, you might be weighted too heavily in one area. Now is the time to rebalance because you never know what might happen. If something happens the market and those funds drop, you risk losing big. It’s best to keep a mix of stocks, bonds and other investments in your portfolio. If you’re approaching retirement, this balance becomes more and more important.
At O’Donnell Financial Group, we want to help you create a strong financial plan that will start your 2019 off right. We will sit with you and evaluate your accounts and create a complete retirement portfolio that you can feel secure in. We will take into account your goals and resolutions for 2019 as well as your lifestyle goals for retirement and your estate plan. Click here to schedule your no cost, no obligation financial review.
