2024's Best Stocking Stuffer: Financial Freedom

The holiday season is here, and while you’re stuffing stockings for your loved ones, don’t forget to stuff your own financial stocking with tips that can bring you closer to a secure retirement. Today, we’re unwrapping 10 bite-sized, actionable ideas to help you save smarter, invest better, and plan for the future you deserve.

 

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Transcript: 

Speaker 1:

The holiday season is upon us. And while you're stuffing stockings for your loved ones, don't forget to stuff your own financial stocking with hopefully some tips that can bring you closer to a secure retirement. Today on Plan With The Tax Man, let's look at some financial freedom and some best stocking stuffers in 2024.

 

Hey everybody, welcome in to the podcast. Thanks for hanging out with Tony Mauro and myself as we talk investing, finance, retirement. We thought we'd have a little fun here. As this is our early December episode, we're going to unwrap a few action items to hopefully help you be a little bit better on your way towards retirement with Tony and just have a little fun with this concept since it's that time of the year. What's going on, my friend? How are you?

 

Speaker 2:

I'm doing good. Just off of Thanksgiving and a quick vacation. So although it's getting cold here, it's the holidays, so. My favorite time of year.

 

Speaker 1:

It is what it is. I mean, it's that time of the year and it comes fast and furious too. It's like soon as one starts, it just, well, snowballs, no pun intended, but it just snowballs its way through to the end of the year. But anyway, well, I'm glad you're doing well. Hopefully our listeners are also. And so let's have a little fun here. Why we might want some of these things as financial stocking stuffers, okay? Is it a good idea as a stocking stuffer? Is it a bad idea? That kind of thing. Have a little fun with it, wherever you want to take it.

 

Speaker 2:

All right.

 

Speaker 1:

All right, so I'll give you the item. You tell us what you think. All right, so the first one, maxing out your retirement contributions. Is this something you'd like to have in your stocking, is to max those out?

 

Speaker 2:

I would say definitely, yes. And for those of the people listening that are in the Iowa area, I actually brought the newspaper article in to share with my staff and it was an article about people that are mostly in the central Iowa area just living on social security. And it's a sad article and I'd encourage people to read it, but the point of it was you don't want to end up just living off social security, which means that, and I tell people this literally like a broken record every tax season, you need to increase your retirement contributions to whatever you're doing. And if you haven't started, you need to start because nobody's going to be there to take care of you and social security, while it's a safety net, it's not a very good existence. And so I would definitely say that's number one on my list.

 

Speaker 1:

Yeah, max it out. Especially as we get to 50. 50 plus, you get those catch up contribution stages, making more money than ever hopefully, kids are off the payroll hopefully. So max those jokers out. Certainly a good idea for a stocking stuffer. All right, diversifying your investments. If somebody says, "Hey, Tony, for Christmas this year, I'm going to help you diversify your investments." That sounds like a pretty good stocking stuffer.

 

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. It goes right along with number one that you definitely don't want to have too much of your investments, of course, concentrated in one area. The old adage, and you still hear some people having it where I've got all my 401(k) wrapped up in my own company's stock. That's probably not the best, that's an extreme example. But I do think you need to be diversified. This is where an advisor can certainly help you and provide some value to make sure you're adequately diversified so that you've always got something in your portfolio that might be doing well when other sectors may not be.

 

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. And to kind of have fun and play on the holiday spirit here, again, you said you want a qualified professional, an advisor to help you. Yes, that is the preferred thing. Not just having Cousin Eddie from the Vacation movies. You don't want Cousin Eddie helping you diversify.

 

Speaker 2:

We don't want Cousin Eddie. No, no.

 

Speaker 1:

We don't want that. We want a qualified like Tony helping us. Same with all of these. So what about reviewing our social security strategy? So good time to think about that and say, "Hey, you know wh