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Look at Your Financial Situation Holistically

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What’s the biggest financial mistake you can make? Choosing the wrong investments? Waiting too long to save for retirement? Underestimating the costs of retirement? All these are reasonable answers, but the biggest mistake you might make is not looking at your financial picture holistically – that is, not bringing into the picture all the elements of yourself.

Let’s consider some of them:

Your Views on Helping Family 

Your decisions about helping your family are clearly going to be a major part of your financial strategy – and this is true at virtually all stages of your life. When your children are young, you’ll need to decide if you’re going to put away money for their college education, and, if so, how much, and in what investment vehicles. When they’re young adults, you may also need to decide how much financial support you’re willing to provide for things such as the down payment on a new home. And when you’re drawing up your estate plans,
you’ll need to consider how to distribute assets to your children, grandchildren or other family members.

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Affecting Change Through Positive Contributions

As someone with civic, ethical and moral concerns, you want to positively affect the world around you. And that’s why you may feel compelled to make charitable gifts throughout your life and then make philanthropy
part of your legacy. To accomplish these objectives, you’ll want to include gifting techniques in your financial strategy today and your estate plans for tomorrow. Of course, for the estate planning component,
you’ll need to work with your tax and legal advisors.

What Will Your Retirement Look Like?

Your purpose in life when you retire – When you retire, you may be stepping off a career path, but you’re  also entering a world of possibilities. How will you define, and live out, your new sense of purpose at this stage of your life? Do you seek to broaden your horizons by traveling around the world? Do you want
to give back more to the community by volunteering? Can you spend more time pursuing the hobbies you enjoy? Each of these choices will carry different financial implications for how much you’ll need to
accumulate for retirement and how much you will need to take out each year from
your retirement accounts, such as your IRA and 401(k).

Your Health and Well-Being

Your physical and mental health can play big roles in your financial plans and outlook. On the most basic level, the healthier you are, and the better you take care of yourself, the lower your health care bills will likely be during retirement, which will affect the amount you need to put away for health care. And you also may need to prepare for the costs of long-term care, which can be enormous – in fact, a private room in a nursing home can easily cost $100,000 per year, according to the insurance company Genworth.

It can be challenging to weave all these elements into a single, unified vision, so you may want to get some help from a financial professional. But, in any case, be prepared to look at your situation holistically – because, when putting together a lifetime’s financial strategy, every part of  your life matters.

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Cameron Thrall

Cameron Thrall is an Auburn-based Edward Jones Financial Advisor. He has a BA in International Studies and an MBA. In addition to his Series 7 and 66, Cameron is also an Accredited Asset Management Specialist.

When not helping clients make smart financial decisions, Cameron spends his time helping promote local businesses as a board member of the Auburn Downtown Cooperative. He can also be found cheering for the best NHL Hockey team (the Capitals) or local favorite the Seattle Thunderbirds.  Cameron and his wife are also avid fliers, flying both airplanes and helicopters. You can reach Cameron at his new Edward Jones office on 3rd Street NW in Auburn.

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