Keen On Retirement

There’s more to crafting a sensible estate plan than just deciding what assets you want to leave to your loved ones. That’s a big part of the process, of course. But your estate plan might also include establishing a trust that safeguards your assets for beneficiaries. You might set up a charitable fund that benefits a favorite cause. You’ll need to file all your important documents in one easy-to-find spot. You’ll need to make decisions about how you want to be cared for at the end of your life. And you’ll need to coordinate with attorneys and tax experts.

I talk a lot in my blogs and podcasts about understanding how to separate the news from the noise. In this Market Update Webinar, Matt Wilson, Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer at Keen Wealth Advisors, takes a look back at what happened in the second quarter of 2019 in the markets and in the economy.

Here’s a fun fact you may have seen as we celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing: An iPhone has approximately 100,000 times the processing power of the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC). It also has around 7 MILLION times more memory! Heck, even the first graphing calculators your kids used in the late 1990s were more powerful than the AGC!

This is one of my favorite questions to ask clients and guests at the many seminars we host throughout the year. And because we’re privileged to work with such outstanding folks at Keen Wealth, I get a lot of very smart answers, such as: “59 ½, because I won’t be penalized for making withdrawals from my retirement accounts.” That’s true.

For most folks, July 4th is the official kickoff party for Summer. But I think it’s important to take a moment between bites of barbeque, parade floats, and fireworks to remember what we’re really celebrating. I’m not just talking about the anniversary of the Continental Congress signing the Declaration of Independence in 1776. I’m thinking more about how our forefathers, working in times that were every bit as challenging and polarized as our own, managed to create something extraordinary: the freest, strongest, most innovative, and most prosperous nation in history.

Each year, we invite our clients and friends of the firm to an Open House at our headquarters. This year, we hosted over 400 guests! With all the storms recently in the Midwest, we were grateful to have enjoyed an almost perfect weather day for the event. As has become a bit of a tradition, we served Jack Stack barbeque with a special burnt ends demonstration, enjoyed a wonderful jazz band, snacked on Sheridan’s frozen custard, and crowded into photo booths. We sprinkled in some games to make for a wonderful amount of fun, fellowship, camaraderie and good times. We are so grateful that our friends and clients would spend an afternoon and evening with us to bring in the Summer.