December is upon us!
I am not ready for cold weather, but thankfully I have a remedy for that. And not so ready to spend less time playing with the kids in the nice weather. My son is still at the age where I stand a chance on the soccer field with his friends (I am an amateur) but I am predicting by next year, I’m toast. I won’t have any chance.
That being said, I am thankful for the time I had during a nice summer and a very beautiful early fall season. i hope yours was as enjoyable as ours.
Now the purpose of this post/message.
As you may remember if you have been part of our community for more than a year, we make a gift to FriendshipWorks (learn more about them HERE).
They are also starting a monthly giving program called Best Funding Friend (“BFF” get it?:). So I will give our usual gift (in lieu of cards to everyone) but also start a monthly giving program with them.
Other Items - Going to Hawaii
We have a 3-week trip planned to Hawaii starting December 15 to January 7. Any housecleaning items that need to be addressed here before year end I am working on. However everything appears to be under control and things I can handle via phone/email. My goal is to reduce the amount of time I spend in winter. I have been spoiled by living in California.
Items of Interest:
I shared this great YouTube video explaining how scammers work with the clients. If any of you have ever been hit with scammers, you know this is how they operate. However the video shows the entire behind the scenes process. Here it is again if you missed the other email: Glitter Trap Catches Phone Scammer
Here is a great article on how to think about giving kids allowances. It helped me out a lot. if you are struggling with the internal debate of whether you should give allowances, or make payment tied to household chores etc, this is a good article: Allowance tips for parents
IRA/401k RMDs - Some of you have accounts I can not see. If they have RMDs that need to come out of them, get that done before December 31, and give the company some time to process it!
Year end thoughts on the tax/estate law changes:
Some of the more onerous parts of the Build Back Better (Build Back Broke?) legislation like the IRS monitoring everyone’s personal bank accounts, were removed. I like to think my open facebook letter to my Congresswoman helped but I think everyone was upset about that. Other than massively increasing the number of “revenue agents” that will be running around and auditing us, I am not super worried about the effects of this bill immediately upon most of you.
If you have any questions or thoughts on this, let me know. As I write this, it looks like the market avoided a plunge with a stick save (hockey term).
Turkeys stalk our neighborhood (I think this neighbor feeds them!)