financial goals

Adulting 101: Three Money Buckets

Those first paychecks can be thrilling. It’s like a signal of being a real adult—and all the responsibilities that come with that term. You’re earning real money, but how do you make those earnings powerful? When you spend less than you earn, you develop savings—but how do you learn how to manage those funds?

We think the easiest place to start is to try and sort your financial goals into three buckets.

The first one you have is short-term. This is where you go to find money to deal with emergencies. You also use the short-term bucket to save for annual expenses like real estate taxes or insurance premiums. This bucket must be stable and liquid, to provide money when you need it. Returns are secondary.

On the other end, you have a long-term bucket. If you ever hope to retire instead of going to work every day, or accumulate wealth for other long-term goals, you need one of these—even if retirement feels like forever away. Unlike the first bucket, this one may endure more volatility in the hopes of garnering higher returns over a long-time horizon. You should plan on not tapping this bucket except for those long-term goals, short of an emergency which can be met no other way.

Naturally, the third bucket is in-between. You may have goals for things that happen in a few years, on an intermediate time horizon. It might be for a major purchase like a boat or camper, to meet educational expenses for a child, a down payment on a home you intend to buy at some point in the future.

Not surprisingly, the third bucket may balance stability and higher returns with a middle of the road approach. It might use a mix of investments from the other two buckets, or other types of investments with intermediate stability and returns.

The idea of three buckets is a helpful way to understand the functional purposes of investing. You will need to know something about the basic kinds of investments, styles of investing, some tax considerations, and the options available.

Clients, if you need help sorting the buckets to reach your financial goals, please email us or call.

Content in this material is for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

All investing involves risk including loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss.

Play the audio version of this post below:

Adulting 101: Three Money Buckets – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services

The text of this episode is available at ⁠228Main.com⁠.

Embracing the Loops, Swoops, and Squiggles

Sometimes life’s big milestones arrive in a neat, straight line. And sometimes that’s just not what happens—or what we want to happen. How do we plan for a swoopy life?

Want content like this in your inbox each week? Leave your email here.

Enjoying the Fruits of Your Labor
photo shows a basket of apples and a hand reaching in to pick a red one up

by Mark Leibman

We’re inspired by recent conversations with clients and friends whose plans, as they say, have come to fruition.

Fruition—the realization or fulfillment of a plan or project—scarcely begins to describe the satisfaction and joy we’ve seen.

What types of projects?

There’s recent retirees who downsized to a maintenance-free home, going to art festivals instead of pulling weeds, having more dinners with their descendants, and seeing more ball games. There’s the people going on that Alaska cruise or the tour of Italy. There’s the people turning hobbies into true avocations.

These are just some of the plans we’ve seen come to fruition for people we are close to.

A wise person once said that a plan is a dream put into writing. We are in the business of trying to make the arithmetic work for people who would like to try to make their dreams come true. We’ve written before about the best way to retire, and the point is, dreams are personal.

What are you trying to do? Where do you want to wind up?

One of the privileges of long experience in our work is seeing the realization or fulfillment of those plans made long ago. But life sometimes throws curve balls. So we’ve also seen adjustments made by people who would have preferred to avoid the need to adapt. Not everyone we love lives as long as we wished, health may be fleeting, and circumstances often present a mixed bag. Nevertheless, sound plans usually put us in better shape to deal with the unanticipated.

Money is not the most important thing in the world. But it is also true that our resources can buy us options we might otherwise not have. Wealth may free up our time, and time is what life is made of. Dreams and arithmetic working together may make the best things more likely.

If you would like to discuss your dreams and plans in greater detail, please write or call.

Want content like this in your inbox each week? Leave your email here.

A Hunch Is Enough

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” A new school year will be starting soon for many, but it’s not just children who feel like they have to have answers to the big questions. New clients will on occasion visit our office with apologies ready: they don’t exactly know what they want or what they might need in the future. And that’s okay. Plans and hunches and visions… It’s all welcome.

Want content like this in your inbox each week? Leave your email here.

Making the Story Come True

Even heroes get knocked down a time or two when fighting their monsters. There may be a couple of bumps in the road, but what good plot doesn’t have some conflict? With our passions in mind, a little bit of perseverance, and a good plan, we all get to be the hero of our own story.

Want content like this in your inbox each week? Leave your email here.

The Momentum Will Build

It might help to think about financial goals like a line of dominoes. Only one domino needs to fall at first, and the momentum will build. We don’t have to do it all at once 🙏

Want content like this in your inbox each week? Leave your email here.

The Hats We Wear

How do we get from where we are to where we’d like to be? Sometimes it’s hard to imagine how we’ll close the gaps. The good thing about the big stuff is that we can only get them done one step at a time. We might wear many hats in life, but along the way… we can only wear one hat at a time. 🙏

Want content like this in your inbox each week? Leave your email here.

The Power of Dominoes

It might help to think about financial goals like a line of dominoes. Only one domino needs to fall at first, and the momentum will build. We don’t have to do it all at once 🙏

Want content like this in your inbox each week? Leave your email here.

When Life’s Not a Straight Line

Sometimes life’s big milestones arrive in a neat, straight line. And sometimes that’s just not what happens—or what we want to happen. How do we plan for a swoopy life?

Want content like this in your inbox each week? Leave your email here.

Are They SMART Goals in a Dumb Pond?
photo shows a ripple growing in a blue pond with green trees in the background

by Caitie Leibman, Director of Communications

Use SMART goals.

Be smart about it.

Work smarter, not harder.

You’ve probably heard this advice at a juncture in life; maybe you’ve even said it to someone else. Goals don’t get us very far unless they are explicit, meaningful, and can be tracked. Without them, aren’t they just dreams? “Hope is not a plan,” I’ve heard it said.

None of this is meant to be cynical, but I’m thinking about an important distinction: having “smart” goals won’t matter if they’re pointed in a “dumb” direction. So let’s get out of that framework. Smart and dumb are relative anyway (not to mention judgmental!).

The fit of a goal matters. For those of us youngest children who ever wore hand-me-downs, you know that even the stuff in the best shape isn’t quite right if it wasn’t picked for you. Alignment of a goal matters too: the thing better fit into the big picture. Does achieving a big purchase now help me live the life I want, without side-tracking my long-term goals? Just an example.

And your goals stay yours. Then it’s part of our job to make sure our strategies stay aimed at those goals.

We, too, strive for good fit. We don’t splash around in “opportunities” that don’t align with our principles. We seek bargains, we focus on owning the orchard for the fruit crop, we avoid stampedes. If it’s not in alignment, it could be a distraction or a tangent.

Jane Fonda once put it nicely: “If I want to make ripples, I better be sure I’m throwing my pebbles into the right pond.”

“Right” is relative to your life, your vision. We’re just happy to be part of the effort. You decide when it’s time to check in on your goals and direction.

Want content like this in your inbox each week? Leave your email here.

Play the audio version of this post below:

SMART Goals in a Dumb Pond? – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services

This text is available at https://www.228Main.com/.