Financial Fitness - North Light Financial Services

What’s Your Financial Health Score?

What’s Your Financial Health Score? Can a 5-question test predict how wealthy you will become? In the future, will you become wealthier or poorer? Who knows, right? It seems like you would need a crystal ball to really answer that question given life’s up and downs. What if the answer is right in front of you? What if you can determine it from your present financial behaviors? Two economists present a brief questionnaire – and an audacious claim. Last month, [...]

By info@northlightfinancialservices.com|2017-03-28T08:17:20-04:00January 16th, 2015|Financial Fitness, Investing, Saving & Budgeting|Comments Off

Your Annual Financial To-Do List

Your Annual Financial To-Do List Things you can do before & for 2015. What financial, business or life priorities do you need to address for 2015? Now is a good time to think about the investing, saving or budgeting methods you could employ toward specific objectives. Some year-end financial moves may prove crucial to the pursuit of those goals as well. What can you do to lower your 2015 taxes? Before the year fades away, you have plenty of options. [...]

By info@northlightfinancialservices.com|2017-03-28T08:17:20-04:00December 23rd, 2014|401(k)/403(b), Financial Fitness, Income Taxes, Investing, IRA, Saving & Budgeting|Comments Off

Accenting the Positive

Accentuating the Positive Retiring? Saving for retirement? Here’s some good news. Are 90% of articles written about retirement pessimistic? Sometimes it seems that way. Repeatedly, we are reminded that most baby boomers haven’t saved enough for the future. There’s no denying this, but the media is giving short shrift to other, more positive developments that may be improving the economic and retirement outlook for many Americans. Here are a few worth noting. 401(k) savings have rebounded tremendously from Great Recession [...]

By info@northlightfinancialservices.com|2017-03-28T08:17:20-04:00December 18th, 2014|Financial Fitness, Retirement, Saving & Budgeting, Well-being|Comments Off

IRS Raises Retirement Plan Contribution Limits – 2015

IRS Raises Retirement Plan Contribution Limits Roth & traditional IRAs won’t get 2015 COLAs, but other plans will. A little inflation means a little adjustment. As the Consumer Price Index is up 1.7% over the last 12 months, the federal government is giving Social Security benefits a 1.7% boost for 2015 and lifting annual contribution limits on key pension plans as well.1 401(k), 403(b), 457 & TSP annual contribution limits increase by $500. You will be able to defer up [...]

By info@northlightfinancialservices.com|2017-03-28T08:17:21-04:00December 4th, 2014|401(k)/403(b), Business/Economic News, Financial Fitness, IRA, Retirement|Comments Off

Couples Retiring on the Same Page

Couples Retiring on the Same Page Agreeing about what you want from retirement is crucial. What does a good retirement look like to you? Does it resemble the retirement that your spouse or partner has in mind? It is at least roughly similar? The Social Security Commission currently projects an average retirement of 19 years for a man and 21 years for a woman (assuming retirement at age 65). So sharing the same vision of retirement (or at least respecting [...]

By info@northlightfinancialservices.com|2017-03-28T08:17:21-04:00September 25th, 2014|Financial Fitness, Retirement|Comments Off