4 Changes Financial Planners Are Making to Their Money Plans This Year

• Financial advisors have been changing their approach to their own savings and investments this year.
• Anjali Jariwala says she is focused on investing this year as she anticipates market volatility.
• Ralph Bender is reducing spending so he can invest in further fireproofing his California home.

There are a lot of factors that make up a strong financial plan: debt and risk management, savings and investing goals, and an emergency fund, just to name a few. But one essential tool for reaching long-term milestones like retirement is flexibility.

The financial plan for a recent college graduate with student loan debt and no children will look vastly different from one for someone in their peak earning years who owns a home, or a retiree. Consistency and staying the course are key to financial planning, but so is the ability to recognize when it’s time to tweak what you’re doing with your money based on your changing life circumstances.

We asked financial advisors who spend their days helping other people adjust their plans to share what they’re doing a bit differently this year and why.

1. Boosting savings

Checking in on whether you’re allocating the right amount of money to long-term investing and short-term savings is necessary — and for Andrew Herzog, an associate wealth advisor at The Watchman Group, that means saving more this year as he faces private school tuition and home improvement needs.

Herzog and his wife have redirected her long-term Roth IRA contributions into short-term savings.

“We are in our 30s and still have time to prepare for retirement,” Herzog says. “Previous years, we focused most available cash flow into retirement, but this year is more of a balance.”

2. Prioritizing investing

Investors have to stomach many ups and downs when it comes to the financial markets. But sometimes, market lows can present an opportunity.

“Since I anticipate it to be a volatile year, it is a nice opportunity to invest on the dips and take advantage of more favorable market pricing,” says Anjali Jariwala, a financial advisor and founder of FIT Advisors. She’s increasing the amount of money she transfers to her taxable brokerage account as well as contributions to a 529 savings plan for her daughter’s education.

In prior years, Jariwala says that she was more focused on filling pre-tax and Roth IRA buckets. While she plans to continue maxing out those accounts, she’s also going to focus on increasing her taxable investment account.

“It provides more liquidity, is a great vehicle to fund a donor-advised fund, and provides a retirement bucket with different tax implications,” she adds.

3. Cutting discretionary spending

It’s a big year for Michael Espinosa, a financial advisor and president of TrueNorth Retirement Services, and his wife. His wife is taking a break from working with a nonprofit to run her own business.

“This has pretty big implications for our personal finances since, at least for the first while, our income will take a noticeable decrease for the first time in our marriage,” he says, adding that they’ve decided to decrease some of their discretionary spending to prepare. “We’ve sat down and run the numbers to make sure that we’ll be OK, but it also means that we’ll have a little less wiggle room in our budget compared to before.”

Espinosa and his wife have also opted to lower the amount of extra payments they’re making toward their mortgage to build up cash reserves, and earmarked funds for some bigger upcoming expenses so that they don’t have to use debt to finance them.

4. Protecting the home

California homeowners are facing added stress due to wildfires that burned through much of the state earlier this year.

Ralph Bender, CEO and founder of Enduring Wealth Advisors, said that he recently realized he needs to protect the dream home he lives in in the Golden State. That means fire-hardening the structure and the landscaping around it.

While some of the items are simple maintenance issues, such as removing growth around the house and repainting wooden structures and surfaces with fire-resistant paints, more intensive changes include regrading slopes to mitigate fire and erosion issues.

“The little stuff will be paid out of our normal cash flow used for the maintenance of our property,” Bender says. For the bigger projects, “funding sources will be negotiated with my wife, as we’ll need to reduce spending on something else.”