2022 - kfinancial

NEWSLETTERS-2022

BI-WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

Welcome to Bellefonte

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We are switching it up a bit for the next few newsletters and having a guest writer, Kami McWilliams. We met Kami a few years back when we were looking for insurance for rental properties we had purchased, that our then, current agent, couldn’t help out with. Jill was blown away by how Kami handled our situation and took the time to thoroughly communicate our options to us. We have been working with her ever since, and thought she would be a great resource for all of us, to help walk us through Property and Casualty insurance for the next couple of newsletters. More importantly, we enjoyed working with Kami so much that we are now sharing an office with her in Bellefonte. That’s right; we have another office and are looking forward to being in downtown Bellefonte, on West High St.

Like any other insurance you may have, we feel it is important to schedule annual reviews, to make sure you are putting yourself in the best possible position for the upcoming year. Therefore, if that is something you may be interested in doing, Kami’s information is at the bottom of this newsletter. She is an excellent resource with a wealth of knowledge in the Property and Casualty world. Here’s the first bit of information from Kami about Auto Insurance :

The Law

We all know that Pennsylvania requires every registered vehicle to carry auto insurance – or do we? Have you ever read the return envelope on your vehicle registration? It’s stated right there in black and white, yet so many of us find ourselves receiving a threatening letter from PennDot, demanding proof of insurance or facing a fine and license suspensi0n because we removed insurance on a vehicle we no longer drive.

“It’s just sitting.” “It doesn’t even run.” “I plan to sell it.” We’ve all been there. However, if the registration is still active, it doesn’t matter. It has to remain insured, at least with the PA state minimum required coverage: Liability 15/30/5.

What does this mean, exactly? $15,000 bodily injury per person. If you are found legally liable for an accident and someone is injured, your policy will pay up to $15,000 toward that person’s medical-related expenses. $30,000 bodily injury per accident. The second number is a maximum payout, which comes into play if multiple people are injured (they don’t automatically each get $15,000). $5,000 property damage. This is paid out if you damage something: another vehicle, a guardrail, a fence, a sign or even a house, for example. The possibilities are endless. It doesn’t sound like much protection but it is, in fact, all that the state of PA requires for you to be legally insured.

Medical coverage in the amount of $5,000 is also required in the state of PA. This pays before your health insurance if you are hurt in an accident, whether you are a driver or a passenger; at fault or not at fault. In fact, even if you smash your finger in the door of a car, your auto policy medical pays first. This is a tough concept to understand. The good thing about medical coverage is that your insurance policy is not surcharged if you use it. Hopefully I’ve cleared up some confusion on minimum required coverage. Next time we’ll delve into the optional coverage available to PA insurance customers.

Kami J. McWilliams Agency LLC

214 W. High St.

Bellefonte, PA 16823

Ph 814-810-2718

www.kjminsurance.com

Greg Korn, CFP® President & Investment Advisor Representative

Toll Free: 833-788-0404

Fax: 814-357-9070

Important Disclosures Regarding Email Communications

Advisory services through Retirement Wealth Advisors, Inc. (RWA), an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. K Financial LLC and RWA are not affiliated. This Email is being sent by or on behalf of a Registered Investment Advisor. It is intended exclusively for the individual or entity to which it is addressed. This communication may contain information that is proprietary, privileged, or confidential, or otherwise legally exempt from disclosure. If you are not the named addressee, you are not authorized to read, print, retain, copy or disseminate the Email or any part of it. If you have received this Email in error, please notify the sender immediately by Email or fax, and destroy all copies of this communication. Please be advised that you may conduct securities transactions only by speaking directly with your Investment Advisor Representative either by phone or in person. Requests for securities transactions via email will not be executed by Retirement Wealth Advisors, Inc. To help protect your privacy, we strongly suggest you avoid sending sensitive information, such as account numbers and social security numbers via Email. Please be further advised that, pursuant to the Bank Secrecy Act, the USA PATRIOT ACT, and similar laws, any communication in this email is subject to regulatory, supervisory, and law enforcement review.

Time to Plan for 2023It's time to plan your healthcare for next year

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I would bet that you’re excited that Fall is upon us and the leaves are absolutely gorgeous right now. However, I would also bet that you’re even more excited about it being that time of year where you get to make important healthcare decisions for the upcoming year. Probably not. For the next few months, we are all going through the process of picking the best healthcare plan to take us through 2023. Some of us will have an easy choice because our employer does most of the work for us and gives us two or three options to pick from. Others will have to venture into the Medicare world or the Pennie world, which can be overwhelming with all of the choices. The insurance industry is a complicated one, and it sure did take some time for me to understand the ins and outs of the healthcare aspect. Fortunately, through thousands of meetings about healthcare, I’ve been able to get a firm grasp of what to look for and what needs to be done to help clients choose the right plans, year after year. I couldn’t imagine tackling this on my own, if this were not my profession.

If I could, I would come into everyone’s homes and take all of your TVs. We know what is coming and what we’ve already been experiencing; commercial after commercial about Medicare and other healthcare products. I want to remind you that these are commercials, which means they have something to sell you. Jim Walker and Joe Namath are paid to make these commercials and it is an advertising ploy to act as if you are missing out on free stuff by the government. The purpose is to get you to call because guess what? They want your business. Yes, there is assistance with paying for your Medicare through the state. However, the overwhelming majority of individuals do not qualify for these services. To qualify, you need to make less than $2,060 a month for married couples and $1,516 a month for an unmarried individual. Here’s the link to those guidelines. Generally, during this time of year, at the end of many of my meetings, I get the same question; “I keep seeing on TV that I can get my Medicare paid for. What is that about?” What that says to me is that the advertising is working. I’ve even had clients who have called, just to find out that these companies were just trying to sell them a new plan. I point this out just so we are all prepared this Fall, for more attempts to suck us into calling a person in Oregon to help with our Pennsylvania Healthcare Plan. I am not sure that makes sense.

Medicare: Important dates to know: You can change your Medicare Advantage plan or Prescription plan between the dates of October 15th and December 7th for insurance that starts January 1st, 2023. If you don’t get it completed by December 7th, you can also change your Medicare Advantage plan from January 1st, 2023 to March 31st, 2023. If you have a Medicare Supplement plan, you can switch plans at any point during the year. You will just need to go through underwriting.

PENNIE: Open Enrollment begins on November 1st and runs through January 15, 2023. If you miss these dates, then you’re going to need a Qualifying Life Event to be able to apply during a Special Enrollment Period for health insurance through Pennie. Here’s a link to the list of QLEs.

Healthcare really matters in retirement, which is why we spend so much time with clients getting this right. We have no idea what health problems are in front of us, but if we make a smart decision during the enrollment time, we can sleep a lot better knowing that if a problem arises, we are prepared. We can simply focus on getting better and recovering from whatever health issues we may face. This is so important because we have a better chance of recovering when we have less stress and a good healthcare plan offers us just that.

We are here for you during this important time and encourage you to reach out with any questions. If necessary, we’ll get together in person because we want to get this right for you, this year and every year after that.

Brookstone Fed rate hikes Video: Fed Raises Rates… Market Says Maybe too Far

More thoughts from my desk in a couple of weeks. Go out and take a hike through the woods over the next month or so to enjoy this beautiful time of year.

Greg Korn, CFP® President & Investment Advisor Representative

Toll Free: 833-788-0404

Fax: 814-357-9070

Important Disclosures Regarding Email Communications

Legacy is more than money

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Often, when we discuss legacy, the conversation tends to be centered around our financial legacy. However, there is a lot more to your legacy than just the financial aspect. This hit me, as my dad and I spent many hours together, over the last few weeks, building a bar for our home. A couple of years ago, I had to cut down an old red oak tree at our last house and I noticed that there were some really nice pieces of wood I could get out of that tree. Therefore, I had about a dozen slabs cut and had been letting them dry for the last two years. When the wood was finally ready, we came up with some great plans for a bar that we wanted to build in our house. You see, my grandfather farmed his whole life and when he retired, he spent many of his days working in his shop, building and refinishing furniture. My bet is that if my grandfather would have been into cars, I would probably be more interested in fixing cars. Regardless, our legacy takes on various aspects, and we have to think beyond just the financial.

I was blessed with two amazing grandfathers and hope that a bit of their character comes out in me, every day. I’ve come to notice that the pleasure of creating something from wood has been a part of my life, ever since I bought my first home. Some of my creations have been sold with my houses, but since we are planning to live the rest of our lives where we are now, we’ll get many nights to enjoy this bar. It is a bit odd, the influence that my grandfather’s legacy has on me, in that I struggled and stressed about this bar throughout the Summer. In a conversation with Jill, I was trying to figure out why I was so stressed about this. Well, the first thing I have to admit, is that I tend to screw things up when I am building something, no matter how slow and methodical I try to be. That fact definitely added to my stress, seeing as how this will be a permanent fixture in our home. It also did not help, but through that conversation, I realized I wanted to make my grandfather proud of the work I did. He has left me with some beautiful pieces of furniture, including the grandfather clock he built, that I walk by, multiple times, every single day. That is truly something to try to live up to.

What is particularly funny about my stress in this whole situation, is that my grandfather was always proud of me and never once did I ever question that. To truly understand the impact he had on his family, I just have to point out one defining moment; my cousin’s wedding. I grew up on the East Coast but my grandparents lived in a small town in Southwest Missouri. Therefore, we only saw them a few times a year. My cousin, Kurt, lived about an hour and half away from my grandparents and is two years older than me. Therefore, he got a lot more time on the farm and in the shop with my grandfather. They were so close that my grandfather was Kurt’s best man in his wedding. I don’t know about you, but that is something I don’t see every day. That was the impact that this man had on his family. To be truly honest, at the time, I was a bit jealous of the bond they had.

In my eyes, that’s the legacy we should all be focused on, though; the impact that we are going to have on the individuals we leave behind. Nathan, my oldest, is the only one of the kids who has memories about his great grandfather. He loved being on the farm, just like I did, when I was a kid. I know our kids, and eventually our grandchildren, is where my legacy will live on. This bar is a legacy for our family because it is something that my dad and I built together. There will be many great memories that will be shared there. Oh, and just for the record, we built a strong bar. How do I know, you ask? Well, because Jill may have danced on it the very first night it was completed.

We’ll work on the financial legacy you want to leave. Just don’t stop there because you have a ton more legacy to leave in this world than just financial. More thoughts in a couple of weeks…from the desk that my dad built.

Upcoming Social Security Seminars:

Saint Marys: October 11th & 13th

Warren: October 18th, 20th, 24th & 27th

Greg Korn, CFP® President & Investment Advisor Representative

Toll Free: 833-788-0404

Fax: 814-357-9070

Important Disclosures Regarding Email Communications

What are you focused on?

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We are working our way to the end of Summer and welcoming the beginning of Fall. I would have to bet that Jill just read this sentence and groaned. It’s not so much the Fall that she doesn’t like, as much as the fact that she sees Fall as the road to the beginning of Winter. It is also the road to the beginning of the end of the year. That is hard for me to believe. The question I have for you is, “How is your 2022 going?” I guess this depends on what you have been focused on. If you wake up every morning and check your investment portfolio, chances are, it hasn’t been a good year, from that angle. If you wake up every morning, look at your schedule and notice all the fulfilling activities you have added to your life, then you are likely having a great year. Every day, through one of my financial podcasts, I listen to how the word, ‘recession’ is being thrown around. Are we in one? Are we on our way to one? Maybe it is because I am not an economics major, but I really don’t care whether we are ‘technically’ in a recession or not. I do know that this year has been more challenging for all of us on the financial side, but again what do we choose to focus on?

At the end of July, the S&P 500 had a 9.11% return. It seemed as though the bleeding had stopped. Then, August reminded us that we might not be quite done, as we had a drop in the S&P 500 of -4.2%. The big question is truly, how might the year finish? Unfortunately, nobody knows. Even with all the information in the world at our fingertips, we still can’t predict the future. I believe that at some point, during your retirement, you are going to have years like this; maybe even worse than this year. Your investments might look awful compared to years prior. However, I also believe that you will have years that your investments will simply take off. You will feel so good about where your money stands and feel richer than you thought you would be. In both of those situations, you will have had no control over the outcome of what was going to happen in the economy, or on the interest rates and in the markets. We have to come to peace with the understanding that we don’t have a lot of say in what goes on in this world. Therefore, we’re going to have good times in the economy, where filling up the gas tank isn’t a big deal, but we will also have times where you will decide to not drive as much because of the outrageous cost of gas.

Without that peace and understanding, we can become paralyzed by the ups and downs of the nightly news, and the effect of that news, on our financial pockets. The Feds are aggressively attacking inflation, by raising rates, which I see as heading to a place of ‘normalcy’. For individuals like yourselves, heading to, or in retirement, hopefully you are looking at this as a good thing. We are starting to get higher and safer returns on our funds at the bank and other financial institutions. Retirees need a safe place to park money that they are going to need over the next few years, and it sure is nice to finally get a little return on that money, as it awaits your spending. However, unfortunately, because of such low interest rates for the last few years, as well as so much ‘free’ money put into the economy, our inflation has gotten out of control. Many other factors have made 2022 a difficult year for our investments in the markets. Do we sleep less because of the downturn in our investments? My answer is no.

We are, after all, playing the long game of life. We are putting ourselves in a place of peace and understanding, that when we are invested in the markets, we are going to have years like this and we are also going to have years that crush it. History tells you that you will have more positive years in the market than negative ones. We have a plan of attack that handles both, and we are going to focus on the things we can control, and hopefully start putting things in our lives to fulfill us, that make us excited about life and that make that morning alarm a good thing. What do you focus on? I heard this and thought it was profound: Ask yourself, what are the five most important things in my life? Then ask yourself, what are the five things that I do most days? My guess is, like my answers, they don’t necessarily line up with one another.

I encourage you to check out last month’s Retirement Asker Man podcast, where his focus was on living a heroic life in retirement. It is truly a great listen. I’ll have more things to get out of my head in a couple of weeks. Talk to you then!

Greg Korn, CFP® President & Investment Advisor Representative

Toll Free: 833-788-0404

Fax: 814-357-9070

Important Disclosures Regarding Email Communications

How Old Do You Feel?

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How old are you? More importantly, how old do you feel? This, to me, is what matters. We had no say in when we were born, therefore we have no say in how old we are. Now, what we do have, is some control over how old we feel. Our bodies go through a lot, throughout our lives. And guess what? This is the only body we have. I know that our occupations certainly have an effect on how our bodies feel. I notice that clients whose jobs were more labor intensive, have a ton more aches and pains on a daily basis than, say, someone who had more of an office job for most of their lives. That is just one aspect that can cause you to feel older than you are.

In the article, The age when people start feeling old, there is advice about how to maintain your sense of youth. Number one, manage your stress. Keeping your stress levels down, prevents you from prematurely aging, they say, by up to ten years. Jill has noticed my stress levels have gone up significantly, over the last couple months. It would appear as though this has caused me to have high blood pressure, which I am now taking medication for. This knowledge is good for me to have because I’ve been making changes to lower my stress levels. Number two, what I’ve been chatting about for years–exercise. We need to get up and move our bodies in some way, every day. I can’t emphasize this enough; the more we do now to strengthen and improve how we move, the better off we are for our future selves. Number three, you guessed it–diet. What we consume has major effects on our bodies and in turn has a major effect on how old we feel. The suggestion in the article is to move toward a Mediterranean diet. Really, any positive change from what we normally consume as Americans, can help how we feel.

Now it is time to play mental gymnastics because what really matters is how old you feel. In the New York Times article, You’re Only as Old as You Feel, it is cited that, “Scientists are finding that people who feel younger than their chronological age are typically healthier and more psychologically resilient than those who feel older. They perform better on memory tasks and are at lower risk of cognitive decline…By contrast, people who feel older than their chronological age are more at risk for hospitalization, dementia and death.” Therefore, this game we play in our heads about our age, actually matters to our overall health. This means that it is important for us to check in with how we are thinking about our own aging. Then, we need to start countering our negative feelings about how old we feel. I know that my mentality around my age and what I can do, has definitely improved which has helped me feel younger than I did five years ago.

You hear all the time, ‘50 is the new 30, 60 is the new 40…’ Your generation is taking on the aging process, changing how we look at it and how we feel about getting old. It seems to me that this generation does not want to follow suit with the previous generations. Just because we get older, does not mean that there is not a ton of life left out there to live. I see it all the time with clients; they are attacking retirement and not just sitting around waiting. I am all for it. Get out there and live your best life. Change the perception of what older life is. The younger you live, the younger you feel and the younger you will perceive yourself. Therefore, the longer you live, according to science. This is a great cycle to get yourself in. If we always feel younger than our true age, we will be a step ahead of everyone else.

Back with more thoughts from my desk in a couple weeks…

Greg Korn, CFP® President & Investment Advisor Representative

Toll Free: 833-788-0404

Fax: 814-357-9070

Important Disclosures Regarding Email Communications

A Beautiful Saturday Drive

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Jill and I took a drive on Saturday through the back roads of Clearfield and Centre counties. It was a very beautiful day and such a scenic ride. What I realized, after 20 years of living in Pennsylvania, is that this is a very beautiful state. It got me thinking back to when this thought hit me for the first time. I had just come back from a trip to Ireland. In Ireland, we played golf one day and the view was incredible. We could see the ocean from the course on the hill. The woods off the course were spooky. The evergreens that grow there, created an umbrella effect over the woods. Therefore, when you went to find your ball, (which I did a lot that day), it was easy to find because nothing was growing on the ground. It was completely dark because no sunlight got through, so it created this eerie feeling over you, as you entered. Ok, back to the original point–when I returned and was driving back from Harrisburg, going through the valley, I realized that Pennsylvania is just as beautiful and scenic, but I didn’t notice it as much because I see it every day. The other problem I faced was that I grew up in New Jersey and it’s very difficult to see the beauty in PA, being a Jersey boy. Pennsylvania is up there in places to live, with great, everyday beauty, and I am blessed to get to enjoy it on a random Saturday with my wife.

I have lived all over the country; California, Connecticut, New York and Colorado. The only one that beats PA, in my opinion, is Colorado. It’s hard to beat the Rocky Mountains and the 300 days of the year with blue skies. Oh, and Colorado has some of the most beautiful skies at sunset. Where else can you ski in Breckenridge, with eight inches of fresh power on Saturday, and then play golf in sunny, 65 degree weather on Sunday? Pennsylvania can, however, compete when it comes to trees and greenery, as Colorado is more of a desert.

I have also traveled quite a bit; London, Rome, Egypt, North Carolina, Mexico, the Caribbean, Alaska, Yellowstone, Florida and throughout the Northeast. I say this as the backdrop to say that I have seen a bit of the world, therefore I feel I have a good reference point to compare. Florida has some of the best beaches in the states. I just feel the diversity that Pennsylvania has to offer throughout the state puts it over the top of those beaches. Now, can Pennsylvania beat the Caribbean? I can’t say that I’m that nutty in my thoughts. The combination of the Caribbean sea, the beaches and weather are hard to match. What a lot of those places don’t have to offer though, is the true four seasons, the bright colors of the maple trees in the fall, the calmness and beauty after ten inches of snow, flowers popping in the spring and hot sunny days in Summer.

Jill and I spend a couple days a month checking out different parts of the state. We like to find unique places to visit and eat lunch. Johnstown has an Italian restaurant that overlooks the city and it sure is cool to sit and look over a once, industrial town. It makes you wonder what the town was like when the steel industry was at its peak. Every day that I am at the Ridgway office, I have such a pleasant ride home with great views. From the top of the Penfield exit, down to Clearfield, is simply amazing. If I am in no rush, I avoid 80 altogether and go down 322, into Clearfield, for an even better view. We have a great state with a lot to offer and I’ll put it against any other state. I might not win the argument every time, but I believe my average will be high.

I am a big baseball fan. In today’s world, baseball players change teams more than they did in the past. That being stated, when players get elected to the Hall and Fame, they have to choose what hat to put on their plaque. I’ve lived in PA more than any state, however, I am still not quite ready to put PA on my Hall of Fame plaque. It is getting close though. It’s just hard to give up my younger years in Jersey. Too bad I didn’t live in Colorado long enough for it to qualify. Oh, I forgot, this newsletter is supposed to be about retirement. Pennsylvania is a great place to retire, even if for the scenery alone. More thoughts from my desk (or my car) in a couple of weeks…

Greg Korn, CFP® President & Investment Advisor Representative

Toll Free: 833-788-0404

Fax: 814-357-9070

Important Disclosures Regarding Email Communications

FREEDOM!!

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Even though I am a little late getting this newsletter out, I hope everyone had a wonderful Independence Day weekend! We enjoyed a nice afternoon on our back porch with our dogs, kids and friends. Naturally, that down time got me thinking. I thought about our working years and what it takes to get to independence in retirement. This ‘freedom’ is what we strive for, but we have to be cautious when it comes to what we do with it, when we finally achieve that sought after independence.

I have met so many individuals that have been working since they were teenagers. That makes the fact that they can collect Social Security at 62, so, so attractive. The chance to finally be independent from the grind of working and having to answer to someone, every day, is very enticing. One of the biggest freedoms in retirement, after all, is not having your time dictated by others. We give control over our time to others, during our working years, so we can eventually exercise some freedom over our daily lives, in retirement. It’s a trade-off. However, we have to make sure that we have enough resources to live independently, without that full-time job, throughout retirement. There is a fine line between exercising freedom, and making sure you don’t struggle, financially, throughout your retirement years. Independence is awesome and so exciting, that sometimes we fail to see the potholes that lie in front of us. It’s truly important that we take an honest look at how we want to live the rest of our lives, and determine whether or not we are set to cover every aspect of retirement, without setting ourselves up for struggles later in life. It’s impossible to predict the future, but we do want to have an idea of where our strengths and weaknesses are in our planning. Then we need to take the steps to practice ongoing planning, as we enjoy our daily freedom.

Another area of independence in retirement is your healthcare. Every year your employer (or spouse’s employer) would give you a few choices, when it came to how to cover your healthcare for the upcoming year. One year you have one insurance company’s plan and the next year that company might be different, and now your doctor is not in the network. There wasn’t much you could do about it though. Who your employer chose and how much you paid for insurance, was all out of your hands. Now that you’re retired though, you have the freedom to choose the plan that is best for you. This independence is great, however, it does come with a lot of responsibility because you practically have to be an insurance expert to figure out what the best solution to your healthcare will be, going forward. Trust me, it can be a challenge to make that choice on your own. All of the options can make your head spin and make you wonder if you did, indeed, make the right choice. I cannot tell you how many clients I work with that come in, completely overwhelmed by all the information they are getting, and don’t know what to do. Fortunately, we are able to assist with finding a healthcare plan that works best for everyone’s unique needs.

We all love independence when it comes to our time. Now that nobody has control of your time, because you’re not working a set schedule, you’re confronted with what could be your biggest downfall–what to do with that time. How do we, not only fill our time, but how do we fill it with things to promote growth in our lives? Too many times we see or meet people that fill that time with stagnant activities. People have this new freedom, but it is filled with nothingness. Relaxation is awesome, in moderation, but when it is all day, every day, it is not good for the mind and body. We need to be prepared to fill our time with something that continues to stimulate us. We are used to having structure in our lives and now that that structure is gone, we can get lost in the freedom, just spinning our wheels. It’s important to be prepared with a plan on how to fill this time, so that we can have a fulfilling life in retirement.

The fight for independence will always go on; we are human and want the ability to choose how to handle our days. However, independence has its challenges and requires something from us. You have worked all your life to attain this freedom, but it truly does take preparation to take full advantage of that freedom. Someone was once controlling your paycheck, your healthcare and your time. Now that you finally have that control, you are responsible for being a good conductor of your freedom train so it doesn’t go off the rails.

2022 Brookstone Capital Management Q3 Outlook

More thoughts from my desk in a couple of weeks…

Greg Korn, CFP® President & Investment Advisor Representative

Toll Free: 833-788-0404

Fax: 814-357-9070

Important Disclosures Regarding Email Communications

Bring On The Fun

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Summer is here! We are outside talking to our neighbors more and enjoying the longer days. What this also means, is that our communities will be holding many events over the next few months. There are festivals, concerts, local minor league ball games and whatever else your community is into. The last two summers have been a little different and not up to the level we’re used to. However, something we have learned (or maybe re-learned), is that we are built for connection and need to be around others for our well-being. We’ve been more isolated over the past couple of years than any other time in our lives. Therefore, it should be our goal to break these new habits and get back out into our communities, looking for opportunities to participate in whatever it is that our communities are putting together. This week, I figured I would throw out some different events offered throughout Pennsylvania and surrounding states, to get you started.

Who doesn’t love a good fair in the Summer? Every county has one. I’ve talked to many people that look forward to their local fair because it’s a great place to catch up with old friends and even distant relatives. Some people have attended county fairs their whole lives and it is in their DNA. Fairs have something for everyone; rides, games and food that you can only get once a year. Check out these fairs in July: the Big Butler Fair and the York Fair. August brings more fairs to PA; the Kutztown Fair and The Great Allentown Fair. Let’s check out what other state’s offer: New York – Saratoga County Fair; the Maryland State Fair; or head to the Putnam County Fair in Ohio. This one has beer tasting from local breweries. Now, if you’re a really big fair person, you could spend some time traveling and visiting different fairs throughout the country each year, so here’s a list for you: The 20 Best State Fairs Around the US.

If fairs are not your thing, fortunately there are a ton of other options throughout the state. If you like beer or wine, there are plenty of events; Brewfest in Harrisburg, Barrel and Flow in Pittsburgh and there are several wine trails to take in PA. I know this one has passed, but I felt it may be good to put in the memory bank for next year; Split Rock Wine & Food Festival. If you are into the arts, there are tons of music festivals and art shows throughout the summer. Musikfest in Bethlehem offers 11 days of music and entertainment. You might even catch us there because as I was researching this festival, I saw a band playing there that we had planned to see in the Summer of 2020, and as you well know, pretty much everything was canceled that Summer. Mount Gretna offers an outdoor art show in August. If you love tomatoes, I’ve got the event for you; Pittston Tomato Festival. If you’re more into knights and jousting, head to Mount Joy for the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire. Here is a link to some other popular events in PA for the months of July, August and September.

Who says you have to drive all over the state to have a good time? Why not just find events that are practically in your own backyard? Elk County has a free Escape Room that you can test your wits against. If you are up for 100 miles of yard sales, check out < a href=”https://www.visitclearfieldcounty.org/events_calendar” target=”_blank”>Clearfield County Events. The People’s Choice Festival is being held at the Grange Fair Grounds this year, if you call Centre County your home. Eat and enjoy music outdoors throughout the Summer in Lock Haven during the Summer Outdoor Concert Series. Catch a Crosscutters ballgame in Williamsport, and hopefully you even walk away with a foul ball. I have been so close to catching a foul ball…and a hockey puck–maybe this year.

My point is simply that there is so much to do and it is time to start doing these things again. We need to be out in the community with each other to enjoy this gift called life. If we’re not living it to the fullest, are we really living it? We’ve seen these walls around our houses for long enough. It’s time to explore our world and all it has to offer.

Also, be sure to check out this awesome publication from Brookstone, on Consumer Sentiment being at an all time low, and how the market has reacted, historically. It is a very interesting chart. Although we still cannot predict the future, it does give us an idea of how we have recovered in the past.

I know I came up with this idea for the newsletter, but I have to thank you for inspiring me to get my thoughts out and looking for new things to write about. Without this newsletter, I would have never found a concert we wanted to see and I wouldn’t have all of these great ideas for Jill and I to fill our weekends with. Talk to you in a couple of weeks.

Greg Korn, CFP® President & Investment Advisor Representative

Toll Free: 833-788-0404

Fax: 814-357-9070

Important Disclosures Regarding Email Communications

Congrats Jenna!

Congrats Jenna!
This week we wanted to take the time to introduce Jenna and “officially” welcome her to our team. Many of you have seen her at our workshops or at the office, sitting in for meetings, or maybe you have spoken to her on the phone. She has been actively involved with K Financial from the start, but now that she has her insurance license, we wanted everyone to know a little bit more about Jenna, so here she is!

Hello, my name is Jenna Korn, and I am a Licensed Insurance Agent and Office Manager for K Financial. I started working here full-time, just over a year ago and am more than grateful to be able to say that this is my job. Being able to help people is something I have always been passionate about, so I am very lucky to now be doing it for a living.

This job has not been without challenges, and I am still learning new things each day. As I understand it, (and also according to my dad, whom you know as Greg) in this field, I will continue to learn for as long as I do this work. However, I have never been one to walk away from a challenge. Academically especially, I have always welcomed a challenge. When I was younger I would tell my mom about how I wanted to graduate early, and after many years of hard work, I can say that I did it!

When I am not studying or working, you’ll most likely find me going for drives and listening to music. (Although, as gas prices continue to climb and my drives continue to get shorter, I may need some suggestions for a new hobby.) I do also enjoy helping my mom with our rental properties. Despite the fact that this is still technically ‘work’, I enjoy the many adventures that come along with that. Other than that, I am probably binge watching something new on Netflix or spending time with my friends and family. Spending time with the people closest to me (and our dogs) is something I will always love doing and I make it a priority in my life.

If you asked my friends and family to describe me in just a few words, these are the ones you would probably hear the most; reliable and responsible (unless you ask my brother, of course). I would say that in my life, I have definitely been someone that people can count on. Whether it be work-related or something personal, I have always done my best to make sure that the people around me know that they can rely on and trust me.

These are just some of the things that make me, me. I know people’s first impression of me is probably that I’m young and don’t have a ton of experience, which I cannot deny. However, I have worked hard to make it here and I know that I am learning from someone who is incredibly knowledgeable and devoted to his clients. I truly hope that I get the opportunity to work with some of you and get to know you, as well. I am looking forward to continuing this journey and pursuing my passion of helping people.

Well, that made for an easy week for me! More to come from my desk in a couple of weeks. Enjoy this beautiful start to summer! Here’s a link to a video put out by Brookstone; Have We Already Hit the Bottom?. Greg Korn, CFP® President & Investment Advisor Representative

Toll Free: 833-788-0404

Fax: 814-357-9070

Important Disclosures Regarding Email Communications

Advisory services through Retirement Wealth Advisors, Inc. (RWA), an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. K Financial LLC and RWA are not affiliated. This Email is being sent by or on behalf of a Registered Investment Advisor. It is intended exclusively for the individual or entity to which it is addressed. This communication may contain information that is proprietary, privileged, or confidential, or otherwise legally exempt from disclosure. If you are not the named addressee, you are not authorized to read, print, retain, copy or disseminate the Email or any part of it. If you have received this Email in error, please notify the sender immediately by Email or fax, and destroy all copies of this communication. Please be advised that you may conduct securities transactions only by speaking directly with your Investment Advisor Representative either by phone or in person. Requests for securities transactions via email will not be executed by Retirement Wealth Advisors, Inc. To help protect your privacy, we strongly suggest you avoid sending sensitive information, such as account numbers and social security numbers via Email. Please be further advised that, pursuant to the Bank Secrecy Act, the USA PATRIOT ACT, and similar laws, any communication in this email is subject to regulatory, supervisory, and law enforcement review.

Copyright (C) 2021 K Financial. All rights reserved.

Loss Aversion

The beginning of 2022 has been a tough one for investors. April seemed to be nothing but one down day after another. There is no place to hide, and with interest rates heading north, bonds don’t even feel like a great option right now. The problem we have, as humans, is that we tend to feel more pain from losses than pleasure from gains. This little phenomenon is referred to as Loss Aversion, which is described in this article from Investopedia. We have all been feeling the pain in 2022. We’re all hoping to have some good news soon and see the market get its gains back. However, because of this ‘Loss Aversion’, we probably won’t even feel joy when that does happen. Instead, it will likely just be a sigh of relief. The future of the market is unknown and will probably always be unknown. Our challenge comes in trying to understand those unknowns and putting the reality of investing into perspective. That reality is simply that there are going to be good times, there are going to be bad times, and unpredictability is the only thing that is predictable about being an investor.

This Simple Chart Shows When to Expect the Next Stock Market Correction -This article was written at the end of last year, during the ‘good’ times, reminding us that the market goes through corrections. We can read articles like this every day of our lives and remind ourselves that it is going to happen and believe that we are prepared for it. Then, when the correction hits, no big deal, right? We are ready for it. Or are we? Maybe we didn’t expect it to be this bad for this long. What do we do now? There are many articles out there, and many individuals preaching about visualization of the situation, prior to getting in it. That method can apply to many aspects of life. I have heard and read many articles about running through my whole meeting, before my meeting, so I am thoroughly prepared. The problem is that there is no way for me to be prepared for the unknown. I can’t predict the questions that will arise, but sure, doing some ground work ahead of time can definitely lower the stress and anxiety when the moment does arrive. However, for many of us, there will still be stress and anxiety in that moment that we will have to deal with. As an investor, you are in that moment–and trust me, we are all feeling the stress.

What do we do with this stress? My recent high blood pressure readings would indicate that I am not the expert, when it comes to dealing with stress. However, I do know that in all of our planning, we have accounted for going through times like this, as I believed that a tough situation would arise at one point. I would also bet that we will go through corrections several more times during our lifetime. To help us through this, we diversify; we don’t have all of our eggs in one basket. We don’t have the money we are going to use in the next three years invested aggressively. Rather, we have segmented our funds into different buckets that have different goals and jobs to do. We do our best to not look at our accounts every single day and to not get caught up in the financial news every moment of the day. Shows and articles are about getting eyeballs, and guess what? The negative topics get more eyeballs than the positive ones. Instead, try to focus on the stuff that really matters to you and gives you enjoyment in life. Yes, money is great and really helps you live the life you want to live, but it should not always be your number one priority, or it will lead to immense amounts of stress when things are not moving in a positive direction.

I have gotten many questions, as of late, about waiting until the market comes back to make any major financial moves. Let me start by saying that I’ve heard this thought used several times and I’m not sure who to give credit to, but I feel it is important for all of us to incorporate, to evaluate decisions around Loss Aversion. Say you have an investment you are unhappy with. When it is down, (and down a good bit) Loss Aversion tends to make us want to hold onto that investment and ‘hope’ that it comes back–at least to even. What I would like for us to think about, to help in our decision making process, is this: If that investment was sitting in cash right now, would you choose to invest in the investment you are in right now, or would you maybe go in a different direction? This thought process can make that decision a lot easier. If the answer is; I would put the cash to work in a different investment, then it could be time for you to sell and go in a different direction. Then, you will have gotten rid of the investment that was causing you stress, and you can begin to embrace that new direction. We can apply that school of thought to many things in our lives; instead of letting that sunk cost (earlier newsletter) hold us back, we can always choose to go in a different direction. Every day is a new day, with new decisions to be made. Sometimes life is about letting go of those sunk costs and choosing a different path.

Roger Whitney is doing a month-long Podcast on Functional Health in retirement and I feel that it could be a great listen for all of us. Have an awesome day and I’ll be back with more notes from behind my desk in a couple of weeks. Greg Korn President & Investment Advisor Representative

Toll Free: 833-788-0404

Fax: 814-357-9070

Important Disclosures Regarding Email Communications

Advisory services through Retirement Wealth Advisors, Inc. (RWA), an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. K Financial LLC and RWA are not affiliated. This Email is being sent by or on behalf of a Registered Investment Advisor. It is intended exclusively for the individual or entity to which it is addressed. This communication may contain information that is proprietary, privileged, or confidential, or otherwise legally exempt from disclosure. If you are not the named addressee, you are not authorized to read, print, retain, copy or disseminate the Email or any part of it. If you have received this Email in error, please notify the sender immediately by Email or fax, and destroy all copies of this communication. Please be advised that you may conduct securities transactions only by speaking directly with your Investment Advisor Representative either by phone or in person. Requests for securities transactions via email will not be executed by Retirement Wealth Advisors, Inc. To help protect your privacy, we strongly suggest you avoid sending sensitive information, such as account numbers and social security numbers via Email. Please be further advised that, pursuant to the Bank Secrecy Act, the USA PATRIOT ACT, and similar laws, any communication in this email is subject to regulatory, supervisory, and law enforcement review.

Copyright (C) 2021 K Financial. All rights reserved.

Living the Perfect Life

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Perfection; Jill is a perfectionist, which can be a good thing, but it truly is also a curse. In our world, she completes and reviews all of the paperwork because she wants to make sure everything is ‘perfect’ before submitting. Perhaps it is because I am not as ‘perfect’. However, we do play this fun game when I complete paperwork; I fill it out and she combs through it to find errors. She believes she can find at least one error in my work, and most of the time she is right. I will inevitably miss a date or forget to sign somewhere. Once in a while though, I do come through with zero errors. You would think this would make her happy, but it doesn’t because that means…(drumroll) that I won that battle. Getting back on track–turning 50 has done something to me. For some odd reason, it has made me want to get better at everything I do, so I have spent a lot of time over the last year reading and evaluating. I am constantly thinking about the ways in which I can improve my life and extend my life for as long as possible. However, it has also caused a lot of extra stress trying to do things the right way and trying to be ‘perfect’.

Let’s start in the health realm; exercising more. My parents’ little joke when I turned 50, was to get me a book on working out. Apparently, when you are over 50, (according to the book), you cannot do the same things, physically, as you could do before age 50. I’ve concluded that I need to be exercising about five days per week for about 30 minutes each day, to cover a different variety of exercises. On top of that, I try to add mobility work each day. The biggest reason for that is that studies show that it is a fast path from walking, to cane, to walker, to wheelchair, to bedridden and I want to hold off on that for as long as possible. What I don’t need, is a book that tells me how difficult it is to do all of this every day of the week. Perfection in exercise? Fail. It is just not that easy to find the time, even though I’m certain that you will see major benefits for committing 150 minutes out of your available 10,080 minutes, every single week.

Don’t even get me started about eating healthier. Ok, I guess I already started so I must continue, briefly. I’ve been focused on eating real food, with less added sugars. I do this perfectly…for a few days…and then, I seem to go back to my old ways. I feel better when I do well, but even so, some food is too good to pass up. Ice cream gets me, every single time. My only hope is to keep it out of the house, which is impossible around here. Perfection with my food consumption–also a fail.

Exercise, food and now, onto finances. Let’s get right to the point–perfection is also impossible here. I am a person that has done a lot of reading about finances throughout my life. I’ve come to the conclusion that a great approach is to live off of 80% and save the rest. I tell my kids this all the time. Some of them understand the concept. Others, not so much. The problem we all tend to run into, is that there are a lot of fun things to do and have in this world. That simple fact can derail us from our ‘perfect’ plan, not to mention those pesky little life events that demand our attention and keep us from being focused on how our money is being spent. You have to be a pretty detail-oriented person and have a good system in place to achieve success in your personal finances. Once you have the discipline, then it becomes all about figuring out how to grow your savings. However, you can do everything right and still miss out because your life changes course. Following a set investment plan throughout your life, to get a great place when you retire, is (undeniably) hard work. In my line of work, I’ve come across many individuals that did an amazing job saving throughout their lives. However, if you ask them, they still have regrets and will talk about how they would have done things a little differently, if they had a do-over.

My conclusion: It is much more practical to focus on success over perfection. When you envision retirement, what do you see? I’ll be the first to tell you that there is no ‘perfection’ when it comes to this aspect of life either, but we can certainly achieve success with the proper planning. Maximizing your Social Security, doing Roth conversions and maintaining balance within your accounts are all excellent ways to help you be financially successful in retirement. Remember, for many of us, success is about waking up each morning with the freedom to do what we want to do. And if we are lucky enough to make it to retirement, then I think it’s safe to say that we have achieved success in those other areas of life, as well.

Welcome to mowing season! I anticipate mowing at least three to four times before the next newsletter. I feel like I can actually see the grass growing, at this rate!

Greg Korn President & Investment Advisor Representative

Toll Free: 833-788-0404

Fax: 814-357-9070

Important Disclosures Regarding Email Communications

Time to develop a strategy

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The best-case scenario: You live the rest of your life in your home and pass away peacefully in your sleep. Unfortunately, the statistics are not on our side. Seventy percent of individuals over the age of 65 will spend some time in a Long-Term Care facility, at one point in their lives. With those numbers, you would think we would be better at planning for such an occurrence. However, rarely do I find that people have an answer to the question, “What is your strategy to handle Long-Term Care?” Most of the responses are something along the lines of, “My plan is that I am not going and they can just put me in the backyard.” Long-Term Care is one of the biggest financial expenses you could incur during your retirement. Therefore, we need to have a strategy and we need for our loved ones to know this strategy. This is such an important conversation for us to have. I’ve come to conclude that there are six ways to plan for future LTC costs:

SELF-INSURING Retain LTC

This is when you use your funds to pay for any type of services needed to take care of you. You can handle this in one of two ways; first allow your investments to pay for the services you need when you get there. Second, you can work backwards, deciding on a number that is needed, and then start putting an amount aside each month to build up that pool for LTC. You are taking responsibility for your care. If you have spent your life living within your means and built up a large savings for your retirement, you will most likely not spend it all in your lifetime. If you project to have enough to cover your care and still have plenty to pass on, then this might be the option for you. However, if it might be tight at the end, it may be a better approach to save every month into an LTC bucket, with the sole purpose of covering those expenses. Pros: You depend on yourself and if you don’t have to use a lot of funds for LTC, then there are more assets passed on to your family. Cons: If you have a longer stay, need more intensive care or a more expensive facility, it would eat into your funds and lessen the amount you are able to pass on.

LONG TERM CARE INSURANCE Transferring LTC Risk

You purchase an LTC insurance product from an insurance company for the sole purpose of covering your LTC stay. These plans have a monthly benefit with a pool amount you can take out, over time. You are able to have an inflation rider that allows the benefit and the pool to increase over time. For married couples, you are able to have a shared pool that one can pull from the other, if one spouse has used all of their benefits. Premiums are lower than Life Insurance with LTC riders at the same age, however, LTC rates are not guaranteed and could rise over time. Also, this is a ‘use it or lose it’ proposition. You must look at this as true insurance, much like home and auto insurance; you hope you never have to use it, but it is great to have if the situation arises.

LIFE INSURANCE WITH LTC RIDER Transferring LTC Risk

You are purchasing Life Insurance with a death benefit that also has a pool of money that is available for LTC if needed. There is a tax-free benefit if you don’t use the policy or only use some for LTC. Your premiums are stable throughout the life of the policy, however usually larger for the LTCi at the beginning. The LTC benefit in these policies is lower than an LTCi policy, at the time when you would most likely need to use it. These policies do have cash accumulation, if there is a need for a loan. Policies can be guaranteed into your 90s but will run to 120s, based on historical returns.

ESTATE PLANNING Mitigate LTC risk

You would work with an Estate/Elder attorney to develop a plan to move assets that you want to protect from LTC costs. These could include several different types of Trusts and anything you plan on gifting. The Medicaid Trust will protect the assets you choose to put in there, however, you would give up control of those assets, and these trusts are irrevocable. Trusts and gifting must be done five years prior to any LTC needed. You would need an expert Estate/Elder attorney to create these and walk you through all of the legal aspects of this choice.

HOME EQUITY Retain LTC Risk

If your house is debt free, or will become debt free in the foreseeable future, you can use the equity in your home to pay for LTC when needed. Your home has value and one of the ways to use that value is to look at it as your LTC plan. When you get closer to that time, you open a HELOC to tap into that asset to cover LTC costs. You would only have to pay the interest on the amount you use for up to 15 years, and then it would turn into a HE loan that is paid back over the next 15 years. Once a home is sold, the funds are paid back by the proceeds of the home. There are no upfront costs, no monthly premiums and you only use it if you need it. You are subject to variable interest rates and if one of your kids wants the home, they will need to pay the outstanding loan amount.

REVERSE MORTGAGE Mitigate LTC Risk

Using a home that is debt free and opening a Reverse Mortgage HE is another way to tap into the value of your home. Depending on your age, you receive a percentage of the value of your home as a Home Equity Line of Credit that you will have access to. This HELOC will grow over time, at a set rate that is determined when you open the Reverse Mortgage. However, you never have to pay the HELOC back, as long as one of you lives in the home. It is repaid when the home is sold and the rest goes to your family. You are not able to leverage 90-100% of the home like a traditional HELOC. Again, if one of your kids wants the home, then they will need to pay off the outstanding reverse mortgage.

What is most important, is that we stop burying our heads in the sand and develop a strategy to handle these expenses, now. We can use a combination of the above strategies, but we need to have one. Everyone’s strategy won’t be the same and there is no one plan that meets everyone’s needs. Once you have a plan, you can come back to it every couple of years to review your strategy and see if it still makes sense.

I promise to have more enjoyable topics in the future. Let’s bring on those May flowers and stop seeing these Spring snowfalls!

Greg Korn President & Investment Advisor Representative

Toll Free: 833-788-0404

Fax: 814-357-9070

Important Disclosures Regarding Email Communications

Rethinking Reverse Mortgages

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Sometimes this profession sends me in directions I never imagined. As I was preparing for my Spring review meetings, I developed a deliverable for those meetings, regarding Long Term Care. One of the six options, when it comes to paying for Long Term Care, is a Reverse Mortgage. Looking further into this, sent me into a deep dive of Reverse Mortgages. What a fun journey! Up to this point, I understood the basics of a Reverse Mortgage, but I did not see how it could play a part in retirement. Like most, I had a negative feeling about them and wouldn’t even consider them as a viable option during retirement. However, after this deep dive, I came to the conclusion that in the right situation, they can play a helpful part in your overall plan for retirement.

Our home provides a place to live and gather with family and friends. Aside from that, it is also an asset. For some, it may be the largest asset they have. Of course, we are not able to walk up to our home and simply ask for cash to cover some expenses or to provide us with income. It is just not that type of asset. So how do you use this asset? One answer is a Reverse Mortgage.

Let’s address the elephant in the room first; the Reverse Mortgage company would now own your home. Not exactly–they file a mortgage with the court, just like when you originally purchased your home and the bank filed a mortgage against the home. Nothing changes in that respect. You are still the owner of the home. The company will simply put a lien against the home to get any money back that was lent to you, before anyone else would receive anything. Your beneficiaries will receive the funds from the sale of your home, after the Reverse Mortgage is paid.

Well, wouldn’t the Reverse Mortgage eat up all of the value in your house? In 2017, some of the rules and the amounts that a couple or individual can access through a Reverse Mortgage changed. The amount was lowered, to prevent couples from eating up all of their equity. I recently ran some numbers for a couple, with the youngest individual being 65 years old, and a home value of $250,000. The maximum they could take out for a single payment was $116,750, (about 47% of the equity in their home) and $109,250 for a line of credit. You can do your own calculations of what might be available to you through a Reverse Mortgage, at Retirement Researcher. Capping at this lower amount, protects some of the equity for homeowners and also protects the lenders, should the housing market go flat or fall in the future. If for some reason the housing market crashes, and you owe more than what your house is valued at, the most the lender can get is what your home is sold for.

Alright, maybe those Reverse Mortgages are not quite as evil as you thought, but why would you use them? There are many ways you can benefit from having a Reverse Mortgage. The first is for cash flow; you most likely owe a balance on your home and have a monthly payment. With a Reverse Mortgage, your current mortgage would be paid off and you would no longer have monthly payments, therefore you would have more cash in your pocket every month. Having no debt against the house, you could get more cash into the home, monthly, through a steady stream of payments for a certain period of time, say 20 years, from a Reverse Mortgage.

When we are using our assets to fund our retirement each month, what do we do when we’re in a down market? Nobody likes taking funds out of the market when the market is down 20%, but what if you had access to other funds during this period of time and you could give your funds a chance to recover? As the recent article in the New York Times highlighted, Reverse Mortgages Are No Longer Just for Homeowners Short on Cash. This goes into some details as to the math behind the benefits of using a Reverse Mortgage with other assets.

There are other areas you can use a Reverse Mortgage for, as well: If you want to delay Social Security, you could use a Reverse Mortgage to cover those years. You could make some home improvements so you can age in your home. You could use it as “insurance” for the unexpected expenses that might show up later in life, such as Long Term Care. If you are considering a Reverse Mortgage, setting this up earlier tends to be a better option than waiting until later. Why is that? When you start a HECM, it grows over time. Back to the example of a 65 year old that starts with a line of credit of $109,250–this is projected to grow to $321,568 by the time they turn 85. This would most likely be larger than what would be available, had they waited until age 85 to start the Reverse Mortgage.

As with all planning, everyone’s situation is different, and before starting a Reverse Mortgage, you will want to do some research into the numbers and understand how this will work for your situation. Reverse Mortgages have up front costs that need to be considered also. Would you pay for those up front or leave those costs in the mortgage, which interest is charged against? There is a lot to consider when taking out a Reverse Mortgage, and like any other financial tools, you need to understand your goals, what you are doing it for and decide if this is the best avenue to accomplish those goals. The one thing that I’ve concluded after this deep dive, is that Reverse Mortgages should be a part of my conversations with retirees. Then, you can decide whether it fits into your overall retirement plan.

Back to my retirement research hole, to find something new to look into for a future newsletter. Chat with you in a couple of weeks.

Here’s the book I read to help me understand the role Reverse Mortgages play in retirement. The Retirement Researcher’s Guide Series: Reverse Mortgages. How to use Reverse Mortgages to Secure Your Retirement, by Wade Pfau, Ph.D., CFA

*A reverse mortgage is exclusively for adults 62 and older. To be eligible, you also must live in the home as your primary residence, so you can’t use a reverse mortgage for a vacation or investment home. As with a traditional mortgage, if you fail to keep up the home, pay your property taxes and homeowners insurance, or fail to comply with your loan terms, your loan could go into default. Use of a reverse mortgage loan will draw down your equity. The decision to take out a reverse mortgage is one you should weigh very carefully.

Greg Korn President & Investment Advisor Representative

Toll Free: 833-788-0404

Fax: 814-357-9070

Important Disclosures Regarding Email Communications

No Regrets, Live your Best Life

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We just returned from an awesome trip to Florida and it got me thinking about living our best lives. I know I talk about this a lot, but I feel that it is so important for our well being, while we are here on this earth. Over the last few months, several clients chatted with me about recent trips they had taken to see their family and friends. You can just feel it when they talk about the joy and happiness they get from these experiences, and how ready they are to plan the next event. It just reminds me to not pass up on opportunities. I know Jill and I are really focused on structuring our lives to not just go through the motions, but to be engaged in every day. Jill caught me last night; I was playing this stupid golf game on my phone that Austin got me sucked into. While I was focused on that, I was missing what my kids were doing. They were each taking turns making up lyrics, or as they call it, ‘freestyling’. I put the phone down and joined in, which I must admit, was quite entertaining.

In February, we realized we needed to get away for a few days. We let the Florida crew know when we would be in St. Pete and sent out the invitation to join us. What was awesome, is that everyone jumped on board and we had an absolutely amazing time together. We shared some great meals, played some games (the world’s longest UNO game, in fact) and explored a few new places. It’s always nice to just be able to ‘check out’ for a few days and relax with family (especially when it’s away from the cold and snow in PA).

How do we figure out what to focus on so we can live our best lives? One way is to listen to the thoughts of others. Bronnie Ware was a hospice nurse for decades. At one point, she began taking notes about what people were saying at the end of their lives, which inspired her to write a book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. She discovered that these were the top five regrets: 1) I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. Even though we might be up there in age, we can definitely implement the changes necessary to make this happen, especially in retirement because now we have the freedom to seize the day. 2) I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. Does that retirement date that we set make sense in terms of the other things we might want to do? 3) I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. Let’s not let Jill read this one; she might use it against me. 4) I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. We do go through seasons in our lives where we gain friends, then move to the next season and those friendships seem to fade away. There are some great relationships we develop in the workplace, but when we move to another job or retire, we don’t always do the best job at maintaining those relationships. 5) I wish that I had let myself be happier. This hits the nail on the head. What does your best life look like? We ideally want to get all of the pleasure out of life that we possibly can, so that we can experience true happiness.

Jill and I have spent the last two years working incredibly hard to get our two businesses off the ground. We are at a crossroads; we could continue to be consumed by work and make that our primary focus for the rest of our working lives, or we could structure our lives to where we are still bringing tremendous value to our clients, but also making sure that we enjoy the moments we are in. For us, we have chosen the latter. You won’t always find us at our desks after noon on Fridays because we like to hit the road and enjoy a nice lunch to begin our weekend. A couple of times a month on the weekends, we will ask each other, “Where do you want to go today?”. We pick a spot and kind of disappear for the day. Some of our best days have been those Saturdays together.

What does your best life include? Each of us needs to understand what truly makes us tick. What gets you excited to jump out of bed and attack the day? My Dad just repaired one of the Grandfather clocks that my grandfather made for each of the four grandchildren. Because of a few moves and not ever seeming to have the right spot, mine hadn’t worked for 12 years. Now it chimes every 15 minutes and reminds me of him and my grandmother. That was their best life when they retired. After a life of farming, they focused on spending time with the grandkids, traveling on bus tours to see the country and making and restoring furniture. They did this until they couldn’t do it anymore. What are we going to do to have a fulfilling day, each and every day, for the rest of our lives? Remember, tomorrow is never guaranteed.

More thoughts from my desk soon…hopefully with more warmth and sunshine. Have a great couple of weeks and enjoy the start of Spring.

Greg Korn President & Investment Advisor Representative

Toll Free: 833-788-0404

Fax: 814-357-9070

Important Disclosures Regarding Email Communications

Home Sweet Home

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As an adult, I’ve had five homes. I would like to think Jill and I have found our forever home because I LOVE this home. We have a vision of what our home will look like when we finish all the projects we have talked about. Also, the idea of packing and moving again actually gives me nightmares AND makes me physically ill. The memories from two years ago are still etched in my mind. But that’s a story for another time. Fortunately, Jill loves our home, too. However, because of our other business endeavors, she spends quite a bit of time on Zillow, browsing real estate. I can’t tell you how many times she sends me links to houses that I know have absolutely nothing to do with our business. Needless to say, she is out there finding houses to compare to ours. She usually begins with, “I know we aren’t moving but…” We play this fun game; she asks about seeing houses and I avoid going anywhere near them to eliminate temptation. So far, three points for me, zero for Jill. To me, this is the only way I know for sure that we will never even have to debate about moving. Moving is a huge decision in general, but even more so when it comes to retirement–where do we want to live out the rest of our years?

I am always amazed by the way life works. I came to the conclusion that I was going to write a newsletter about where to settle down during retirement, and the very next day I had two meetings with clients in which one of the topics that came up in both, was moving south. The weather here is one of the main reasons people are always looking to relocate. Winters in Pennsylvania can be brutal, dealing with subzero temperatures, and all that frozen precipitation. The icing on the cake is that, for some reason, the winter months seem to have extended much longer than they used to. We had snow in May last year. May. I distinctly remember a few unseasonably warm days, and then, less than a week later, watching the snow fall, as I sat in the living room. Let’s face it, there comes a point in life when shoveling snow is no longer an option. Be that as it may, I still find that many of my clients do not even have the discussion about moving. They have lived in their home for 20 plus years, raised their kids there and have plans to continue their traditions there.

Your home is such a personal thing, if you think about it. Everything in there is yours. The home improvements were made to your liking and the paint colors were picked out by you. Therefore, you have tons of emotional equity in that home. It can be difficult to think of just putting that all aside and starting over. Even so, I do think it is important to go through the process of exploring the best options for where to live now, and throughout your retirement. I know my parents went through this process for two years. They finally came to the conclusion that the home they had lived in for 30 years, simply was not going to fit their needs, going forward in life. They spent many weekends searching for the right place, attempting to find a home to suit their needs, that was also located near a halfway point between my sister and I.

Family is a huge part of this decision, especially if our parents, siblings and children are still in the area. A client of mine just moved down to Florida to be closer to one of her sons and her grandkids. I know of another couple that is debating the very same issue; their daughter and granddaughter are pushing for them to move south, to be near them. Once the husband and wife are both retired, I know this will become more of a conversation. There are many factors to work through in this situation, and I look forward to working through the options with them.

What are some of those factors, you ask? Well, one factor we tend to forget (oddly), is aging. How we move around the house now, is probably not how we are going to move around when we are 85 years old. Is the home set up for an older person, who probably isn’t as mobile as you are now? One-floor living has huge value when it comes to you being able to stay in your home for as long as possible. When my parents found a new place, one of the major factors in making their decision, was that their bedroom was on the main floor. With that, they are not required to go up and down the stairs for much of anything. One aspect they had to adjust to was losing their social ties and making new friends. That can be tough as we age. The community you live in is also a major factor. What are the options for healthcare? Do you have access to the leisure activities that interest you? What are the transportation options when driving yourself isn’t an option anymore?

Then, there is obviously the financial side of the equation that will need to be considered, as well. If your home is not the greatest setup for when you are older, is there some remodeling that can be done to make the home practical for those years? What are the costs to make that happen? How much equity do you have in this home? Will you be able to relocate to another place that makes sense, financially? Not every place has the same cost of living. I’ve heard of individuals moving out of the county, simply because the cost of living is lower and allows them to live the life they desire, without any worries. Fortunately, Pennsylvania is not one of the 12 states that tax your Social Security income. You will probably want to know if the state you plan to relocate to is one of them. What is the state tax rate? These are all good questions to get answers to, prior to making your decision regarding moving.

Our home is where we spend a majority of our time and as we get older, unfortunately the time spent at home becomes more and more. Jill’s grandmother usually gets out about once a week to run some errands or go for lunch. It just is not as easy to move around at the age of 94. That is a big part of why I feel it is so important for you to spend some time looking at your current living situation and evaluating the pros and cons, when it comes to your options during those retirement years.

I actually thought the snow was done for the year, but it appears as though I am wrong. We have four inches down already, as I am writing this. Ugh. Here’s to warmer and sunnier days! More thoughts from my desk in a couple of weeks…

Greg Korn President & Investment Advisor Representative

Toll Free: 833-788-0404

Fax: 814-357-9070

Important Disclosures Regarding Email Communications

Don’t Worry, it Takes Time

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The day has come–your last day of work. Hopefully there is a big cake in the break room with some comment on it about how old you are now. People at work sure do like to find reasons to have cake. You spend some time saying goodbye to your coworkers and talk about getting together for lunch or other activities in the future. It can be a bittersweet process because you have spent so much time during the week with these people, and starting tomorrow, you will probably see them very little, if at all. Things are going to be different; your whole life is going to change because the daily routine you are used to, is a thing of the past. I like to think of this as newly found freedom. For your whole life you have essentially woken up and had a majority of your day planned out for you. Between school and work, you always had to be somewhere. Now the whole day is yours to plan as you see fit. It can take time to find your rhythm in retirement and sometimes your vision of what you thought retirement would look like and what it ends up being, doesn’t exactly match. I tell clients all the time that it can be a two year process to transition into your full retirement life.

There are a couple of approaches that I see clients take when heading into retirement. Some plan a big trip, some plan to begin all those projects they have been putting off “until retirement” and some plan to do nothing at all. No matter what approach you decide to take, I believe it is important to go in with an open mind and let your retirement life come to you. You’re taking a journey with yourself and with your partner through this process. The fact that you are home during the day may be strange for you, but it also might be strange for your spouse/partner because maybe they have already retired, years before. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard a client tell me that their spouse is “invading their space”. The problem is that the individual that has been home, has developed their own routine with how they approach the day. Well, that definitely gets disrupted now that both of you are home. It is important that you each have your own interests in retirement, as most of us are not used to spending every waking minute with our spouses, and some (maybe many) people, simply do not want to. Use some of your freedom to fulfill your own projects, activities and needs.

Once you get through these initial few months, you might be surprised at how quickly your time can get filled. Another phrase I hear all the time is, “I am busier now than I ever was when I was working.” Family members, friends and organizations realize (fairly quickly) that you now have more free time on your hands. Therefore, the requests might start coming in and you will need a plan as to how to handle those requests. The last thing you probably want, is to step away from your job, only to have your time completely taken up by others, yet again. It is important for you to have ownership of your time now, and sometimes that means saying no. This way, you set boundaries for yourself so that you can have the retirement that you want. If you live close, watching the grandkids can become part of your retirement. I have had many clients say it is great to spend this much time with their grandkids. However, remember this is a time commitment, which means you might have to say no to other opportunities that you may be interested in. Volunteering can be the same way; before you know it, it can be a full-time job, taking up much more time than you anticipated. Don’t get me wrong– it is awesome to give back to causes you believe in, but I have heard clients comment on the time commitment some of these organizations expect. They may have great visions, but they also have minimal staff to make those visions happen. Therefore, you are the one helping them bring those visions to life, and before you know it, you end up having less freedom.

After a year, most people will have a better understanding of what their retirement life is shaping up to be. By this time, you should have clearer ideas of how you want to fill your time and who you want to be spending your time with. How has the travel thing worked out for you? Is there a yearly trip or just some small ones here and there? What is the time with family like? Can you/do you want to improve that? The biggest question you should be asking yourself is, ‘Am I getting what I hoped for out of my retirement?’ If you are, great. If not, try to make some tweaks and modify your time commitments. Remember, we should be trying to live our best lives. Of course, the vision for our ‘best life’ is different for each of us. That is why it takes a period of time to discover what that is in retirement. It is rare that our retirement vision will be an exact match for how our retirement plays out, as we all know that things change once we are actually living them out. Don’t rush anything and do not worry if retirement isn’t how you thought it would be, because you will eventually find your rhythm. Your best life is out there, waiting for you.

Here are a couple of articles about transitioning into retirement, that might be of some interest:

The Transition to Retirement: 11 Exceptional Tips for the Average Joe or Jane

Retirement Boredom and Other Hardships: 14 ways to Eliminate the Ennui

We are getting close to being able to spend more time outside! Have a great couple of weeks and I will talk to you soon.

Greg Korn President & Investment Advisor Representative

Toll Free: 833-788-0404

Fax: 814-357-9070

Important Disclosures Regarding Email Communications

Make Life Easier

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It follows you everywhere you go, it sits in your pocket or purse, you can completely lose track of time when you’re on it…You probably guessed it–it’s your Smartphone! These phones have really changed our lives, and many people might say it’s for the worse. That is especially true if you observe kids today and the way they can do literally anything and everything on their phones. However, they are not just for teenagers. I have noticed that more and more of my clients are now using smartphones as well. Therefore, I felt an appropriate topic for today’s email could be, apps that can actually be helpful to you during your retirement.

Since I have been so focused on health lately, I figured that would be a good place to start. The first app that I believe is worthy of checking out, is MyFitnessPal. It is a great place to track your exercise, as well as your food and water intake. You can track your progress in multiple areas, and this app even connects with dozens of other apps you might already be using. One of the apps I used a lot when we were walking consistently, was MapMyWalk, or if you’re a runner, MapMyRun. These both connect with MyFitnessPal. For all you Apple users, you can link the health apps that come with your Iphone or Apple Watch to this app. If you use a Fitbit instead, this app will also work with that. Then, you can have access to all the information you need in one place. Of course, we don’t only need to work our bodies, we also need to continue working our brains. A couple of apps that I find helpful for that are Lumosity, BrainHQ, Peak and Chess.com (which I happen to play daily).

Even with all this exercise and brain training, you might still have a difficult time remembering whether or not you have taken your daily medication. I can’t tell you how many times Jill has asked me if I remember whether or not she had taken her pills. She had asked me so many times that I actually bought her a weekly pill box as one of her birthday gifts a couple of years back. I don’t think Jill saw the humor in it as much as I did. Some of us may still need reminders though, even if we were lucky enough to have been gifted a handy little pill box. An answer for this dilemma is the MediSafe app. This app will remind you which meds need to be taken and when. Speaking of medication, Goodrx is an app that I use to find the least expensive places to get medications for clients who are not yet on Medicare. You just enter the medication, dosage and zip code and it will provide you with the prices at each pharmacy near you. It even offers a nice discount off the regular cash prices.

Many of us will have a little more time on our hands when we retire, but I still hear all the time how clients are busier in retirement than they were when they were working. If you can manage to find some downtime, you could use some of the following apps: Words with Friends, (I played this with Jill and discovered pretty immediately that it is no fun at all if you take on a wordsmith and you are not so great with words, yourself!). If reading isn’t your thing, listen to a book through Audible. If music is more your style, download Spotify. You can also listen to Podcasts on Spotify, but I prefer Overcast for those. I drive everyone in the house crazy when I begin my sentences with, “I heard this on a Podcast the other day…”

We use the Fidelity app to monitor our investments and we also use Fidelity as our custodian for our investment clients. It is a great way to keep track of your funds, but it is important not to go overboard and check your accounts too frequently. That can cause some unnecessary stress. Once a week is generally a good guideline. If you want to go beyond that and track all of your finances, Mint is a good place to do so.

Don’t ask our kids about this app because they know we would be able to find them anywhere in the world (unless they outsmart us and leave their phone behind…which may have worked for them a time or two in the past). Anyway, Life360 is great if you want to know where your spouse or other (honest) family members are. If you have a tough time reading small print, there’s an app for that: Magnifying Glass & Flashlight. Too many passwords to remember? LastPass is great for keeping track of those. Always forget where you park your car? Google Maps is quite handy. Just open the app, mark it, and when you’re done it will take you right back to the spot. It worked great when we were traveling; I marked our parking spot in an airport parking lot and after several days, I let my phone guide us back to the car. Want to get those photos off your phone to put into a nice frame? Snapfish is perfect for that.

Let me know what apps you find useful because there are so many available to us and sometimes we aren’t even fully aware of what’s out there. Let’s use these handy little devices to our advantage. Hopefully your Saturdays and Sundays are open now because football is done for the time being. Spring is finally close so hopefully we can get out there and enjoy it soon!

Greg Korn President & Investment Advisor Representative

Toll Free: 833-788-0404

Fax: 814-357-9070

Important Disclosures Regarding Email Communications

Volatility: Scary or Good?

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Life as an investor has been interesting over the last few weeks. Volatility has certainly been present and can start to make us all feel a little nervous about where things might go. We would much prefer our investments be trending upward all the time, but those types of guarantees come with a price tag; potentially low returns and even lower returns if you turn to a bank for principal protection (but that’s another conversation). Therefore, we have to find our happy place when dealing with volatility. The thing about being an investor is that you really have to lean into it and realize that volatility is actually good because it creates opportunities for your investments to grow. You invest with the hope for growth, offset with the risk of not receiving that growth, but human emotions also play a factor in investing. Remember, when you’re buying and selling investments, you need someone on the other side of the table to make that transaction happen. If an investor is not willing to purchase an investment for the price the seller wants, then the seller has to lower the asking price until they find someone that is willing to purchase that investment. As more investors get nervous about what the outlook is, there are more sellers and less buyers, which can create a downturn or correction in the market.

Corrections happen. They are part of being an investor. In the article, How to Deal with a Stock Market Correction, they point out that a ten percent decline is to be expected, and on average, happens once every two years. The market has periods where it pulls back, which creates the volatility we see and feel as investors. Corrections are hard on investors because nobody likes giving back gains that they have achieved and this sometimes causes us to make poor decisions around selling. As an investor, losses are not truly realized until you sell. This is why it’s important to have a plan about your investments before the volatility begins and corrections happen. Overall, we are investing for the long term, so making short term decisions during these downtimes will likely not get you where you want to go. Time is an investor’s friend; the longer the time funds are invested, the higher the probability you will have a positive return in the stock market.

Well, what if you are planning on retiring in a few years or you are retired now? What if you depend on these funds in the present, and therefore, do not want to lose any money? Although that is a valid concern, you most likely do not need all of your funds tomorrow. The majority of your funds will likely be needed further down the road, so you actually do still have time on your side for those funds. This is why I like to do mental accounting with clients when we invest. Your money has a job, which is to provide you income. The funds for the income you need in the next couple of years will need to be invested differently than the funds you will need 15 or 20 years from now. Hopefully this helps alleviate some worries, because the funds you will need to access soon are not going through the volatility, and the funds you need for later, still have the advantage of time.

Predictions of the future aren’t something we can hang our hat on, so it would not be wise to make choices based on what we believe is going to happen. I always come back to late March of 2020, when things were not only going down, but going down fast. I didn’t see many people predicting that the market would bounce back and take off like a rocket. The reality is that even the greatest investor minds do not really know what is going to happen. They have some ideas and thoughts, based on the experience and data, but at the end of the day, they are still guessing. We have to have a solid rock to plant our belief flag in and go forward based on that belief. My belief is, and has always been, that this country has a tremendous ability to overcome the challenges we are faced with. I have certainly seen a fair share of those challenges in my lifetime, and we have always found a way through. There are great companies out there, doing great things and those great companies will be successful, and that will ultimately push our country forward. That is why I invest in what I am investing in. It will not always be a straight and smooth ride, but remember, it is about the end game. That is the foundation that I come back to when volatility and corrections happen. This is also my foundation when chatting with you during this volatility. I believe in us.

Jill’s brother recently visited from Florida with his girlfriend, who had never seen snow before. Unfortunately for us, she got to see a ton of it. I have always liked the snow but it must be my old, creaky bones not enjoying it as much this year. Hopefully we don’t have a ton more in our foreseeable future and the rest of the winter isn’t too harsh on all of us. Chat in a couple weeks.

Greg Korn President & Investment Advisor Representative

Toll Free: 833-788-0404

Fax: 814-357-9070

Important Disclosures Regarding Email Communications

One Last Gift

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Over the fall of last year, I met with many clients about their healthcare options for the following year. Something I noticed throughout that time, is that I had been talking to a lot of women who had recently lost their husbands. Believe it or not, I had eight clients lose their husbands over the course of the last year. I had just one male client lose his wife. Men, we need to wake up! The chance that we will outlive our partners is slim. This leaves the woman that we love, by herself, to go through the rest of her time on this earth without our help. The life expectancy for a female in the U.S. is 80, compared to just 75 for a male. Therefore, on average, a woman will be on her own for at least five years, assuming there is no age difference between the couple. Factor in a couple of years if the male is just a little older, and that period of alone time grows even larger, during a time when a woman probably doesn’t have as much mobility and perhaps even declining cognitive skills. Eighty five percent of widows are women. Those odds are harsh. Yes, women are living longer, but that increased responsibility can be tremendously stressful.

Through my conversations with retirees, I get the sense that most men don’t think much about this situation. However, take a moment to think about all the things that you do that are going to have to be the responsibility of your wife, once you are gone. Several of the women I spoke with, have had to find a neighbor or family member just to mow the grass. It is a simple task that their husbands took care of, but perhaps they don’t want to be riding a lawn mower alongside a hill every week. Seeing the effects of losing a spouse was truly a wake up call for me. Jill’s grandma has been five years without her husband and there are tasks that she simply cannot complete without the help of her husband (or now, us). As men, it is important that we do everything possible to provide our women with one last gift–a plan for when we are gone.

What do you do around the home that your wife wants nothing to do with? Maybe it’s taking care of the firewood or feeding the stove that heats the house. Do you do all the driving? Who is going to do the driving when you’re not here? Are there items on high shelves that you’re always getting down for your spouse? Do you take care of all the finances? Everything is on the table, and I mean everything. Each household is run differently and there is no “one” list for everyone. However, this is a project that we need to dive into and really begin to pay attention to those tasks that we, as men, take care of. Don’t leave this to her to figure out. She is already going to be dealing with the fact you are no longer with her. Spend some time finding a solution for her so that when you are not around, there is a plan in place. What a great last gift–she will know you loved her so much that you wanted her taken care of, even when you are not there to do it anymore.

I truly grew more and more impressed by the widows I met with, the more conversations I had. These women were really stepping up under tremendous heartache and grief from the loss of their partner. It has affected me so much that it has been a part of all of my financial planning meetings since having those conversations. First, I am taking an honest and deep dive into what the financial situation would be when there is just one partner left. If something were to happen, we know what the foundation for income will be for the individual that is left behind. I want people to feel secure and sometimes there are gaps we need to fill in to find that security. Then over the next year of meetings, we will get into understanding how the tasks are divided in the home and finding solutions for that inevitable day.

This is a call to my fellow men to stop burying our heads in the sand and realize that there is a huge chance that our spouses will outlive us. Therefore, we can either ignore this, or we can step up and prepare for it. You have the chance for her to open one last note from you, telling her how much she meant to you; “A list of the things that I took care of while we walked this earth together and the arrangements I have made for each of those, now that you are walking this earth without me.”

On a lighter note, grandma did it again–made us all laugh uncontrollably. She comes down every morning to get her breakfast and coffee. A few days ago, she saw clean dishes piled up on the counter so she grabbed one to put away. Doing so created a domino effect that caused the bowl at the end to fall off the counter, onto the floor and shatter. In her Italian dialect, she turns and says “oh boy”. The moment was priceless and fortunately we have it on video. Therefore, Jenna has of course, made grandma Tik Tok famous.

Greg Korn President & Investment Advisor Representative

Toll Free: 833-788-0404

Fax: 814-357-9070

Important Disclosures Regarding Email Communications

Bring on 2022

Welcome to 2022! Another year has ended, with the possibility of a great year ahead. At the end of the year, most of us take time to reflect on the past year and all we have accomplished, as well as the things we wanted to accomplish that we may not have had a chance to do. Now it is time to look forward to the opportunities and excitement that lie ahead, in the new year. However, for many, it has been a tough go over the last couple of years, and I feel for those in retirement or those who had planned their whole lives to retire in 2020 or 2021, but maybe didn’t get to fully enjoy this next stage of their lives. It probably was not exactly the start to their retirement that they had envisioned. Hopefully at some point over this next year, the life they had planned once they walked out of the workforce will come to fruition. I know we are certainly looking forward to this next year and have a grand vision of what we would like to accomplish in our personal lives, as well as our businesses.2022 is another opportunity to enjoy this life we have created. As for myself, that is an easy task because I wake up excited for every day that lies ahead–even on those days when I am getting up earlier just to exercise. I don’t know exactly where this came from, but I truly do enjoy the life that we have built and just want to keep adding to it. I have to believe that my energy comes from the decisions I make, from who I spend time with, to the food I eat, to what I listen to and watch on TV. There seems to be so much negativity everywhere you turn, and it can be a huge drag on everyday life. People just seem to be at odds with one another. Nobody can have a conversation without worrying that we will disagree and leave us feeling like enemies. As we head into this new year, with the chance of having more socialization in our lives again, we should be embracing each other with joy, no matter our beliefs. In-person interaction is truly a blessing, as we are not stuck in our houses having to have conversations through Zoom or by phone.Everyone I speak with says the same thing; time flies, and it passes us by even faster as we age. I can’t believe I am 50. I actually have no idea where all the years have gone. The fortunate thing is that I work with retirees, who have helped me to realize that before you know it, your work life is over and you have to figure out what the next stage will be. It helps me put in perspective that every day matters and just knowing that, I try my best to squeeze every bit of life out of each day. I do it in my newsletters and in meetings with clients; I emphasize the importance of getting out there to experience life and to do the things that you love to do. Being that we might get the opportunity to do things we were not able to do over the last couple of years, makes 2022 even more special. We are hoping to attend concerts that we had scheduled in 2020 and to do a little more traveling that had to be cancelled. December 31st is no different than January 1st, but it definitely can give us a mentality shift, symbolizing a fresh start. We can take advantage of that mentality shift to live each day like it is our last one.I believe that individuals preparing for retirement should try not to focus only on working and stashing away money for retirement. Make sure you get to enjoy the ride there; take time for yourself, your family and your friends. Those starting retirement should enjoy that newly found freedom, where your day is your day and nobody else’s. For those that have been enjoying retirement already, keep the good times rolling and make sure you get everything out of every day because unfortunately, those days are limited, for all of us. A new mindset might be just what you need, heading into this new year. This is the time we live in and this is the hand we have been dealt. We may not love it, but there is still a ton we can do to maximize enjoyment in our lives.Hopefully you noticed that my newsletter hasn’t quite been on track over the past month. I am sorry for the gap in my communication with you, but it was truly a crazy end of the year for us, which really, was a good thing. It has forced us to change a few things and plan a little better, going forward because we really feel that there is important information we want to get out to you and don’t want this content to get lost.Have a great start to your 2022 and we look forward to catching up with each of you in this new year! Greg Korn President & Investment Advisor RepresentativeToll Free: 833-788-0404Fax: 814-357-9070Important Disclosures Regarding Email CommunicationsAdvisory services through Retirement Wealth Advisors, Inc. (RWA), an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. K Financial LLC and RWA are not affiliated. This Email is being sent by or on behalf of a Registered Investment Advisor. It is intended exclusively for the individual or entity to which it is addressed. This communication may contain information that is proprietary, privileged, or confidential, or otherwise legally exempt from disclosure. If you are not the named addressee, you are not authorized to read, print, retain, copy or disseminate the Email or any part of it. If you have received this Email in error, please notify the sender immediately by Email or fax, and destroy all copies of this communication. Please be advised that you may conduct securities transactions only by speaking directly with your Investment Advisor Representative either by phone or in person. Requests for securities transactions via email will not be executed by Retirement Wealth Advisors, Inc. To help protect your privacy, we strongly suggest you avoid sending sensitive information, such as account numbers and social security numbers via Email. Please be further advised that, pursuant to the Bank Secrecy Act, the USA PATRIOT ACT, and similar laws, any communication in this email is subject to regulatory, supervisory, and law enforcement review.Copyright (C) 2021 K Financial. All rights reserved.