We all know the importance of having health insurance for ourselves and our families, but what about for our four-legged family members – our pets?
Health Insurance Enrollment Explained, Including Medicare
Whether you’re eligible for Medicare, signing up for employer-sponsored healthcare, or finding an individual plan on the marketplace, health insurance can be one of those topics that finds its way to the bottom of our to-do list and makes us all sigh.
Understanding your health coverage options can be a daunting task to navigate, but avoidance can have real consequences to your health and well-being! It’s important to be mindful of what coverage you need, annual enrollment and change periods, and potential penalties of missing deadlines in order to ensure you’re signed up on time for a plan that fits your needs.
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Investing Explained
As environmental and social justice matters continue to make national headlines, you may be wondering if your financial investments align with your personal beliefs and values.
In recent years, the concept of socially responsible investing gave rise to the practice of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing, which uses those guidelines to build a sustainable and ethical portfolio. Potential investments are screened for a variety of factors in each category to ensure that investments are made in companies whose leadership has demonstrated through ethical practices and policies that they care about people and the planet. Like all investing, there are both pros and cons, and it’s important to work with a financial company or advisor who is transparent and trustworthy when deciding if and how to begin ESG investing.
Access to Saving for Retirement
The lack of Americans’ retirement savings, referred to as “retirement insecurity”, is a topic we are hearing more and more about as the Boomer generation ages into retirement. Private company pensions are few and far between these days, putting the onus of saving for retirement on individuals, rather than corporations. Compounding the issue of the lack of retirement savings is the fact that Americans are living longer and will need to save more to cover living expenses and potentially higher medical costs later in life. Elected officials have responded to the potential crisis by enacting legislation such as the SECURE Act (Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement) and the OregonSaves program.
The Psychology of Investing
When it comes to investing our hard-earned savings, it’s difficult to remove emotion from our decision making, especially as those savings fluctuate up and down with the market. For most people these assets are grown over decades through saving and hard work – how could we not be emotionally attached? Especially when considering retirement assets, a portfolio can feel like a member of the family; they’ve seen the good times and the bad, from the job we loved to the one we didn’t, from our youngest child’s wedding to our first health scare. However long you’ve been invested, it’s likely that you know the feeling of watching the markets drop and the inevitable sinking stomach feeling. Perhaps that feeling and the corresponding worry stayed with us longer than it took for the market and our portfolios to recover and now informs our current financial decision-making. Why then, can few of us mark the moments in time when our investments grew significantly and we celebrated their success?
