I love baseball. It’s the best.

With baseball season starting and tax returns due soon, let’s take a look at an interesting intersection between the worlds of baseball and taxes:

Shohei Ohtani’s contract.

Are forecasts related to the markets and economy useful?

Or are they useless?

You could even argue (persuasively) that predictions and forecasts are more a source of risk rather than a tool to help you avoid risk.

"When you think about your finances, how far into the future do you tend to think and plan? Days? Weeks? Months? Years? Decades? Generations?"

This is a question I often ask people during the prospective client process, as how someone answers is very helpful in understanding their financial approach.

How far ahead do you think?

Wondering what you might be able to do to improve your tax picture?

Tax planning can be extremely beneficial, potentially leading to thousands upon thousands of dollars saved if done well.

Let’s go through 15 common strategies I use with my clients. My hope is that perhaps something in here will be helpful to you, hopefully reducing that pesky tax bill a bit.

Looking at your insurance picture?

Wondering what to consider, what to prioritize, what to do?

Let’s go through 15 quick ideas.

“If she’s being abused by her partner, why doesn’t she just leave?”

This is a common question about survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV).

In this guest blog post, Kimberly Klein outlines some basics about IPV and economic abuse, and discusses a few connections to financial planning and long-term economic stability in the lives of IPV survivors.

Has your home insurance premium skyrocketed lately? Has your insurance company stopped writing policies in your area? Is the home insurance market broken?

Welcome to the crazy world of getting your home insured against disaster. In particular in the great state of California.

Thinking about retiring?

There’s a lot to unpack. Lots to consider.

Just to get the juices flowing, here are 15 quick ideas.

It's official. We've entered a new bull market in the United States.

At least according to the generally-accepted definition of stocks going up by 20%.

Does it matter? What should we do about it?

Spencer Financial Planning turned 3 years old this week!

In this blog post, I share some facts, non-facts, observations, and reflections regarding three years of providing financial planning services to my clients.

Spoiler alert: It has been amazing (still).

What happens if the U.S. doesn’t raise the debt ceiling and then defaults on its debts?

What about a different type of crisis?

Are our investments in danger? Should we sell?

How much did we spend on our Emergency Planning supplies?

This post also has a downloadable copy of the Emergency Planning Top 10 Checklist, which is a one-page summary that consolidates much of what we covered in this blog series.

What can we learn from the recent bank failures?

Here are three major takeaways:

1) Transfer cash over FDIC limits
2) Match investments with your time horizon
3) Importance of diversification

Figuring out your emergency supplies is important. But this post is about something that is just as – if not even more – important: having an emergency PLAN.

The emergency plan we came up with is a compilation of the best ideas and suggestions we found in our research. We felt like it was much more approachable for us as a family than many plans or forms we found online, and we hope you find it helpful.

And the best part? The only cost to put it together is our time.

You may have heard that President Biden recently signed the SECURE Act 2.0 into law. The good news is that there’s a lot in there that should be quite helpful to many of you. The bad news is that it makes the rules around retirement and tax planning even more complex than they already are.

Let’s take a look at the SEVEN new provisions that I think may provide the most benefit to people reading this blog.

Ready to be bored? Let’s dig in!   

Everyone does tax preparation, yes? Maybe you prepare your taxes yourself. Or maybe you hire a tax professional to do it for you.

But not too many people do tax planning.

Do you? Should you?

So, we had gathered all our emergency supplies! It was both exciting and overwhelming when we actually laid them all out.

Wow! Look at all this great stuff! Um…what in the world are we going to do with all of it?

The Biden administration announced the Student Debt Relief Plan recently, and with it came plenty of attention.

This article provides a quick synopsis of what the Plan contains, along with some warnings and deadlines.

Emergencies happen. Including while in a car.

Having a Car Emergency Kit helps us prepare for a wide variety of unexpected events that could happen on the road or away from home.

We can’t know when we might be stuck somewhere for an extended period of time, or when our car might break down, or when another kind of emergency might delay our plans, but a good car emergency kit can help us stay safe while we get where we need to go. With the right tools and supplies, it could even save our lives (or maybe our sanity?).

“We should have an emergency kit.”

We’ve been married for 20 years now and we’ve been saying that for…about 20 years now.

Natural disasters seem to be happening more and more often. A cyberattack causing a disruption to the power grid and/or other essential systems is more likely than ever. Even a nuclear attack doesn’t seem so far-fetched anymore. Any of these happening is out of our control.

But what IS in our control is putting together an emergency kit and plan so we aren’t completely unprepared if/when an emergency happens.

This is Part 1, which deals with how we decided what to include in our kit.