Transcript:
Easan Arulanantham:
Are there any kind of New Year’s resolutions that I can do for my finances?
Tom Vaughan:
Oh, yeah, well, one thing I mean, there’s a lot of different things, a lot of different categories. But one thing that I am doing is I have pieces that we bought in 2020, that did phenomenally well. And they’ve come down some, I haven’t wanted to sell them at the end of tape especially came down at the end of the year, I didn’t want to sell them at the end of the year, because of the tax return was just around the corner. So happened lightening up on those types of things. So if you have things in your portfolio, that are at gains, that you’re not so sure you’re going to continue to keep those gains, this is a good time to sell them. Because now you have the gains, and you can work them off for the rest of the year. If you if you buy something that doesn’t work out very well, or one of your positions turns into a loss, you can sell it capture that loss, offset whatever gains that you took this week. So that that, to me is one thing that we do, you know, on a consistent basis. You know, I think there’s a whole host of different areas that that we could look at in terms of, you know, what you’d might want to do, I would say making sure that you know, your budgets and your goals, and those types of things are in line. It’s kind of a New Year’s resolution type concept, as far as that goes, is important also, but yeah, it’s for me right now, I’ve been really focused on kind of the capital gain issue.
Easan Arulanantham:
Yeah, for this year, I looked at my budget, and I realized that I spent a little bit too much on takeout. So, you know, just, you know, maybe one or two more meals that I cook myself is the goal this year, you know, each week to save that money, and, you know, trying to find where, you know, maybe I’m losing a little bit of extra more money that I want to be losing. And then another thing was I looked at my contribution percentages, and I decided that I want to maybe bump it up a couple percentages this year. And so maybe that’s something you reevaluate is like a, like I got a raise, maybe last year? Do I want to be savings a little bit more of that money this year? And so you could do that?
Tom Vaughan:
Yeah, that’s good point. I mean, so what you save on, you know, some area, I especially like saving money on things that don’t dramatically impact my lifestyle, right? There’s always these little things that accumulate that haven’t stopped subscriptions, different things that I’m not using anymore, and then apply that towards your, you know, contribution to your retirement plan, or what have you. Yeah, that’s, that’s a great new year’s resolution right there. It’s just to try to get, you know, more fiscally sound this year and continue to do that. I would say cross the country. If you look at the numbers, people are, are really doing a great job financially, in comparison, not everybody, right? There’s always this bifurcation. But if you look at the averages, they’ve gotten a lot better. savings rates are a lot higher. People are in much better position debts are lower, which is kind of nice. So yeah, it’s still still a good time to refinance if you’re got a higher mortgage. And I do that really quick, because boy, mortgage rates are shooting up. That might be a news resolution right there. If you have a mortgage that’s at, you know, four or five 6% For some reason, now’s the time to do it, because mortgage rates are really starting to move upward right now. So that could be a big savings, right? Most people have already done it. But if you haven’t done now’s the time