What do you want them to say about you?
/As we head into a new year, everyone is excited to turn the page and get a fresh start – a “do-over” if you’ll permit that expression. New Year’s resolutions are commonplace – whether health, finance, exercise, family, etc…, most everyone wants to do better next year. Which is a great thing! But what do we need to do to make sure those pledges that we make to ourselves stick?
Where we fail most often with our New Year’s resolutions (and any other goal for that matter) is in execution. We have this grand idea of what we want to happen, but lack the gumption to execute. To execute, there must be discipline. And for there to be the kind of discipline needed to promote the execution that accomplishes the resolution, there must be passion behind the “why” to the resolution. So we need to dig a little deeper and determine what the “why” is behind the goal and use the passion and energy created from the “why” to make the change.
I was given an exercise about 15 years ago from a business coach I had hired to help me with my work/family balance. The first thing he asked me to do was get in a room by myself, with no distractions, for a couple of hours while I wrote my own eulogy. In other words, he asked me to write down what I would want my friends/family to say about me when I’m gone. When I did that, it gave me the fuel to change everything about my actions that needed changing. I was able to focus on the things that needed to be done to allow what I wanted said about me to happen. I got to the core of what was important to me and let that be the motivator for everything, both big and small, that needed to change in my life. So ultimately, the things I wanted said about me when I’m gone not only could be said, but would be.
So figure out what it is that you want said about you when you are gone and design your life (daily routine and activities) around making that happen. May 2018 be your best year ever!
Part 2 | Quick Market Review
Friday morning the President signed into law the biggest tax code overhaul in more than thirty years. Its centerpiece is a cut in the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21, plus cuts in individual tax rates.
Critics of the bill say lower taxes will raise the deficit, supporters claim the boost in economic growth, jobs and wages resulting from the tax cuts will ultimately increase government revenues. Part of the new package includes the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act. For homeowners, the capital gains exclusion on home sales, and the mortgage interest deduction on existing mortgages were left unchanged. But the interest deduction on new mortgages is only available up to $750,000 (down from $1 million).
Time will tell the ultimate benefit of the new legislation. For now, the housing market continues to boom. I can’t help but think that we are in for higher interest rates in the near future. For now, we continue to trade in this tight range (near the bottom of the range) that we’ve been in since the end of March. If/when the mortgage bonds break through the bottom of this channel, higher rates are likely.