Welcome to 2020

The new decade has kicked off. Many economic headwinds remain in place including China tariffs, the U.S. manufacturing slowdown, an election year, and economic policy uncertainty.  A new heightened concern with events involving Iran in the Middle East is an addition to the list.

Despite the long bull run and macro-economic concerns that may tip over the stock indexes; the investment focus of Financial Insight will remain on long term planning for your personal economic future and how to ride out the market roller-coaster.

Over the upcoming weeks there will be articles that focus on:

• Retirement Planning
• 401K Diversification
• FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early)
• Stock Selection
• Social Security Guidance

There has been a continual set of articles in the mainstream media in recent days that has greatly amused me.  The media has bombarded us with assertions implying that it is critical that you write "2020" as the year rather than "20" - otherwise scammers will take advantage of you on monetary instruments such as checks. Even misinformed police departments have joined in the fray. Several outlets provided an example of a scammer turning a check with "20" on it to "2017".  I don't see how altering the date on a check (or other instrument) to "2017" will aid a scammer.  Most likely it will only make the check non-despositable due to not being cashed for three years. Most checks are good for a mere 6 months.