Make 2026 a Financial Success

Kickstart Your Financial Success in 2026: Six Essential Moves

In this episode of The Retire Early Retire Now podcast, host Hunter Kelly, owner of Palm Valley Wealth Management, provides a comprehensive 30-day financial action plan to set the tone for 2026 and beyond. Hunter outlines six critical steps to take by January 31st, including knowing your financial numbers (net worth, savings rate, debt balances, and investable assets), automating savings, rebalancing investments, building an early tax plan, revisiting insurance and estate planning, and defining a purpose for your money. Through intentional action and system-building, listeners can achieve a smarter, calmer, and more intentional financial year. Hunter also emphasizes the importance of continually revisiting these goals throughout the year for sustained financial success.

00:00 Welcome and Introduction
01:19 Setting the Financial Foundation
05:39 Automate Your Finances
07:47 Rebalance and Reset Investments
09:36 Early Tax Planning
13:10 Review Insurance and Estate Planning
16:10 Define Your Financial Purpose
19:09 Final Checklist and Conclusion

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Transcript

0:00

And welcome back to The Retire Early Retire Now podcast. I'm your host, hunter Kelly, owner of Palm Valley Wealth Management, and as we step into a brand new year, I want to give you something more helpful than resolutions. More helpful than this year. I'm finally going to get serious about money. I want to give you a clear financial action plan for the next 30 days that will set the toll for the rest of your year and honestly, your long-term future. because here's what I know. After working with hundreds of families, the people who win with money don't wait around, hoping things will work themselves out. They aren't doing anything special. All they are is intentional. They take action when action is needed, and they build systems instead of rely on motivation. So today we're talking about your 2026 game plan. Six moves to do by January 31st. So you don't just hope this year goes financially better. You actually design it to, But before we dive in, if you enjoy this show, take 10 seconds to leave a five star review. It helps people find this podcast and it genuinely supports what I'm building here at the Retire Early Retirement Podcast. So let's jump in. The worst financial mistake people make in January is charging ahead with goals, without actually knowing where they stand. This is big. This is a time. If you didn't do it in December. To go ahead and start taking inventory. Before you do anything, you need to measure, you need to understand where you are currently, and here are the four numbers you want to lock in before the end of January. Four numbers that you really want to know. One is your net worth, right? What is net worth? Net worth is taking all of your assets, your home, your investments. any other assets that may be, of note and then minusing out or, taking away your, your liabilities, right? Your mortgage, any loans that you have, debts, things of that nature. And whatever that net number is your net worth. This is a good number for a point in time to say, Hey, where am I at? And it gives you an idea of where you want to go into the future, whether that be a year from now or even longer. The next thing you want to look at is your total savings rate. So how much did you actually save in 2025? That includes 4 0 1 Ks IRAs. Savings accounts and any brokerage accounts that you may have. And to figure out your savings rate, you wanna say, Hey, what did I make in 2025? Was it a hundred thousand, 200,000, 300,000? Whatever that num gross number was. And then what did I save from a dollar amount? Okay, maybe I made 200,000 and I saved$20,000 throughout those accounts, while I would take that$20,000 to buy that by my 200,000, and that would be a 10% savings rate. And so this will give you a good point in time. Now, you may have goals where you want to be higher or maybe you exceeded your goal, whatever that may be. It doesn't matter if it's good or bad, you just need to know where you're at, and it gives you a point of reference to improve on for the following year for 2026. The next thing is your debt balances and interest rates. If you have debt that you're working on getting paid down, whether that be student loan debt. Car loans, HELOCs, mortgages, whatever that may be, understand where your debts are, what progress you made on them in 2025, and what is the plan moving forward in 2026, even if it's not paying all of that debt off in 2026. What progress do you need to make on that, to make 2026 a successful, year financially? And then lastly, your total investible assets. This is just good to know, if, if all things went hell in a hand basket. what do I have, in my investments that I can either live off of if I lose my job, or, need to pay off debt, whatever that may be, right? this gives you a good understanding of where you're at. This isn't about feeling good or bad. These numbers are just about the truth. Where am I currently in January, 2026? Because you cannot optimize what you have not defined, right? And I, I think I said this a couple weeks ago. If you're trying to lose weight, if you're not measuring your calories for the vast majority of people that are trying to lose weight, then you're likely not going to lose weight. Because you don't know the actual calories and if you need to cut your calories or increase your exercise, whatever that may be for you. Right? Um. You need to measure what what you're doing, figure out where you are, and that's where you can start making those adjustments. So treat this like your starting line. Plant your flag here. So when you review this later in the year, you see real measurable progress, right? So if you went to the doctor, the doctor took blood work, and you saw that there was something outta line, and you went back six months later. Hopefully that blood work would have improved, right? Those same thing with these numbers, right? If you go back and you look at your net worth, your savings rate halfway through the year, your debt balances halfway through the year, have they improved and have they improved at the rate that you want it or needed them to, to meet your goals? And so number two, what should we be thinking about when we understand where we are? Well, if you do nothing else this month or in January, do this building wealth. Should it depend on your willpower? Just like anything else in life, right? You should try to automate things. That you don't enjoy doing, you should automate things that you need to do, that it's easy to slip up and forget to do. And finances are probably the number one thing that you can automate, right? So set up automatic transfers to, your 401k and a lot of things, or a lot of companies have this automatically already, but you need to, you need to adjust it to the proper amount for your particular situation. Automate the Roth IRA transfers, right? Um, even if you need to do a backdoor Roth, maybe you set it to be at the first or second of the year, uh, every year, uh, to be a one-time poll, right? If you're not doing a monthly contribution, uh, automate. Savings or contributions to your brokerage account. Automate your savings to your HSAs, whatever you're, you need to save to, or you need, or, or even debt, right? Uh, if you're trying to pay off a student loan debt or a mortgage or, or a car loan or whatever, right? Um, if you're paying extra to that, make sure that you're automating that and not have to manually go in and go, oh, I need to put an extra$500 to my car loan. Or, or whatever, right? Automate those things so that. It just becomes another, another thing that is just added on that you don't have to think about, the less and less you have to think about the more and more that you can get done, right. The people who win aren't more disciplined necessarily all the time, but they've created systems that help them meet their goals every month. Now, discipline is a big part of that. We need to have discipline because, uh. Even though these, these amounts are coming out of your, your paycheck or your bank account every month, we need to have discipline to continue to do that, right? But it makes it a lot easier to automate it and schedule it, um, and not have to forget about it every month or quarter or whatever that may be for you. So. And if you recently had your income increased, make sure that you match all of your savings rate to that income. Right? Number three, rebalance or reset your investments. The market moves every year. this year was, no different, right? Early in the year, we had a lot of volatility with tariffs and, and all those sorts of things. The market rallied later in the year, and there has since been some, some periods of volatility, but not as much in the back end of. Back half of the year. but the market moves your, your portfolio moves with the market. Your life changes every year. Your risk tolerance may shift within that year. So make sure you rebalance, reset your investments. So, uh, if your portfolio hasn't been touched since last January. You may want or need to rebalance, maybe do some tax loss harvesting, uh, whatever that may be for your portfolio. Just give it some tender loving care in January if you haven't done it already. Right? So rebalance your portfolio, establish. a new target asset allocation. So maybe you were all equity, and you have since said, Hey, we need to dial back the risk a little bit because, of whatever number of reasons. so re reestablish that target allocation through rebalancing or making a new allocation. Reduce any oversized positions or, Again, if you have any opportunities in your brokerage accounts for tax all servicing, take advantage of that and then clean up any, redundant funds or messy funds. Simplify that portfolio, which we talked about again a few weeks ago, when we dove into portfolio. management there. So this isn't sexy, it's not fun for most people. but it is things that need to happen to make sure that you're squeezing every bit of, return out of your portfolio, but also keeping it within the guidelines of what your risk tolerance and capacity is as well. So discipline is what builds wealth. Number four, build your tax plan early. Tax planning is a year round thing. I talk about this all the time. Do not wait till April to start to try to figure things out. do not wait until the end of the year of 2026 to start figuring things out. You should be planning, even if there's. Act, actual actions that you need to be taking. mechanically you can start to build a plan, to help minimize taxes throughout the year. So most people think about taxes in March or April. That's when it's too late, right? and so you should almost be done with probably 98% of things for 2025 already. and so you should be thinking about 2026 and January, not 2025, right? So smart money plans in January. So go ahead and start doing these sort of things. So estimate your expected income for this year. So if you need to adjust any quarterly payments. what you're withholding at work, whatever that may be. Look ahead for Roth conversion windows. So is your income gonna drop and you're gonna have a big window, to do some Roth conversions? Like this past year, I had a client, their income for 2025 dropped significantly, and we did, well over a hundred thousand dollars Roth conversion because of that. another client. we planned some charitable giving around a Roth conversion. Uh, so for that year there was ch charitable giving. So you should be looking, Hey, do I have any opportunities to maybe, donate to a donor advised fund to avoid some capital gains that I have, in a particular holding. Or do I want to do a larger Roth conversion where I can donate to this donor advised fund, take that deduction and just cancel it out with the Roth conversion? do I want to bunch some deductions? There are some changes with the tax laws with the baby. Beautiful bill. Does that affect my situation in any significant way? and then again, make sure your withholdings and your estimated payments are set correctly. I mean, you can do that through calculating your safe harbor number once you have. your 2025 numbers kinda set and correct and all that. doing this now saves you money, saves you anxiety, and you're not surprised later scrambling to do a Roth conversion like anybody that's wanting to do a Roth conversion. Right now, I'm recording this on the 30th of December, 2025. You're likely not going to be able to do that because the custodians, kind of have these cutoff dates and things of that nature. any of these actions that you want to do, make sure you have a plan to do them earlier than later so that you can kind of set this in place and, and so. Taxes aren't something that just happened to you. There's something that you can plan for, yes. within reason, right? We don't want to evade taxes. That's illegal. But if you can put strategies in place now to avoid them, that's what we're all about here, right? So there's something that you can plan for. and mitigate as much as possible. And my famous line here is it's going to be the largest expense that you're ever gonna have, so why not try to cut that as much as possible? People always talk about cutting the subscriptions and things of that nature out of their monthly, bills and everything else. And yes, for some people, that makes a difference. But where you're gonna make a huge difference is if you can find ways to mitigate 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, a hundred thousand dollars in taxes, whatever your situation calls for, that's gonna make a huge difference in your wealth over time because that money can stay invested. you don't have to pay it out to Uncle Sam. and that's going to increase your wealth much more over time. Number five, revisit your insurance, your estate planning, and anything protection related, right? whether you act on it, again, with taxes, whether you act on it now or not, having a plan to revisit it and, take care of it is essential. So every January you should be asking yourself one question, and that is what if something unexpected happened this year? Would my family be okay? If we had a hurricane, we live in Florida, or I live in Florida, if we had a hurricane, you a flood, if we get in a bad car wreck and cause a lot of damage, if one of my spouses passes away or becomes injured and can't work anymore, would we be okay? So it's a good time to review life insurance, your disability insurance. Umbrella policies if you, if your situation calls for that, estate documents and beneficiaries. one of the most underrated insurances that I find for, high income earners is that umbrella policy. I just spoke with a client a few days ago. she is actually upping her umbrella policy because she had not reviewed it in a, in quite some time. Her net worth has grown quite a bit since then. and the rule of thumb is we always wanna try to match our net worth with, the umbrella policy that we have, so that in the case that we have some sort of massive liability, we're not having to come out of pocket, for. That particular event, right? the other thing that is not looked at a lot, but should at least probably every five years is your estate planning documents. So if something happens to me, I'm incapacitated who's taking care of me, what are my wishes? Who's taking care of my kids? Is it my parents or all my parents? at a point where they're not, capable enough anymore because they're older or whatever that may be, right? who's taking care of the money? If, I pass away, my spouse passes away and my kids are with my parents, right? Is it my parents taking care of that? Is it a sister or brother? Do I need a third party? what, is going to happen? And going through all that and meeting with an estate attorney, is the best way to do it. But there are online solutions as well. and so make sure that you review those estate planning documents and along with that, make sure that you're reviewing your beneficiaries because people get divorced, people pass away, things change. if those beneficiaries are not correct, then the person that you thought were was getting that money, we'll certainly not get that money right. And we wanna make sure that is correct. So it, it eliminates, confusion, heartache. Work in times of grieving. nothing, nobody likes thinking about this type of stuff. It's not fun, it's not glamorous, but. It's your future self, it's your family, and they will be grateful that you did. Number six. And the most important, I thought about putting this number one, but I wanted to make sure, that I talked about those things first. because this is the most important part. You need to have a purpose for your money this year. So when you sit down with your spouse, you sit down with your partner, you sit down with your family. There's this most important thing, and that is having purpose with your money because without purpose, things can sway you one way or the other, right? you'll have distractions this year that will want to take your time and money, whether that be trips you didn't plan for, things, to buy at stores or whatever, whatever it may be for you. If you don't have a purpose, then it's hard to really make progress, on your goals. So because without purpose, everything becomes noise, it becomes stress, it becomes. Endless chasing of other things that aren't gonna give you fulfillment. So this is what you should be asking yourself at the beginning of 2026. What do we want to do? What do we want our money to do for us in 2026? Because money is a tool. Don't let money work you, you make the money work for you, right? how can we use this tool to best facilitate or best reach our goals or make progress the proper progress to our goals? The next question you should be asking yourself, what matters to our family this year? And right now, is it debt pay down? Is it taking family trips? Is it preparing, for kids' tuition in college? What are those important things? Is it giving to our favorite charity or church? what is most important? What matters? The third and final question, what would progress actually look like, not just numerically, but in life that would make 2026 a success, right? So if we get, if we are having this conversation ideally on January, January 1st, 2026, and then we're having this lookback period in December of 2026, what needs to happen in between that gap to make this a success? maybe it's travel, maybe it's more time with your family. Maybe it's freedom to say no more often. giving you that purpose will allow you to say no to things. that just don't align with your purpose and your goals and your, aspirations for what you want that money to do, right? So if something pops up, maybe it's a concert or something, or a trip with friends that you didn't necessarily plan on, but you know, you have these other goals, it makes it easier to say, no, I'm not saying that it's easy, it's just easier, or at least you know where your guiding light is, right? And so this is the most important part of. To me of getting 2026, right? Is defining that purpose, right? What do we want our money to do for us this year? What matters most and what progress do we need to make in year 2026, to make it a success? again, here's our checklist for January, or here's our checklist that we want to complete by January 31st. Know your numbers. Where are we at? Net worth savings rate, income. Where are we at? Automate your savings. Make it easy on yourself. To where you don't have to think about your savings or anything else that you're doing, whether that's extra payments to debt, rebalance and clean up your investments. It's boring. Just like tax planning, just like looking at your estate planning, these three things are really boring. But it needs to get done. It makes the wheel go around. It makes success a lot easier to come by. So rebalance that portfolio, clean your up, your investments, build a tax plan. Now, not, do not wait until the end of next year strengthen your, your protection planning, right? So whether that be. Reviewing life insurance, disability insurance, your p and c insurance, like umbrella insurance, get with a estate, a planning attorney, look at your beneficiaries. All those things that nobody wants to talk about you need to do. and then have that purpose for your money. How is that money gonna work for us this year? How are we going to make it a successful 2026? So do these six things and your year is already off to a smarter. Calmer, more intentional start then 99.9% of other people. The hard part, the simple part, but the hard part is sticking through it throughout the year. And I'll have other podcasts throughout the year to make sure, just to give you that, that nudge, that reminder that this is gonna happen. but. The hard part is doing that, but getting off to a right foot is going to help you out. And then one other extra tip, these goals, these purpose, like write all these things down, put it on your refrigerator, put it on your mirror in your bathroom so that you see it all the time. It's in front of your face. It's not something that's hidden for six months at a time and you forget about it three weeks later. Right? So again, I always use like the. Losing weight analogy, but you need to have that in your face. You need to be thinking about it all the time, so that you don't forget about it. And so if this episode helped you get clarity and motivation for the year ahead, share this with a friend. Your friends need that motivation or that kick in the, the rear end to make sure that they're going to meet their goals in 2026. I always tell my friends, I don't want my friends to be poor when I'm, when I'm retired and, and going on trips. I want them to be there with me. So I try to help them out too. Uh, be that, be that person in your, in your friend group. Help them out financially. Share this with a friend. Get them on the right foot for 2026. And if you want help creating your 2026 financial plan and a per that is personalized to your situation, I'm here to help. Go to my website, palm Valley wm.com. You can look at my process. It's called the Palm Valley Pathway. If you like what you see, you can schedule a call. It's no cost As a 50 minute call, we can see if we can work well together. If I can help you, I'm gonna give you as much. Help as I can in that 15 to 20 minute call, and, we can go forward from there. But, I appreciate you guys listening. And don't forget, take 10 seconds, leave a five star review on your favorite podcasting app. Helps us grow this audience to help more people retire early or retire. Now, I'm Hunter Kelly. Thank you for listening. and here's to building a year with intention, clarity, and purpose. This podcast is for educational purposes only. It's not meant to be financial or investment advice. Please do not make decisions solely based on this podcast alone. Please seek help in your own situation. I.