Reaping the Benefits By Investing in Your Dreams

Photo Credit: Victor Filippov

Reaping the Benefits
By Investing in Your Dreams

Summer is a great time for vacations that turn into forever memories with friends and family. Your vacation may lead you to explore new exotic destinations by sea, fly to a family reunion across the country, or drive to a familiar family cabin by the water, or maybe even, all the above. Our ability to actualize our dreams can be influenced by how big we can afford to dream. In order to make your dreams come true, make sure your investments are still working, even when you are taking time off.

Here are three simple steps to achieving your dreams this summer:

Photo Credit: Tirachard Kumtanom

Recharge

All work and no play is a dangerous equation. Giving your body time away from stress keeps us healthy and mentally fit. According to Psychology Today, "Chronic stress takes its toll in part on our body's ability to resist infection, maintain vital functions, and even ability to avoid injury. When you're stressed out and tired, you are more likely to become ill, your arteries take a beating, and you're more likely to have an accident.” Vacations are not wasted time. They help give us the energy we need to accomplish our goals. As Psychology Today explains, "We emerge from a successful vacation feeling ready to take on the world again. We gain perspective on our problems, get to relax with our families and friends, and get a break from our usual routines."

Photo Credit: Dianne Povey

Dream

In order to know what your goal is, you first must define what your dreams are. Take time to visualize where you want to see yourself, how do you want to get there, and who are you with. Do you dream of visiting new foreign countries, or do you prefer the comforts of home in a second home? Open your mind to the possibilities, talk to friends, read travel magazines and blogs, listen to travel podcasts, and watch documentaries. Discuss with your spouse their wishes and dreams. What is something you have always dreamed of doing together? What is on your bucket list? Write it down. Dream big. Get excited about the possibilities. This excitement will motivate you to do the work necessary to make it happen.

Work with Experts

Look for help to make your vacation dreams come true. Investing is not everyone’s strong point - and it doesn’t have to be. The most successful people aren’t experts at everything. They are successful because they collaborate with other experts. Learning the basics of financial investing can help you learn the foundations of what you need to know and can help you communicate more effectively with an advisor. Sage Rutty offers a variety of free, educational seminars that can help you ask the right questions. 

Sage Rutty also invites you to explore our website and review our roster of expert financial advisors that can help you invest in your dreams. Have any questions, feel free to reach us by phone at 585-232-3760 or toll free at 1-800-733-1133. We look forward to helping you make your dreams come true.

The Long Haul:
3 Essential Tips to Remain Financially Healthy Throughout Retirement

The cost of living keeps going up, and after retirement, when you no longer have a regular paycheck to count on, you need to be able to rely on your savings and investments in order to stay financially stable. But we all want to do more than be stable and keep afloat, we want to thrive and make the most of our retirement during our golden years. Here are three essential tips to help you stay financially healthy and making the most out of life during your retirement.

1.  Save Early. Save Often.

As soon as you start working, make saving a top priority. This is the time to put money aside in savings and investments so funds can create compound interest and work for you, augmenting your earned income. Saving early is key to retiring early. According to a survey by MoneyRates.com, “people who start saving in their 20s are significantly more likely to expect to retire before age 60, compared even with people who begin saving in their 30s. But the study also finds that the majority of savers don't begin saving until their 30s, and that a significant percentage begin saving even later -- if they begin at all.”

2. Budget Now

Insure you have enough money saved ahead of your planned retirement. Online tools, such as financial calculators and online expense worksheets, can help determine what you need to enjoy your retirement. While you are still working, try to do a test run of your retirement budget and see how it works and what needs adjusting. Create a journal with detailed examples of how you envision your ideal retirement. Research how much it would cost to realize these dream goals. Work those numbers into your budget. Look for any unnecessary expenses that you can cut out or cut down. Don’t forget to consider your debt and the cost of paying off your mortgage. 

3. Maximize Your Investment Savings

Working with a financial advisor can help you find the best ways to maximize your investment savings and minimize penalties. A financial advisor can educate you on how retirement income is taxed and how to be best positioned to handle that expense. There are a variety of ways to invest, from real estate, to stocks and bonds. A financial advisor will be able to work with you, your retirement goals and your budget to determine what investment strategy is best suited to accomplish your dream goals.

Learn more about enhancing retirement income strategies at our upcoming workshop with Christine Palmiere. You can also learn more about about all our upcoming free financial workshops on our website. Our workshops are held in the Sage Rutty Educational Center located in our offices at 100 Corporate Woods, Suite 300. Please feel free to contact us with any questions online or call 1-800-733-1133.

Always Growing, Always Learning:

Keeping Your Advantage in an Ever-Changing Financial Market

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Sage Rutty has been in business for over 100 years, and our key to success has been the ability to adapt to the ever-changing financial market. It has been said that the difference between being smart and being intelligent is that smart “is more about being adaptable.”

Sage Rutty believes in sharing our knowledge with others so they too can make smart financial decisions and that belief is one of the reason why the Sage Rutty University was created.

"We want our clients to be as informed as possible about today’s economic changes and challenges, and the impact that these factors can have on personal plans and goals.”

The Sage Rutty University offers free hour-long informative workshops, that are open to both their clients and the general public, on a variety of subjects that offer, "valuable educational tools and resources to assist you in your efforts to stay up-to-date on the latest financial information, activities and best practices.”

An example of the diverse topics covered is our upcoming, “Financial Spring Cleaning” workshop with Financial Advisor, Jill Knittel. This workshop explores how a thorough spring cleaning includes organizing one’s papers. The informative workshop answers such questions as: Which documents should you keep? For how long? What papers should be tossed? Which shredded? Where should documents be stored? The workshop "will show you how to set up a clearly-defined record keeping process so you know what you have and where to find it” so you can “ walk away with simple tips designed to keep your home organized and clutter-free for years to come."

Other examples of financial workshop topics covered are:

• Get Your Affairs in Order
• Medicare: The A,B,C & D’s
• Savvy Social Security Planning
• Planning for Healthcare in Retirement
• Trusts & Estate Taxes
• Suddenly Single

Feel free to bring a friend and RSVP to attend any of these workshops. You can find the complete calendar of events for Sage Rutty’s Financial Workshops online. All workshops are held in the Sage Rutty Educational Center located in their offices at 100 Corporate Woods, Suite 300, Rochester, New York. In addition to helping people learn more about evolving financial strategies, these workshops also allow people to get to know Sage Rutty advisors in a stress-free, sales-free, no obligation environment. Please call 585-232-3760 or contact us online to learn more.

Planning Ahead:

Finding the Right Key to Unlocking

Your Robust Financial Future

For over a hundred years, Sage Rutty has been assisting families create and preserve wealth. What is most effective for one client, may be different for another client. Sage Rutty Advisors supply their clients with the keys to unlock the right financial planning strategy, opening doors to the best investment track leading to a well-planned financial future.

With nearly 20 unique advisory teams, Sage Rutty advisors are experts in a variety of financial planning fields that are tailored for the client's distinct needs. Our expert advisors are skilled in adapting investments to adjust to life’s changes and your changing needs. Our comprehensive financial services include: financial planning; trust services; retirement planning; investment management and fixed-income, bonds & CD’s. With no proprietary products to sell, the client can feel confident knowing they will receive the most objective and honest guidance possible across all of our service offerings including:

Financial Planning

• Retirement Projections and Income Planning
• Estate Planning
• Tax Planning
• Survivor Needs Analysis
• Risk Analysis and Insurance Review

Trust Services

• Revocable or Living Trusts
• Charitable Remainder Trusts
• Irrevocable Trusts
• Succession Planning Remainder Trusts

Retirement Planning

• IRAs: Traditional, Roths and Rollovers
• 401(k) and 403(b) Management
• Pension and Profit Sharing Plans
• Converting Your Investments into a Retirement Income

Investment Management

• Portfolio Analysis
• Asset Allocation Development
• Portfolio Management

Fixed-Income, Bonds & CD's

• Tax-Free Municipal Bonds
• Corporate Bonds (with Survivor Option)
• CD's (with Survivor Option)

We invite you to explore our website and review our financial advisor teams. You'll notice that all of our advisor pages look a little different - that is because all of our advisors do things a little differently.

You can also learn more about our advisors by attending one of their free seminars, which gives you an opportunity to get to know them in a stress-free, sales-free, no obligation environment. You can find the calendar of events for Sage Rutty Financial Workshops online.

If all else fails, please call Wayne Holly, our President, at 585-512-2300 or email him at wholly@sagerutty.com and he will be happy to guide you.

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Image Credit: 123Photos

The Diversified Art of Investment Management

The art of having a healthy investment portfolio is not having all your eggs in one basket. Portfolio diversity helps spread the risks and increase the rewards. Diversity in where and how you invest are both important. Sage Rutty Advisors supply their clients with the keys to unlock the right financial planning strategy, opening doors to the best investment track leading to a well-planned financial future.

One of the ways to create diversity in your portfolio is asset allocation. Asset allocation is the studied implementation of an investment strategy that attempts to balance risk versus reward by adjusting the percentage of each asset in an investment portfolio according to the investor's individual needs and concerns.

Asset allocation performance varies in different market and economic conditions. A fund that holds more than one asset class is called an asset allocation fund. An asset class is a group of economic resources sharing similar characteristics, such as return and riskiness. According to Wikipedia, asset classes are typically divided into two groups: traditional assets and alternative assets.

Traditional Assets:

• stocks
• bonds
• cash

Alternative Assets:

• Commodities: precious metals, nonferrous metals, agriculture, energy, others.
• Commercial or residential real estate (also REITs)
• Collectibles such as art, coins, or stamps
• Insurance products (annuity, life settlements, catastrophe bonds, personal life insurance products, etc.)
• Derivatives such as long-short or market neutral strategies, options, collateralized debt, and futures
• Foreign currency
• Venture capital
• Private equity
• Distressed securities

Finding a financial advisor that can find the right investment balance for your portfolio is what Sage Rutty does best. We have a group of financial teams that understand the client’s financial needs and can suggest a top-notch, custom investment strategy that minimizes risks and maximizes results.

We invite you to explore our website and review our financial advisor teams. You can also learn more about our advisors by attending one of their free seminars, which gives you an opportunity to get to know them in a stress-free, sales-free, no obligation environment. You can find Sage Rutty’s Financial Workshops’ calendar of events online.

Planning For Your Financial Future

There are many unknowns that a person can have while planning their life, but their financial future doesn’t have to be one. There are so many angles and considerations while creating the right financial plan for your goals and dreams - for many, this can be overwhelming. Luckily, the financial advisors at Sage Rutty have got you covered.

Whether this is your first step in planning for your financial future, or you’re investing in a part of your plan you’ve been working towards for years, we are determined to help match you with an advisor that fits your needs the best. Perhaps you’ve just married and want to start a savings plan for when you have children. You could be in the middle of raising children and want to ensure you’ll have the funds to pay for their higher education. Or perhaps your children are growing up and you want to now ensure you’ll be financially comfortable in retirement. Our company is comprised of nearly 20 unique advisory teams, and we are confident that the perfect advisor is waiting to meet with you. If you’re interested in planning for your future, or perhaps you’re looking to create a plan for your family, we have every aspect of financial planning and investment management covered, including retirement planning, legacy & estate planning, trust services, fixed income, bonds, and CD’s.

As Rochester’s oldest, locally owned financial services firm, we are proud to count a number of second and even third generation clients among those we serve. We as a firm have formed stability during times of uncertainty while putting our client’s needs as a top priority. We are a family-owned business which is what has rooted us to be so family-orientated in our services. Sage Rutty is not a huge corporation, nor do we have multiple locations. However, we are a loyal, trustworthy company that has a long-standing history of providing quality financial planning services to a community we love. Nothing is more important to us than taking care of others, specifically the families that we serve.

The future is uncertain, but you can rest easy knowing that you’re in good hands when it comes to your finances. Sage Rutty is committed to giving their clients the best service possible while producing results that will last a lifetime. To learn more about our services and how to get started with a financial advisor, you can visit our website or give us a call at (585)-232-3760.

Don’t Wait to Plan Your Estate

Believe it or not, you have an estate - nearly everyone does. Your estate is comprised of everything you own: your car, home, other real estate, checking and savings accounts, investments, life insurance, furniture, and other personal possessions. No matter how large or how small, everyone has an estate and something in common - you can’t take it with you when you die.

What is Estate Planning?

When your time comes, you probably want to control how your possessions are given to the people or organizations you care about most. To ensure your wishes are carried out, you need to provide instructions stating whom you want to receive something of yours, what you want them to receive, and when they are to receive it. You will, of course, want this to happen with the least amount paid in taxes, legal fees, and court costs. 

How to Create a Successful Estate Plan 

These items should be included in a thorough estate plan:

1. A Will: Name who will inherit your belongings and choose a guardian and inheritance manager for minor children.
2. Health Care Directives: Include a living will and a power of attorney.
3. Financial Power of Attorney: Grant someone legal authority to act on your behalf regarding financial issues if you become incapacitated and are unable to make those decisions yourself. 
4. File Beneficiary Forms: Naming a beneficiary for retirement plans and any bank accounts makes the funds automatically "payable on death" to your beneficiary and allows for the probate process to be skipped altogether. 
5. Life Insurance: Can help provide immediate cash at death. 
6. Preplan Your Funeral: Planning ahead enables you to make financial arrangements to cover your funeral costs. Even if you are leaving behind sufficient money, will your survivors be able to access it? Funeral insurance and funeral trusts are sound financial planning options you can consider ahead of time.

Individuals put off estate planning because they think they don’t own enough, they’re not old enough, they’re busy, think they have plenty of time, they’re confused and don’t know who can help them, or they just don’t want to face it. But what if something happened to them? Sage Rutty can help by offering step-by-step guidance to put you at ease. By evaluating and addressing any financial concerns, Sage Rutty provides peace of mind regarding important questions about personal estate plans.

Learn more about estate planning and how we can help by visiting SageRutty or calling 585-232-3760.