Newsletters
Periodically reviewing your investments is a critical part of your financial planning. Over time, your financial goals may change based on your life circumstances. Perhaps you have new grandchildren that you want to help with college savings. Maybe you are needing to make renovations on your home or purchase a new one. These changing needs are taken into consideration when looking at your investment portfolio.
You and your advisor can discuss your risk tolerance during a portfolio review to ensure that your investments are allocated according to your comfort level. While there is always risk when investing in stocks, bonds, mutual funds and other similar products, you may want to minimize risk through diversification. Alternatively, you might feel comfortable with an additional level of risk to take advantage of potential higher return opportunities. Your advisor will look at your risk tolerance and help you choose an appropriate strategy based on your goals.
Periodically reviewing your investments is a critical part of your financial planning. Over time, your financial goals may change based on your life circumstances. Perhaps you have new grandchildren that you want to help with college savings. Maybe you are needing to make renovations on your home or purchase a new one. These changing needs are taken into consideration when looking at your investment portfolio.
If it has been a while since you last met with an advisor or your financial needs have changed, feel free to call us (315-637-5153) or visit our Appointments page to schedule a review.
Sometimes, “National [insert your favorite pastime here] Day” seems so ridiculously over done (National Squirrel Appreciation Day, National Be Humble Day, National Lemon Juice Day to name a few). But “September is National College Savings Month” makes sense. You’re probably already thinking “Back to School” for a variety of reasons. You’re heading out to buy notebooks and backpacks. You’re sending your eldest off to college or waving to your youngest grandchild as they hop on the school bus for the first time. No matter the reason, “Back to School” often leads people to think about college savings for their children or others they care about.
In celebration of National College Savings Month, we are including an informative article about the 529 Education Savings Plan. The really great thing about these investment accounts is while offering certain tax benefits, the funds can be used to pay for qualified education expenses – and not just college tuition! K-12 tuition, apprenticeship programs and even some student loan repayments qualify.
Don’t wait for National College Savings Month to go by 🙂
Call us at 315-637-5153 (or visit our Appointments page) if you would like to learn more about the benefits of a 529 Education Savings Plan or to open an account.
Visit the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals website for further information on all of the Goals.
As we fly into the 4th quarter, here are a few of reminders for IRA account holders:
- If you are 73 or older, you need to take your Required Minimum Distribution from your IRA. If you haven’t already set this up, please contact our office and we will prepare the necessary documents for you.
- Did you know that Qualified Charitable Distributions can help take some of the “burden” out of your taxes? If you have an IRA and are at least 70 1/2, feel free to contact us to discuss using those funds to make non-taxable gifts to qualified charities you care about.
- Inherited IRAs also have required distributions. Since the tax rules have recently changed, you may want to touch base with Gayle or Laura to be sure you are on track with these distributions.
A few weeks ago a client drew our attention to an unsettling article published in The Nation. You’ll understand why “unsettling” when you read the title: “The Right Hates Environment, Social, Governance (ESG) Investing. The Left Should, Too.” [i]
Really?! I admit I was both a bit incensed by this seemingly one-dimensional opinion piece and at the same time in admiration of the author’s provocative title. After all, provocative titles are how you get people to read what you’ve spent time thinking and writing about. Kudos to author Brad Swanson for successfully getting me to not only open the article but read it thoroughly. And much gratitude goes out to our client for sending it as it identified the perfect opportunity for us to talk about what’s behind the letters ESG and outline how our Hansen’s team views and puts this term to use—day in, day out.
We now see the SEC investigating some ESG fund marketing strategies.
The term ESG first appeared in 2004 and its letters stand for Environmental, Social and Governance. As an investing concept, it means taking consideration of a company’s carbon emissions, employee policies and diversity of its board members. For companies, ESG can be used as a marketing tool—often in a selective and ‘green-washing’ way that rightfully invites a critical eye to the term. Politically, ESG is under fire from both sides: the right touts it as a ‘woke agenda’ that uses American investors’ money to divest from fossil fuel industries and create lower returns, while the left warns of the potential for harmful industries to manipulate a higher ESG score for themselves while still causing damage inherent to their products. Tobacco manufacturers, for instance, can raise their ESG score by using renewable electricity and reusing wastewater, but their company still places profit over human lives. [ii] Increasing interest for ESG funds from investors appears to have fueled increasing unethical use from companies in their marketing. Consequently, we now see the SEC investigating some ESG fund marketing strategies.[iii]
In a recent “Sustainable Reality” report, the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing affirms both increasing investor demand for ESG funds as well as their outperformance of traditional funds, illustrating how funds that consider ESG issues may be better situated for long-term performance. In the first six months of 2023, ESG median returns across all classes and geographies showed returns of 6.9%, compared with 3.8% for traditional funds. [i] Additionally, as more attention is drawn to ESG investing from both shareholders and the public, corporations are facing more scrutiny and accountability regarding their claims of adherence with these concepts.
While ESG also continues to grow as a hot-button issue, our approach to choosing investments with Environmental, Social and Governance factors considered remains about the same: we do our own extensive research. By using a variety of screening tools, we continually gather scores on investments for their involvement in fossil fuels, deforestation, gender equality, civilian and military weapons, prisons and tobacco. ETHOS, Morningstar and YourStake are some of the tools we use but we also talk directly to fund company managers and resource an ever-widening community of ESG-minded advisors nationwide to keep up-to-date about our best fund options. All of that knowledge is balanced and informed by a fund’s market performance over a sustained period of time. Our belief is that investors should not have to choose between performance and their values.
We want to take this opportunity to spell out more clearly ‘what we do’ not because we want to toot our own horn but to express our gratitude for having clients who led us down this path some 30 years ago. Our clients then and now come to us with their requests to match their values with successful investments. Some call this Doing Well by Doing Good. That is what is at Hansen’s Advisory Services core mission and we plan to continue expanding our knowledge and expertise to serve our most important assets—our clients.
Stay tuned for ESG’s sibling: SRI
Past Newsletters
Winter 2017
Newsletter:
Resolutions and the gift of giving
Summer 2017
Newsletter:
Derivation of a Derivative
Winter 2018
Newsletter:
Magic on a Budget
Fall 2018
Newsletter:
Music, Muscles and Markets
Winter 2020
Newsletter:
Gifts of Planning Keep Giving
Winter 2021
Newsletter:
Multi-Faceted Investment Appreciation