Seven things to consider before agreeing to a Voluntary Severance Program

Few things cause sleepless nights like the offer of a voluntary severance package. You wonder, as you toss and turn, whether you’ll be able to support yourself and your family if you accept your company’s offer, and whether you’re being foolish if you pass it up. You might be upset and, especially if you’ve worked at the same company for many years, you might be afraid of what the future holds. The good news is that you have the opportunity to analyze your financial situation and resources available to help you decide. In the 30 years we’ve been in business, we’ve counseled plenty of clients through the VSP maze, and we can help you. In fact, we’re offering a free consultation to anyone facing a voluntary or involuntary severance program. Meanwhile, here are seven things you should consider before you decide whether to participate in a voluntary severance program: The likelihood that your job will be eliminated entirely. An honest industry assessment should give you a good idea of whether innovations and/or consolidations threaten your specific job. If this is the case, you may be better off taking the severance program and make good use of your company’s employee assistance program to refine your skills and update your resume for the next phase of your career. Your age. Consider your full retirement age, which varies based on the year you were born. How close are you? Will the severance be enough to tide you over until you can withdraw from your IRA without penalty? Your current financial needs. Perhaps delaying your severance will give you more time to build up a cushion. Take a look at your budget, which will not only give you an idea of how much readily available cash you’ll need, it will also highlight areas you can trim. Tax implications. Does your severance include a lump sum payout? Will it bump you into a higher tax… | Read More »

10 steps toward financial fitness

The first and most important step toward financial health is education. All other steps follow that one. As retirement options become increasingly sophisticated, fine print consequently more lengthy, and pensions decidedly rare, investors need to work harder to understand the impact of the important choices they make. Fortunately, access to quality financial education has improved. Podcasts, blogs, books, seminars and financial education classes all offer plenty of valuable information, most literally available at your fingertips. Of course, you need to check your sources and be leery of sales pitches, but that still leaves a wide variety of legitimate options. Winch Financial offers financial classes in several locations through the University of Wisconsin continuing education system and, while we cover the information in our syllabus, we also tailor each class to its participants because finances are personal and everyone’s risk/reward profile is unique. We also send out a weekly commentary, which not only covers what happens in the stock market each week, but also offers some explanations behind the moves. Many of us subscribe to a variety of financial podcasts. We also follow Dave Ramsey and have taken his Financial Peace University course. If you do one thing for your retirement this year, we urge you to educate yourself. That education is going to lead to other tasks, so here are a few more steps you can take to get financially fit this year: Track you expenses. This may seem like a tedious task (because it is), but you can make it easier by making it part of your daily routine. Digital banking has made it easier to categorize expenses and we find that seeing where your money goes makes you much more intentional about your spending. Once you’ve tracked your expenses for a few months, you can set a realistic budget pretty easily. Random budgets waste time. The best budgets develop from your own spending habits. Change your passwords. This… | Read More »

Several factors support an optimistic view of 2018

As stocks markets around the globe soared on accelerating corporate profits and strong economic growth, 2017 turned out to be a stellar year for investors.  It was the third best showing for the U.S. stock market since the 2008 financial crisis, with only 2009 and 2013 having higher average returns.  What was different about 2017, though, was that the prodigious stock market returns were, for the first time since 2008, attended by strong underlying economic fundamentals.  Fourth quarter earnings won’t be reported for a few weeks, but based on the first three quarters, together with Wall Street’s best estimates for this quarter, earnings growth for the 500 companies that comprise the S&P 500 are expected to be about 10 percent for the full year.  That would be the best earnings growth we’ve seen since 2011. During the slow, arduous crawl out of the global recession corporations managed to grow their earnings, primarily, by cutting costs and reorganizing their business models.  But in 2017 businesses finally saw a sustained pickup in demand, both at the consumer level and in business-to-business transactions.  As economic activity accelerated during the year we began to see in the financial press a new phrase that, by December, had become the defining theme of 2017.  That phrase is: synchronized global growth. Europe, Japan, China and emerging market economies such as Brazil, India and the Pacific Rim have all experienced some of the highest GDP rates in a decade, creating a virtuous cycle of growth that has provided an extra boost to the U.S. economy. Consider that somewhere between 30 to 38 percent of revenue generated by the largest corporations in America comes from these foreign countries. All indications are that this “synchronized global growth” should continue well into 2018.  Indeed, the latest Purchasing Managers Index for Europe showed “robust intakes of new business” that “tested capacity.”  As current capacity gets squeezed, businesses likely will have to invest… | Read More »