The close of the year is a pivotal time for your financial strategy, marked by both the desire to finish strong and the anxiety of looming deadlines. For intentional investors, this period presents the opportunity for control.
It’s the moment to perform a critical harvesting of the gains and opportunities cultivated over the past twelve months. Here’s a year-end action plan to move you beyond reactive worry and into proactive preparation.
The Tax Mitigation Moment
Tax considerations offer the most immediate and tangible advantage of a measured year-end look. These actions require precise timing and discipline to maximize your after-tax wealth.
- Implement Tax-Loss Harvesting: Review investments currently held at a loss in your taxable accounts. Selling these can offset realized capital gains and potentially reduce your ordinary income, up to $3,000 annually. This is a crucial, non-emotional move and a core component of disciplined smart money management.
- Maximize Retirement Funding: Confirm you’ve used your entire allowance by maximizing contributions to 401(k)s, IRAs, and other qualified plans. Hitting the annual IRS limit is a fundamental part of disciplined resource allocation.
- Refine Your Gifting Strategy: Use the final weeks to make strategic use of the annual exclusion gift or fund strategies like Donor Advised Funds (DAFs). These are essential components of a tax mitigation and life-integrated wealth plan for families.
Fortifying Your Plan for the Future
Beyond tax efficiency, the year-end review is your opportunity to check the structural integrity of your overall plan and assess whether it remains resilient to future market and life changes.
- Check Your Alignment and Awareness: Begin with an honest review of your goals. Did a major life transition (a new job, an inheritance, a child graduating) change your risk tolerance or timeline this year? Use this time for financial reflection to confirm your investment strategy still serves your current reality.
- Rebalance Your Portfolio: Review your asset allocation against your targeted allocation. If market movement has caused your stock allocation to drift too high, your risk exposure is likely greater than intended. This signals a need for disciplined portfolio rebalancing to bring risk back in line with your long-term goals.
- Confirm Your Intentional Strategy: Successful investors know that a resilient portfolio is built to prepare, not predict. Your year-end review is the time to gather the research needed to strategically position your portfolio exposures for the year ahead.
Embrace the Power of Proactive Partnership
Financial progress requires consistent attention, reflection, and refinement. The integrity of your plan is influence by the intentional action you take now. Being proactive and disciplined can help eliminate anxiety and set a strong foundation for the future.
- Schedule Your Annual Review: Finalize your year-end process by meeting with your advisor to review the above actions, which will help integrate every piece of the puzzle into your long-term plan.
- Define Next Year’s Focus: Work with your advisor and other financial professionals to establish clear, intentional financial goals for the coming year. This promotes a mindset of intentional growth and treats your finances as a living system that evolves with purpose and planning.
The end of the year provides a rare moment to pause, assess, and act with clarity. Every decision you make now compounds into the strength of your future. Partnering with Measured Wealth means having a disciplined guide by your side to ensure your financial plan stays aligned, optimized, and resilient in the year ahead.
Let’s close the year with purpose — and step confidently into what’s next.
Connect with the Measured Wealth team today.
