This might be one of your least favorite subjects – the crossover between financial planning and taxes. At a time when many people are giving attention to their taxes, we are often giving clients information about tax implications.

Many of us cringe at the thought of paying for college. How do we even begin to think about that process? It's an incredibly expensive pursuit. The costs are forever rising when it comes to college expenses and that goes for private, public or trade schools.

Retirement means different things to different people. Perhaps you may be transitioning from a full-time career to part-time work. Or maybe you have plans to spend more time with family, travel the world, or hit the golf course with more frequency. Point is, you need to outline what a happy and fulfilling retirement looks like for you…and everybody is different!

Hospital bills, divorce, car repair, how do we address items when they come to us as a financial surprise? When we don’t anticipate certain financial events happening, can you plan for that in advance? The answer is yes, to a certain extent.

Hints of Spring are starting to pop up and March Madness is just around the corner and all this can only mean one thing…income tax season is upon us. Whether you are receiving a W2 or 1099 or filling out a Schedule C or a Schedule A, there is a flurry of forms that you are receiving, sending, filling out, and signing for the IRS.

Planning for retirement is like putting together a financial puzzle. There are a lot of pieces, considerations and moving parts that you must evaluate. At North Main Financial we work with our clients to help them map out their path to retirement based on their goals, needs and wants. While it may seem daunting, it’s not impossible.

When thinking about your financial universe it’s important not only to think about how to increase your assets, but how you can protect your assets. Asset protection strategies are important for preserving your estate for your loved ones but the only way this can be accomplished is through planning.

Volatility is an intrinsic characteristic of the stock market. When you think about your financial plan, it’s important to have a solid understanding of your goals and situation so you can think through how a volatile market may affect your situation. The volatility of the market over the last few months may have made you take notice but it’s not a time to panic.

The end of the calendar year brings with it some requirements from a financial planning standpoint that are important to remember. At North Main Financial, we sit with our clients between the holidays to take care of things from a planning standpoint.

You may have been watching business shows or the nightly news in recent weeks and seen quite a bit of negative volatility in the stock market for the first time in a collection of months. We had some negative volatility earlier this year, but it seemed to dissipate over the summer. Fast forward to October and we’ve seen the negative volatility pick up in recent weeks.