Time for Your Personal Year-End Review?
November 18, 2019
This is the time when we start thinking about year-end portfolio reviews, including 2019 tax issues, and starting to consider ideas for 2020. We are also reviewing annual gifting strategies. As we approach the holidays and the end of the calendar year, most monthly financial reports look good. The markets are at all-time highs and statements generally reflect that fact.
This is also a time of year when some companies conduct annual performance reviews of their employees. I remember the days when I was working in the large corporate world and had to spend time preparing for my personal year end review. I no longer must go through that process, but I expect some of you still do.
Whether or not you are planning to complete an annual review of your finances, I suggest you consider the potential benefits of undertaking a year end evaluation of how you personally did this year. Are you prepared for your “New” Year End Review?
This weekly goes out to people across the spectrum of the adult stages of life, including recent retirees, long-established retirees, people in their 20s who are just starting their career, and every stage in between. Whatever your stage of life I believe it demands a regular assessment by you, the person who knows you best. I sometimes counsel young adults trying to get jobs. In this role I have one simple message. When you are in an interview, you are selling a product, and it is the product with which you are most familiar. That product is you. Your knowledge of the “you product” changes every day through your life. No one knows that product and how it’s doing better than you. It only makes sense to complete a year-end review of your priceless product.
What should be on your year-end review.? First of all, this isn’t about New Year resolutions. Instead you might want to consider an honest reflection of how you did versus resolutions made last January that might have been long since forgotten. Year end reviews in business are about measuring your accomplishments versus the goals you set. What did you accomplish in 2019? What did you accomplish for yourself, for your family, for your community, for your faith, your health, for all those many things that matter most to you? Grade your performance honestly. Was it an A+ year or a C-? Remember no one knows you better than you so don’t cheat the grader or the product.
By gauging and monitoring your life performance on a consistent basis, it may help you to direct your energy to those things that matter most to you. Remember you are the product and ultimately in charge of your life – make the Boss happy.
Carl Gambrell
