Helping you live the best life possible with the money you have!

November 2020

Above: A persimmon sprinkled with cinnamon is the best fall snack. A Percinnamon, if you will. 

Dear Readers,

We hope you had a spooky Halloween! Our street in Felton went all out for a COVID-safe night of trick or treating. Everybody was in masks (spooky or otherwise), and most houses had PVC delivery pipes for a socially distanced delivery system. 

One of our neighbors attached a leaf blower to their pipe to create a candy launch cannon. Across the street, they built a motorized Lego train that shuttled back and forth on a ten foot track, filing up at the home station with candy to deliver to the kids. 

Us? We set up an eight foot tall plywood barrier with a suspended UFO, full lights and sound, and a tractor beam delivery pipe that dropped candy directly down into the kids' bags (or, sometimes, onto their heads). All of the effort was worth it when a eight year old kid ran up under the UFO and yelled "Make it rain! Make it rain candy on me!!!"

Above: Jane and I painted in planets, meteors, galaxies, and if you look closely you can see a giant quadruple scoop ice cream cone. The existence of a giant floating ice cream cone in space has technically never been disproved by astronomers, so we decided to roll with it.

Market Updates

The markets went down, and then they came back up. Growth stocks are rallying much harder than value stocks, which is nothing new since, like, 2010. Maybe next decade it will turn around again.

Election uncertainty? Everyone predicting a stock crash due to an uncertain election is now eating their hat. Perhaps not coincidentally, hat stocks are also up.*

*If you prefer the phrase "I'll eat my shoe" instead, please note that Genesco is a general apparel brand selling both hats and shoes. 

We may see another market crash, but hopefully it won't be at the end of December again since that's just... annoying to have to hurry up and do tax loss harvesting and new tax plans in the last month of the year. Wall Street should really time these market dips to be more convenient for tax preparers.

ACP Conference

While we unfortunately were not able to have a live conference this year for our 25th anniversary, the Alliance of Comprehensive Planners put together a fantastic virtual conference. ACP is a great group of advisors who share the same mindset of putting clients first and providing tax-focused financial advice.

"Our mission is to provide a philosophically united community for fiduciary advisors to share their wisdom in order to build exceptional financial planning practices, transform client lives, and grow client wealth."

Chris, as this year's ***PRESIDENT*** of ACP, gave the opening remarks and thanked all of the community members for sticking together through this challenging year. As independent advisors, it's so helpful to have the ACP community as our own "inner circle" of experts.

Anabel was on a panel session about second-gen advisors transitioning into leading client relationships. They were asked about the hardest part about contributing to meetings (Anabel: "Knowing that it's okay not to know everything immediately") and the best part of moving into an advisor role (Anabel: "Client relationships. All of our clients are so fun to work with!") 

Moana learned some stuff about asset allocation and year-end tax planning, BUT the most important session was definitely the ACP Team Trivia Happy Hour. Her team (self-titled Team Awesome) beat out ten other groups to win a free ACP t-shirt and prove themselves worthy of their team name! 

Could you win ACP trivia? Here is a sample of the questions we rocked: 

1. What 1995 Alanis Morissette album sold more than 33 million copies worldwide? (1995 was the year ACP was incorporated)

2. What was the first name of "The Dude" in the movie The Big Lebowski?

3. How many Hawaiian shirts does Chris have in his closet?

(Scroll to the end to see the answers)

Natural Bridges Blog Posts

Common Financial Myths: Don't Give Away Too Much Money, or You'll Owe Taxes on It!

Do you have to pay taxes if you give somebody money? Probably not.

How You Can Involve Your Family with Philanthropy

With so many people needing so much help right now, you have a unique opportunity to teach younger family members the value of giving back. Here are three ways to make giving an activity that will bring your family closer together while making a real impact on the world:

1.  Volunteer together.
2. Design a family donation strategy. 
3. Start your family foundation

Above: One of Moana's long-time favorite charities to support, a learning center in Matènwa, Haiti run by a friend of a friend.

Natural Bridges Personal Updates

Anabel just finished reading 1984, which she can never keep straight - "Is it 1984, or 1948?" George Orwell actually wrote the book in 1948 and just transposed the digits for the title, so that's how you can remember that one. 

Chris has never read Brave New World so Moana told him that he has to read that for next month. It's the best counterpart to 1984 if you're in a dystopia kind of mood. Speaking of dystopias...

Above: Moana also went to go visit her mom in Maui. Totally worth a 2 week self quarantine!

Finally it's the season to practice gratitude. We are so thankful to have the best, funnest, awesomest clients ever. We can't wait to start meeting again with you in person (and no, that's not just because a lot of you bring donuts and/or dogs to the office). Until then, we want to send out a huge THANKS and give you a big virtual hug. Stay safe this Thanksgiving!

Much love and a zillion thank yous,

Moana and the Natural Bridges Team

P.S. The answers to ACP trivia:

1. What 1995 Alanis Morissette album sold more than 33 million copies worldwide? (1995 was the year ACP was incorporated)

Jagged Little Pill. This was the first CD that Moana ever bought, along with every other pre-teen girl from her generation. What was your generation's first album purchase?

2. What was the first name of "The Dude" in the movie The Big Lebowski?

The Dude's first name is Jeffrey. "Let me explain something to you. Um, I am not 'Mr. Lebowski'. You're Mr. Lebowski. I'm the Dude. So that's what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing."

3. How many Hawaiian shirts does Chris have in his closet?

Chris has 26 Hawaiian t-shirts in his closet! He says that he only wears about half of them. 

Above: My mom teaching Jane how to steer the sailboat, while my husband makes sure she doesn't jump into the water again since that's really all she ever wants to do.