Happy New Year!

As we turn the page from 2025 to 2026, what are your goals for the new year? Do you want to travel more? Do you want to spend more time with your family? Are there some new hobbies you want to try? Hopefully you’ve set some short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals and have a financial plan that prioritizes those goals. Let’s review why the beginning of the year is a great time for a financial checkup.

Understanding the Four Types of Wealth

As you finalize your goals for 2026, it’s important to realize that having enough money to pursue your goals is just one piece of the puzzle. Financial wealth is what many people think about when it comes to wealth, but time, health, and social wellness are key factors to your wealth as well. Do you have time to reach your goals? Are you healthy enough to accomplish them? And are you positioned financially so you can achieve your goals for 2026 and still have enough money to live out your desired lifestyle beyond 2026?

Finding Time for Health and Financial Checkups

If you haven’t recently visited your doctor for an annual checkup, do you have it scheduled or plan to schedule it soon? Your health is your wealth. No one knows how much time they have left, but having a recent assessment of your health can help give you a better idea of how feasible some of your goals are and how much time you have to do them. Also, remember that you don’t need to wait until retirement to start pursuing your goals.

The same thinking applies for meeting with a financial advisor for annual financial checkups. It’s sometimes second nature for people to try to avoid financial checkups and health checkups because they’re worried about receiving bad news. Hopefully, you won’t receive bad news at your next financial or health checkup. But if you do, work with your financial advisor or doctor to develop a plan to improve your financial situation/health by your next checkup.

Keep in mind that checkups can bring good news, too. If you’ve done a good job of sticking to your budget, maybe you can dream even bigger with your goals for 2027 and beyond. As you’re preparing for your next financial checkup, make sure to review these seven annual items, which can also be found on our 2026 Financial Planning Calendar.

Review Your Spending Plan (AKA, Your Budget)
Review Your Beneficiaries
What’s Your Gifting Strategy?
Review Your Estate Plan
Review Your Multi-Year Tax Strategy
Rebalance Your Portfolio
Meet with a team of Wealth Management Professionals

1. Review Your Spending Plan (AKA, Your Budget)

Speaking of sticking to your budget, that’s the first annual item to review on our list for financial checkups. “Budget” can be a negative buzzword for some people, especially as they’re entering retirement. Think of a budget as a spending plan.

Do you know how much you’re spending each month? Some individuals find out that they are spending too much at financial checkups, while others realize that they’ve been so focused on saving and could actually spend more. Regularly reviewing your spending plan may help you gain confidence to make informed decisions with your money.

2. Review Your Beneficiaries

Review your beneficiaries on your IRAs, investments, pensions, life insurance, bank accounts, etc. Along with this being an annual item to review during a financial checkup, it’s important to review your beneficiaries after major life events.

For example, let’s say someone got divorced and then remarried. However, they suddenly passed away shortly after remarrying. Can you imagine how the decedent’s widow and children might feel if the decedent’s ex-spouse was still listed as a beneficiary? That’s one of many examples why it’s important not only to have financial checkups, but to also have family meetings to make sure everyone understands who is getting what if you pass away or become incapacitated (or vice versa).

3. What’s Your Gifting Strategy?

Even if you just made end-of-year contributions to your favorite charities, that doesn’t mean that the beginning of the year isn’t a good time to assess your gifting strategy — for both charitable giving and wealth transfer. Potentially getting tax benefits can be a nice incentive to make charitable donations before the end of the year to help negate the cost of the donation, but is that really the deciding factor that determines when you give and how much? Many people give to charity — regardless of the time of year — because they’re passionate about the cause that the charity supports mission of the charity getting

As far as gifting to family goes, have you thought about what you want your legacy to look like? You have the option of giving with cold hands (after you die) or giving with warm hands (while you’re still living). For some people, that may be an easy decision. Giving with warm hands and getting to witness the impact of your gifting to family can be very meaningful. However, there’s a lot of responsibility that comes with receiving an inheritance. Do you trust your children, grandchildren, etc. to make responsible decisions with their inheritance? Take some time to think about that and your overall gifting strategy each year during a financial checkup.

4. Review Your Estate Plan

The second and third annual items to review on our financial checkup list leads us right into item No. 4. Review your estate plan, including your beneficiaries, health care directives, and power of attorney. Do you think having a will is enough or do you want to establish a trust? It all depends on your unique situation, and your situation can change from year to year. It’s important to review your estate plan during a financial checkup.

5. Review Your Multi-Year Tax Strategy

Review your multi-year tax strategy to help manage and potentially reduce your overall tax burden over time rather than focusing solely on a single year. This is a critical item to address during your next financial checkup given recent tax law changes.

If you did your last financial checkup during the first half of 2025, the current tax rates from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act were scheduled to sunset after December 31, 2025. If the current tax rates expired, the higher pre-TCJA tax rates from 2017 would have gone back into effect. That didn’t happen, though, since the One Big Beautiful Bill Act extended the TCJA tax rates. However, no sunset date is in place, so it’s still important to plan for the possibility of higher tax rates in the future.

While OBBBA extended the TCJA tax rates, there were also several new provisions that went into effect — and some of them do have sunset dates. Make sure that you download a copy of our Tax Reduction Strategies guide, which recaps several key planning considerations regarding OBBBA and your multi-year tax strategy.

Tax Reduction Strategies

6. Rebalance Your Portfolio

When was the last time you rebalanced your portfolio? Was it this time last year? If that’s the case, it’s important to understand that your current asset allocation may be much different than what it was when you last rebalanced your portfolio.

A lot has happened within the markets over the past year, including the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, gold, and Bitcoin reaching all-time highs in 2025.₁ Will there be more all-time highs as we move forward in 2026? Unfortunately, we don’t have a crystal ball to be able to tell you have will happen. We also don’t know your risk tolerance — everyone is different! Regardless of market performance, remember that it’s important to regularly rebalance your portfolio as you work toward your overarching goals.

Meet with a Team of Wealth Management Professionals

This may seem like an obvious final point on our annual financial checkup list, but think about this. While many people see a primary care physician for annual health checkups, there are other health care professionals that they may need to see as well.

When it comes to a financial checkup, many people tend to meet with financial advisors. Our financial advisors do their best to be as knowledgeable as possible in tax, investment, estate, and insurance planning as they help their clients work toward their unique goals. However, just like there are health care professionals who specialize in certain areas, the same applies in the wealth management industry. That’s why we have specialists in tax, investments, estate, insurance, and other areas that work alongside our advisors to support our clients.

If you have a financial advisor, do they regularly address the items on our financial checkup list? Before you have your next financial checkup, make sure that you have a team of professionals that’s working for you to help you address these items. If you have any questions about what we covered on our financial checkup list, start a conversation with our team below.

Schedule a Meeting

We look forward to learning more about what gives you purpose and discussing different planning opportunities that may be available to you to help you toward your goals. Our team welcomes the opportunity to help you enjoy today while building confidence for tomorrow.

Resources Mentioned in This Article

Downloads

Tax Reduction Strategies

Other Sources

[1] https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/trading-investing/markets-sectors/stock-market-report

Investment advisory services offered through Modern Wealth Management, LLC., a Registered Investment Adviser.

The views expressed represent the opinion of Modern Wealth Management a Registered Investment Advisor. Information provided is for illustrative purposes only and does not constitute investment, tax, or legal advice. Modern Wealth Management does not accept any liability for the use of the information discussed. Consult with a qualified financial, legal, or tax professional prior to taking any action.