by Gary Pevey, Wealth Design Group

There are several interesting things that happen as the holidays approach. One of those includes the subject of money.

The holidays are a time when we reflect on our friendships and family. Some of us try to make up for all those times that we had our attention on things that seemed, at the time, important to us, rather than paying more attention to the ones we care about. So, what do we do? We take people out to celebrate, give them food and drink-related gifts, and spoil the kids with extra presents.

Now all of this involves money.

Remember when the banks used to set up Christmas Club accounts to get you to save a little extra over the preceding months so that you didn’t drain your checking account before New Year’s Eve. As helpful as these may have been they were only a band-aid cure that didn’t confront the real issue.

We should save money all year long! Money that we can access, that we can use, that will help us grow our financial future. But how? That’s what I am getting to, hear me out.

Now the “financial entertainers”, Wall Street, and the banks strongly encourage you to “invest all you can into your 401(k)”. But let’s think about that advice. You take a good chunk of money every pay period, put it into an account you can’t access for 20, 30, 40 years, invest it in funds you have no control over or even know what they do, get penalized for taking money out early, hope that your income tax bracket will be lower when you retire and pay the tax then. But wait, things get tricky, because the feds keep pushing taxes up, they have to. So maybe you’re in a lower tax bracket, but you’ll be paying way more taxes anyway.

Furthermore, that 401K gives you no liquidity to use your money for emergencies, opportunities, or extra gifts for the kids.

So, back to the matter at hand: To pay for your holiday festivities you put it on your credit card. The average consumer is still paying off those credit cards the next summer. Unfortunately, the kids have forgotten about the gifts, the cheese and wine is long gone. The happy credit card companies have been rubbing their hands together grinning.

Let’s rethink this. Maybe I can offer you another way to consider saving money. A way that has worked well, happily for me. I found a way to create an account that:

• You can access
• Will grow in value
• Will have guarantees
• Will be tax efficient and maybe even tax-free, and
• Will compound uninterrupted for the rest of your life

Let’s no longer be debtors or even savers. Let’s become Wealth Creators. How to make up this type of account is not something I can detail every piece of in this article. But, I am not trying to lure you in to some high cost interview. I’ll tell you all about it if you want to know. Just shoot me an email at [email protected].