As the calendar flips over to Fall, our checklist-driven process at Keen Wealth brings my team to some important action items to help folks prep for the year ahead. In particular, we want to make sure retirees are getting ready to review their Medicare coverage during the upcoming Open Enrollment period in November. And we're also waiting for the Social Security Administration to announce its benefit changes for 2023. 

On today's show, we dig into some of the annual adjustments that could affect your retirement benefits next year and how we tie these projections into a comprehensive planning process. 

What's in a name?

On Tuesday, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law (and let’s not confuse this IRA with the older “IRA” as in Individual Retirement Account). That's certainly less of a mouthful than, say, the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act of 2019 and its proposed sequel. But will the IRA actually have an impact on inflation? Will it change how IRAs work? And what's this carried interest tax loophole that everyone was so worked up about?

These are just some of the questions that we've been fielding about the IRA at Keen Wealth. On today's show, we answer these questions and discuss five major bullet points about the new law.

Usually, the last part of a financial plan that folks want to talk about is their estate planning. People expect the conversation will be morbid, depressing, and depending on the family situation, maybe even a bit contentious. And while it's true that this can be an emotionally challenging process, I believe that there are ways to reframe how we think about estate planning so that we can feel more positive about what we're going to leave behind.

On today's show, we discuss the differences between estate planning and the comprehensive legacy planning that's part of our checklist-driven process at Keen Wealth.