January

Greetings to you all from beautiful downtown New Berlin!

Quite often in this newsletter I've mentioned that a particular time of year is my favorite - autumn being the most favorite. However, this time of year, in the midst of the high school and college basketball seasons, with a promising new year ahead of us, comes a close second for me. If you know me very well at all, you'll know that I make an extra effort to attend as many high school basketball games as I can (I recently spent nearly fourteen hours in one day watching games at the Waverly Holiday Tournament).

In addition to all of the sports happenings around us, we're getting geared up for the coming tax season - with some good news for those of you who have me prepare your income tax returns... lower cost! I've recently changed software providers, which has resulted in reduced software expenditures over the previous software, and I am passing that savings on to you. If your return hasn't changed materially from the return prepared last year, you can expect that the cost will be approximately $10 less than in the past. It's not much, I agree, but every little bit helps.

In this month's newsletter, I found an article provided by the Financial Planning Association on actions that homeowners who find themselves in trouble (as a result of adjusting mortgage rates) should take in order to ease the impact of the problems. Hopefully this doesn't directly apply to any of you reading this newsletter, but if it does impact you or someone you come in contact with, the suggestions are very helpful and useful. By all means, if you have problems with such a situation and need help exploring your options, don't hesitate to call me.