“Good, all things considered.”
I said that a lot this year. How’s your family? Good, all things considered. How is the team? Good, all things considered. How is my portfolio doing? Really good, all things considered.
We are so very lucky to serve our clients and community the way we do. We deeply appreciate you – our clients who welcome us deep into your lives; non-profits that warm us with your mission; all of you, who challenge us to keep getting better at what we do and how we serve.
This year was unique. And it was hard. But we are objective about the present and optimistic about the future. We believe we have a lot to be optimistic about. The pandemic sharpened our skills and deepened our experience. For that we are grateful. We grew, we learned, we communicated even more with our client family, we were challenged by the markets, we doubled down in believing in our process, we leveled up in resilience, and we focused on how to keep each other safe and supported.
During this unique year, we also want to share some of the events that we are happy to report:
We welcomed Sergio Garcia, whose ten years of experience as a CFP® have already expanded our financial planning services and ability to serve new clients. Sergio was also selected as a D Magazine 2020 Best Financial Planner.
Lindsay Zentner celebrated five years with our firm, and used her experience with her first major market correction to add even deeper analysis to our investment process. She also led a conversion of our CRM to a cloud-based platform.
Chelsea Neece took on the role of Document Manager - which these days is code for “digital client experience” in our office - and accelerated our digital offering by about three years in just six months.
Kim Adams celebrated twenty years with our firm, and gained her Series 66 license. While Kim has provided exceptional client service for two decades, this new license adds a fiduciary responsibility to her position, which we value highly.
Mindy Muzzarelli, aka our Culture Ambassador, converted a very in-person team to a WFH team in a matter of days and continues to add tools for us to use internally to increase efficiency and communication. She also designed our daily team huddles to have themes throughout the week to help us all stay close and connected, even as we became physically distant.
I was selected as an Investment News Woman to Watch and was included again in the D CEO Dallas 500.
We worked with Communities Foundation of Texas to launch Be In Good Company, a new program that recognizes companies that meet three pillars of excellence and make a difference in our community. We think it’s a gamechanger for the local North Texas community and were so thankful to Modern Luxury and D Magazine for helping us spread the word (and choosing us to be among the 17 Most Influential Dallasites!)
As a team, we focused our heightened awareness of our community needs on both volunteering and learning together. We volunteered for Children’s Health and Senior Source, and we spent a virtual lunch together discussing the ways that discrimination has created economic disparities around the world and right here in North Texas. We are continuing that conversation into 2021, and look forward to figuring out how we can provide our financial education to a more diverse audience.
We also used the BFS Community Lift Fund to support some of our favorite nonprofits that needed extra help this year, as well as Get Shift Done and the North Texas Community Response Fund, both of which were created this year to help those in the community that are most severely affected by the pandemic.
A Recap of Our Blogs
And in case all the other 2020 topics stole your attention this year, here are links to our blogs about some important things that happened in the financial world:
Congress passed an extremely important bipartisan (remember that word?) bill, and most people missed it. The SECURE Act updates many aspects of retirement plans.
Tax strategies were a big focus this year, as an election and pandemic converged.
The SEC released Regulation Best Interest, which deserves the attention of all investors.
Future college costs have been widely debated this year, as the value of campus life has for the first time been observed as a live experiment. Here we present how to plan for future unknown education costs.
If you’re sitting by the fire and need some good reading material, feel free to curl up with our full blog list: https://www.bfsadvisorygroup.com/blog
While we are as eager as most to leave the unwelcome surprises and negative events of 2020 behind, we know that 2021 is going to have its own set of challenges. That’s okay. We’re ready for them. We are excited for some future-focused announcements that we will roll out in January. Until then, we wish you and yours a very happy and safe holiday season.
Debra Brennan Tagg is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ Professional and the creator of the DBT360 Financial Plan, a proprietary program that helps her clients prioritize their goals, leverage their resources, and address their risks. She is the president of BFS Advisory Group and teaches the public and the financial services industry about the importance of values-based financial planning and investor education.
The D CEO Dallas Top 500 Business Leader award recipients are chosen by the editors of D CEO magazine and is not reflective of the recipient’s abilities as a financial advisor.
The 2020 Investment News Women to Watch selects recipients based upon accomplishments, contribution to the industry, leadership and community involvement. Nominations of Professionals from all areas of the financial advisory industry are selected by Investment News as winners. Winning Financial Professionals may select promotional materials about this award for a fee.
The 2020 Best Financial Planner is presented by D Magazine. Nominees are selected by Certified Financial Planners in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. A group of financial planners selects the recipient.
Third-party rankings and recognitions are no guarantee of investment success and do not ensure that a client or prospective client will experience a higher level of performance or results. These ratings should not be construed as an endorsement of the advisor by any client nor are they representative of any one client’s evaluation.