What a difference a year makes! It feels like so much time has passed since this pandemic first hit us, but it also feels like just yesterday when I announced that remote work “for the foreseeable future” thinking that we’d be back to normal within a few weeks. Oh how silly that was!
In the months that followed, my team and I noticed an interesting series of events:
A big, but short market crash in Spring 2020. At Merino Wealth we took an “all hands on deck” mentality by reaching out to our clients to proactively address their needs. This included guidance on what NOT to sell to strategies to increase emergency funds and everything in between.
Government intervention came in hot starting April 2020. These initial actions (the CARES Act) came in so fast that our government is still playing catch up. Highlights included the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), increased unemployment, student loan and mortgage payment forbearance.
Months of uncertainty. We couldn’t step out our front doors without worrying about our safety. Toilet paper was scarce and cleaning wipes were even scarcer. Most of us had a hard time making plans beyond the next few days let alone for the next few decades.
Adjusting to the “new normal” last Fall. At Merino Wealth this translated to hiring 2 new employees and taking on 80% of our 2020 new clients during the last 5 months of the year. Also most of us now won’t leave the house without our masks, hand sanitizer, and cleaning wipes!
A lot of good progress by the end of the year-positive market returns, a new President, and COVID-19 vaccines. All of us feeling as though there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
A lot has happened in the last year, but we all still have one remnant to get past before we can really put 2020 behind-our tax returns! And as you might have heard the IRS actually extended this deadline to May 17th, 2021, so we’re not *quite* there yet.
This past year was tough on all of us in different ways, but some of us are stronger than we were a year ago. We’ve seen this when it comes to our clients and we’d love to help more people feel confident when it comes to their decisions in the year ahead. CLICK HERE if we can be part of that “light at the end of the tunnel.”