As June approaches, we reach a strategic pause point in your financial year—a perfect moment to assess progress and make thoughtful adjustments to your wealth strategy. Mid-year reviews can be especially valuable when approached not just as a financial task, but as an opportunity to ensure your wealth continues to support your life and goals. That’s the heart of Wescott’s Life-Minded Wealth® approach: your financial plan should reflect the life you’re building, not just the markets you’re navigating.
Why Mid-Year Is the Ideal Time for Financial Reflection
The middle of the year provides a distinctive advantage for financial planning. As one of our advisors recently noted, “Mid-year, before everyone scatters for summer vacations, is a perfect time to regroup, to see what you have done so far this year, while you still have six additional months to adjust, or course correct to be on track for the year.”
This interim period allows you to:
Mid-Year Planning That Reflects Both Your Life and Finances
Financial planning should be a deeply personal process that goes beyond just the numbers. A mid-year review is more than a portfolio checkup—it’s a chance to align your plan with what matters most. That might mean reviewing your investments, yes, but also revisiting goals, updating documents, or simply recognizing how much life has changed in a short time.
Consider one of our recent client experiences (details changed for privacy): A widower who had navigated significant transitions including selling his home, buying into a retirement community, selling a family vacation house, updating beneficiary designations, and executing a new power of attorney. His mid-year review offered space to reflect on both the practical progress he’d made and the emotional weight of those changes as his advisor shared, “I could hear the relief in his voice from being able to check off these monumental tasks and feel settled even amid big life changes.”
This is a great reminder that wealth isn’t just about returns—it’s about feeling confident and grounded in your life decisions. When your financial plan is built around that idea, reviews become more than a routine—they become a meaningful reflection of progress.
Five Critical Areas for Your 2025 Mid-Year Assessment
To help prepare you for your mid-year review, here are the five most important areas our team has identified to reassess:
Market volatility often triggers emotional responses that can lead to reactive decision-making. That’s why Wescott revisits your risk tolerance—typically assessed during more stable periods—to help ensure your investment strategy remains aligned with your long-term goals, even when headlines are unsettling.
For clients in retirement years particularly, we’ve observed increased concern about market fluctuations and recovery timelines. To help manage that risk, Wescott builds portfolios with broad diversification —spanning bonds, domestic and international stocks, real estate, infrastructure, and strategic sectors like healthcare and consumer staples— designed to provide balance and resilience through a range of market conditions.
Remember: The question isn’t just what adjustments to make now, but how your portfolio was structured to withstand volatility in the first place.
Mid-year provides an excellent opportunity to implement strategic tax planning, including:
One client example demonstrates the value of foresight: A retiree with one year remaining before Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) would begin from a substantial IRA account. We developed a strategy to concentrate two years’ worth of charitable contributions into the first RMD year when income would spike, potentially keeping the client in a more favorable tax bracket and avoiding increased Medicare premiums.
Having updated estate documents is only the beginning—proper implementation is equally critical. During mid-year reviews, we have an opportunity to discover if account registrations and beneficiary designations need to be updated to comport with recently revised estate documents. Recently, a client who had spent months finalizing his estate documents, including creating both living and testamentary trusts, needed comprehensive assistance ensuring his accounts aligned with this new structure. Our team helped with:
Without this implementation support, he would have had, as our advisor put it, “a shell of an estate plan, but nothing actually working to make it happen.”
Mid-year is an ideal time to review both upcoming cash needs and excess cash positions. By communicating these needs to your advisory team, you enable more strategic:
Mid-year reviews also provide the opportunity to address unique priorities, especially for those who may soon experience a significant life transition, including:
Using PerfectScore® to Focus Mid-Year Planning
Wescott’s PerfectScore® process provides a comprehensive view of your financial health across all critical areas. During mid-year reviews, this structured, comprehensive framework becomes especially useful to quickly identify which aspects of your plan need immediate attention, and which are tracking well.
“PerfectScore® provides clients and advisors with a quick view of the status of each aspect of financial planning and wealth management,” explains one of our senior advisors. “This allows us to home in on the areas needing the most attention so that we can prioritize actions needed prior to year-end.”
The goal is to provide a framework that makes financial planning more actionable and less overwhelming—bringing clarity to complex decisions while tailoring the conversation to your unique situation.
Preparing for Your Mid-Year Review
To maximize the value of your mid-year financial checkup, consider these preparation steps:
During your mid-year review, our advisors will guide you through a comprehensive evaluation framework, tailored to your specific situation, to ensure all relevant aspects of your financial life receive appropriate attention.
Moving Forward with Confidence
The mid-year review isn’t just a checkpoint—it’s an opportunity to recalibrate your wealth journey with intention and confidence. With nearly 40 years of experience helping clients navigate complex financial landscapes, our team understands that true wealth management goes beyond investment performance.
By taking this time to assess, adjust, and align your wealth strategy with your life goals, you position yourself for more purposeful progress through the remainder of 2025 and beyond.
To schedule your mid-year financial checkup with your Wescott advisory team, please contact your lead advisor directly. We look forward to continuing to help you navigate the complexities of your financial life with clarity and purpose.
This article was prepared by the Wescott Financial Advisory Group team as part of our ongoing commitment to providing valuable insights and guidance to our clients. The information contained herein is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as specific investment, accounting, legal, or tax advice.
