Everything looks like a nail if your only tool is a hammer – that’s what financial planning expert Brad Berger finds himself telling clients all the time.

What does he mean?

“A lot of the people in the financial services industry have only a hammer; they have specific products to sell, so they present them as the perfect solution for you,” says Brad Berger, author of the book “Stop Trying to Keep Up With the Joneses – They’re Broke Anyway” (www.LiveYourIdealLife.com).

“Some financial professionals tend to serve as salespeople, and clients can grow defensive and numb to the products an advisor might be pushing on them. But there are many tools available for financial planning that may be ignored at the expense of a product. Clients should better understand that there are other tools, including stocks, bonds, mutual funds, REITs (Real Estate Investment Trust), annuities, insurance, real estate, commodities, futures, ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds), precious metals—the list goes on and on.”

Despite all of these tools that some financial advisors may ignore in this solution phase, there are also three other phases when creating a sound financial plan. Berger reviews the phases.

• Discovery. It’s important to focus on the “why” of financial planning before considering the “what.” A computer can calculate the what, but it cannot tell you the why. It cannot define your personal values and your goals—and unless those are established first, how can you know that a potential solution is appropriate for you?

“That’s why, in my firm, we use something called the Financial Road Map® to help clients articulate their values,” he says. “Then we help them establish goals and milestones for reaching them. How will they feel when they achieve them? When do they want to attain a particular goal, and how much money will that require? We look at their current financial situation to assess the possibilities.”

• Planning. Here, it’s important to make sure the right product is used for the right job. “In my opinion, there are no bad financial products, but there are many financial products applied badly,” Berger says. Financial regulations keep these products out of the marketplace unless they have been vetted—at least somewhat. But such oversight tends to break down when it comes to whether the products are being used for the purpose for which they were designed. You could hammer in a screw as if it were a nail, but in doing so you would be misusing both the hammer and screw.

• Solutions. Again, here is where some advisors try to push products. “In this phase, we collect all the pertinent numbers and review them, and we talk about approaches and products,” Berger says. The goal is to uncover whether the client would object to a particular strategy.

“Because I’m an independent advisor, I’m not beholden to specific products,” he says. “There really are many tools for folks to use when mapping their financial future.”

• Monitoring. “We’ve uncovered more than 150 checkpoints for our clients during the course of a year,” Berger says. “Many may not apply to a client at a particular point in time, if ever. Nonetheless, our financial team considers how each one might apply and how we would deal with it.”

The monitoring phase is critically important, and it has become more complex. Life’s pace is faster. People are subject to more rules and regulations, Berger says, which can provide many opportunities but also present a lot of potential pitfalls.

The Judy B. McDonald Public Library invites adults of all ages to Bad Art Night on Friday, September 18^th at 6:00 p.m. The community is invited to create something truly outrageous and appalling, with prizes given for the most heinous art. “We’re not celebrating bad art, per se, but rather enjoying art making without expectations,” says Crystal Hicks, assistant library director. “So many people want a creative outlet, but there is typically a focus on the output. For this program, we want to concentrate on the process and have fun.” Kids can play Xbox in the next room, so parents are welcome to bring children 8 years and up. Registration for this program is requested to ensure that there are supplies for all participants. Please call 559-2970 to sign up. More programs for all ages are planned throughout the fall, so check out the library’s website, www.ci.nacogdoches.tx.us/library or follow Judy B. McDonald Public Library on Facebook.

Junior Forum of Nacogdoches will host its first Pajama Story Time of the school year at the Judy B. McDonald Public Library on Thursday, September 17^th at 6:00 p.m. Children of all ages and their families are invited to attend. Children may come dressed in their pajamas or SFA football gear for this special event. Prizes and snacks are generously provided by members of Junior Forum. For more information about this or other library programs, please call 559-2970 or visit the library’s new website at www.ci.nacogdoches.tx.us/library.

The deadline to register for the free Spanish computer classes at the Judy B. McDonald Public Library is approaching. The library will offer Computer Basics on September 22^nd and E-mail Basics on September 29^th. Both sessions are 4:00-6:00 pm. Handouts and class instruction are provided in Spanish. The deadline to register is September 22^nd. Please call 559-2970 to register.

A debilitating disease such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, takes a devastating toll on the people who suffer from it as they lose their ability to walk, dress, write, speak, swallow and breathe.

But it also can wreak havoc on their families, says Marylee MacDonald (www.maryleemacdonald.org), a caregiver advocate and writer whose debut novel, “Montpelier Tomorrow,” focuses on a family caring for a loved one with ALS.

“Caregivers crumble under the demands of providing long-term care,” she says. “The sleepless nights and the stress can end up putting their health at risk as well.”

The situation takes on an added dimension when children must take on all or some of the responsibility for caring for a parent, sibling or other relative weakened or incapacitated by a disease such as ALS.

“When a house turns into a nursing home, children lose their childhoods,” MacDonald says.

Nationally, about 1.3 million to 1.4 million young people between the ages of 8 and 18 are serving as caregivers for sick or disabled relatives, according to the American Psychological Association.

It’s unclear how many of those children are caring for someone with ALS, so the ALS Association recently announced plans to fund a new study of young people in that situation. The results will be used to better understand the needs of youth caregivers and to design support services to address those needs, the association says.

Although the life expectancy of a person with ALS averages about two to five years from the time of diagnosis, there are variations, and many people can live with the disease for five years and more, according to the ALS Association.  About 5 percent live 20 years or more.

“They need constant care and family members, including children, find themselves devoting much of their time and resources to providing that care,” MacDonald says. “When it’s someone you love, you can’t help but want to try to do that. But it’s such an enormous task and most families are unprepared to deal with it, which is why I believe we as a society need to start asking questions like: Who is going to pay for it? What happens if families can’t handle the job they’re asked to do?”

She suggests the nation needs to take steps to improve the lives of caregivers, both young and old, and a good start would be to:

• Understand the problem. The healthcare system in the U.S. works only because families do most of the heavy lifting for disabled children, brain-injured veterans and those with ALS and other neurological diseases, MacDonald says. The majority of caregivers are women, and to help a family member they often cut back to part-time employment and pass up promotions, which puts their own futures and retirement in jeopardy.

• Consider tax credits. When people debate solutions for problems with the nation’s healthcare system, long-term care rarely even gets worked into the conversation, MacDonald says. She advocates tax credits for family caregivers, which would help ease at least some of the burden for what becomes a financial crisis for many families.

• Study what other nations do. Many other countries take a more active role in trying to address the problem, MacDonald says. In Great Britain, some caregivers who spend at least 35 hours a week caring for someone are eligible to receive a modest “carer’s allowance.” In Australia, a non-governmental program called Youngcare provides assistance for young Aussies who have high-care needs. “We should look for the best examples happening around the world to see what might work for us,” MacDonald says.

She says it’s unrealistic to take the view that this is a family problem so all the responsibility should fall on the individual family. It’s even more unrealistic to take that position when the caregivers are children or teenagers.

“Most people can manage a short-term health crisis that lasts a few days, and many may be able to manage one for a few months,” MacDonald says. “But when it comes to one that lasts for years? Come on, get real. That’s beyond what most of us can deal with.”

The Judy B. McDonald Public Library will feature two nights of Spanish family-friendly movies in the month of September. Movie nights, featuring Mexican comedian, Cantinflas, will be September 11^th and September 25^th at 6:30 pm. The movies will be in Spanish with English subtitles. Please call 559-2970 to register.

The amount of whole grains and fresh fruits and vegetables offered in school meals is up and sodium is down, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Thursday.

“Schools play a critical role in demonstrating and reinforcing healthy eating behaviors by making sure that nutritious and appealing foods and beverages are available and promoted to students,” Caitlin Merlo, the study’s lead author and a CDC health scientist, said in a statement.

Researchers compared data from 2000, 2006 and 2014 to determine how well U.S. schools are implementing nutrition standards issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2012. The standards require serving more fruits, vegetables and whole grains and gradually reducing sodium over 10 years. Nutrition standards also impact foods sold during the school day.

The CDC report found that in 2014:
• Almost all schools offered whole grains each day for breakfast (97.2 percent) and lunch (94.4 percent).
• About 80 percent of schools offered two or more vegetables a day for lunch compared with 61.7 percent in 2000.
• Seventy-eight percent offered two or more servings of fruit for lunch versus 68.1 percent in 2000.
• Nearly a third — 30.5 percent — offered self-serve salad bars.

More than two-thirds of schools in 2014 brought sodium down to more reasonable levels in recipes, up from a third of schools in 2000. More than half of schools that prepared meals on-site used fresh or frozen vegetables instead of canned, and used lower-sodium canned vegetables instead of regular canned vegetables.

“We hope Congress pays close attention to these findings, because it’s clear from this new CDC study that the dedicated food service professionals in our nation’s schools are working hard every day to keep our kids healthy,” said American Heart Association CEO Nancy Brown. “If we continue to teach our kids to eat nutritious foods early on, we can protect them from a lifelong struggle with cardiovascular disease or even an early death. On this point, there is no flexibility.”

Voices for Healthy Kids

For most employees, addressing retirement issues is a costly, abstract and deeply psychological matter, which is apparent from a surveyby Schwab Retirement Plan Services.

While most survey participants find their 401(k) – a workplace savings plan that lets employees invest a portion of their paycheck before taxes are taken out – a crucial benefit, with nine in 10 calling it a “must have,” most do not seek professional help to improve the plan’s performance. In fact, while 87 percent said they would seek professional help changing their car’s oil, just 24 percent would seek advice about their retirement plan’s investments.

“As a professional and rational human being, the survey’s findings do not seem to make sense, but human nature is often this way,” says Reid Abedeen, a partner at Safeguard Investment Advisory Group, LLC (www.safeguardinvestment.com).

“Health-wise, for example, we know what’s good for us, yet we often choose an option that is unhealthy. Luckily, many of us come to a point in our lives where we finally follow the wisdom of following our own advice, and I would encourage more individuals who are approaching retirement to tend to their financial plans sooner than later.”

Abedeen discusses ways in which individuals can more easily develop a relationship with their retirement finances.

•  “Procrastination is the thief of time” and “Time is money.” Two simple but profound quotes – the first from Charles Dickens and the second from Benjamin Franklin – sum up the problem of neglecting retirement planning. There are issues that many of us would like to ignore and put off, both because it’s hard and complicated, and because we can. Retirement is always something that’s “down the road” – that is, of course, until it’s on your doorstep. Don’t let your future well-being, the ability to afford and enjoy the good life in your golden years, suffer. Admit to yourself that retirement planning needs your attention, Abedeen says. Find a professional you trust and take action. You’ll feel better.

•  Develop a relationship with your money; find someone to talk to. Over time, adults get into a pattern with money. Direct deposit from work, direct withdrawals for bills, groceries, gas, etc. Between habit and automated banking, it’s easy to see why we might be disengaged. Find ways to engage with your finances. There are apps out there that can better connect you with one of life’s most important resources. You might think of it as a game, and it can even be fun.

Also, treat your future well-being at least as well as your car. Find a trustworthy professional, who can help you get started with increased financial engagement and guide you over time. If you have an aversion to money matters, finding a likeable professional will be important. If you don’t like talking to your financial advisor, you may find yourself maintaining an unhealthy distance.

•  Contribute as much as you can to your 401(k). Sadly, only about half of American workers have access to a 401(k), so take advantage if and while you can! While many live paycheck-to-paycheck, try contributing at least a small percentage – perhaps 5 percent of your income, and see how much you miss that money. If this means that you have to take on additional debt via credit, then the interest rate may not be worth contribution. However, retirement funding is nothing to put off, so seriously consider finding financially sound methods for maximizing this important personal investment.

•  Engage yourself with knowledge; understand your 401(k). There are multiple 401(k) plans offering different options. However, when you have a 401(k) plan from a previous employer, your investment choices are usually limited. One option to consider is comparing the investment choices you have within your current plan with the investment choices you have in the previous plan or plans.  You may find that the number of investment options between the plans gives you enough diversification to simply keep the money where it is and not change a thing.  Another option is to take the old 401(k) from your previous employer and roll it over to an IRA or Individual Retirement Account, with a different financial institution. In most cases this will open up many more investment options to you, and more options mean more opportunity for true diversification. As with any financial changes there are some things you need to consider before rolling over your 401k to an IRA.