FPI March 2026 Economic Update

https://youtu.be/EVNnF4C_Opc

Mar 5, 2026

Hello everyone. Blake Smith with Financial Partners bringing you your March 2026 financial

and economic update. And I'm going to dive right in. What's on everybody's minds? We got breaking news over the weekend that the United States and Israel were launching combat operations against Iran and that ever since that news broke, there's been a lot of investors on edge in this first week of March. And rightfully so, headlines like these caused a lot of chaos in the markets. We saw an immediate move up in energy prices. And I'm recording this on Wednesday, first week of March. US stock market has been very volatile and honestly the markets around the world have been very volatile up until this point. I think this is likely going to continue for the days and weeks ahead.

So, what I wanted to enforce, and I know we talk to our clients about this all the time, but for anybody who's listening or just like a refresh, I'm going to go through our bucket planning process because what we do is pre-plan for unforeseen events like this with that process.

So, when it comes to creating a bucket plan, first and foremost, you want to talk about your now bucket. And typically, these are cash or cash equivalents. Call it more safer money, right Typically, in in the bank oftentimes FDIC insured types of accounts and this creates liquidity and safety and we build these out up to two years. We want to make sure we have enough cash or cash equivalents on hand to fund you know retirement needs. If somebody is in retirement or if you're still working, you're providing for yourself and your family, we want to have

that now bucket adequately filled with enough income, enough cash there for any planned

expenses coming up. Then of course our emergency fund is is now in that bucket preserved and safe.

The next bucket we'll talk about is the soon bucket. And the soon bucket is geared towards any money that needs to come out sooner rather than later. And what we mean by that is typically two to 10 years out. And depending on somebody's complexity of their financial plan, depending on their timeline, again, that can go up to 10 years. But what the soon bucket is for is distribution needs that we know are on the horizon. This could be monthly distribution needs in retirement. This could be a large purchase that we have planned coming up. What we want to do is take a portion of our overall assets and put them in more of a preservation type of investment.

And we drill down on that here at our office. We know exactly what type of investments to put in that sum bucket for our clients because we do our due diligence on that. But the goal is that those assets are preserved, hopefully can produce a little bit of income along the way and are relatively safe, ready to come out of that soon bucket into the now bucket so you can go and you know live life in retirement on a monthly basis if that's what your financial plan is geared towards or prepare for that large distribution and purchase on the horizon.

What we don't want is money that needs to come out now or soon allocated towards you know risky positions in the stock market because if somebody was preparing for large distribution this week for example we have a lot of volatility and we don't want to be taking out our money out of our investments during down markets. We run into what's called sequence of return risk which can be very damaging to portfolios.

And then the third and the last bucket that we talk about is our later bucket. The

later bucket is usually a 5 to 10 year period out on your financial planning timeline. And whatever your risk profile is, the later bucket is geared towards the the the more aggressive side of your personal risk profile. And the goal of the later bucket is long-term growth, keep your net worth growing hopefully over time. Legacy planning, future health care needs, situations like that.

And what we've learned is if we properly fund the now, soon, and later buckets for folks, we're essentially buying a timeline for them. And if adequately filled, those clients, those investors know that they have several years of a runway already paid for them when it comes to the distributions that need to come out, and they're likely less stressed during unforeseen events like we're seeing today.

So, we've essentially pre-planned for this volatility and for our clients, again, we talk about this quite a bit, but if you have any questions on your own bucket plan or would like it more information on how to create one, by all means, give our office a call. We'd be happy to assist in that way. We cannot control the headlines. We cannot control the the chaos in the news or what's going on around the globe. But what we can control is the design and the implementation of our financial plans.

So having a properly, adequately filled bucket plan process in place is essential and we're big advocates of it. And again, feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions. Hopefully we've got warmer days ahead. We're getting a little bit warmer this week compared to the weeks past and hopefully spring is right around the corner. Talk soon. Thank you.

1-641-684-0368 Intelligent Choices – Exceptional Service Learn more about the current economy and the impacts on the markets. Financial Partners, Inc. is an Iowa-based independent boutique financial advisory firm founded in 2000 by Bob Kramer, ChFC®, AIF®, RICP®. Discover how our unique process, The Intelligent Advantage, can make a positive, profound impact on your life.