Hello and Welcome to our December 2025 Financial Planning and Capital Market Update!
If you are too busy to read, feel free to listen as we describe our post and thoughts in friendly shortened podcast like audio format as well as a Video!
Newbies –
We like to articulate our thoughts and review on a Monthly basis our Financial Planning Tips, Capital Markets thoughts and current events!
Hope you enjoy!
December 2025 Video
YouTube
Financial Planning Tip(s)
401k Rules slightly Change – Roth Mandate
With several great questions from you guys in the field, in this post we discuss the new 401k Rules that mandate catch up contributions be Roth rather than typical pre-tax contributions
If your income was over $150k in 2025 and If you participate in the :Catch Up” 401k amount (Extra amount available to save in your 401k – for 2026 – $8k for all but age 60-63 you get Super catch up of $11,250) this catch up must be in the form of a Roth after tax contribution
Once a contribution is automatically (Employers are supposed to automatically adjust to Roth once the maximum pre-tax levels are attained – We will see, this is complicate) there will be two buckets of money, a Pre-tax and a Roth within the 401k.
While you may have not had a Roth before, if mandated into one next year, a new personal Roth account needs to be opened.
Expect more taxes as the switch occurs, avoid company matching into the Roth.
Double check the switchover occurs after the $24,500 pretax is met.
Capital Market Comments
Federal Reserve Gets Jiggy – QT Stopped, Lowering of Rates, RMP
After being relatively quiet, the FOMC – Federal Open Market Committee aka “The FED” Led by Jerome Powell (for now – will be replaced soon!) as mentioned in this post finished QT – Quantitative Tightening or the run off and taking back money they put into the system during lock down – This is stimulative to the Economy as the sucking of money out of the system has slowed with this conclusion.
A few days later the FOMC aka The FED lowered short term interest rates as mentioned in our post here …
But wait, the FOMC was not finished there…. as analyzed in this post they created a new term RMP – Reserve Management Purchases aka fill up the Emergency fund….
Have a Great Day talk to You at the end of January – 2026!
John A. Kvale CFA, CFP
AI Content Authenticity: -. All of the following written content has been completed by myself and has not been edited or created by AI. Occasionally we do use AI for images and will note so when used.
Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.
A Dallas Texas based fee only
Financial Planning Total Wealth
Management firm.
