The Mid-Year Money Check-In I Use With ClientsThe Mid-Year Money Check-In I Use With ClientsThe Mid-Year Money Check-In I Use With Clients 

The Mid-Year Money Check-In I Use With Clients

Twice a year, I sit down with clients and walk through a version of the below questions. Not because the questions are exciting, but because they’re the ones that actually matter, and they’re the ones that get skipped when life is full and the to-do list never ends.

I do this work because I live this exact season. Client, household, aging parents, kids, a business, a full life. I am not standing outside this looking in and handing you advice from a distance. I built the Allora Wealth review process because I needed it too, and it works. This is the same discipline that got me into this industry in the first place. Not a fascination with markets. A conviction that the women doing the most, earning the most, and carrying the most should not also be the ones left guessing about whether any of it is actually working.

A mid-year check-in will not fix a plan that was never built with your full life in mind. But if the foundation is solid, this is the maintenance that keeps it that way. Six months is long enough for a lot to shift. It is also short enough to catch and correct before those shifts turn into real problems.

So here is what I walk through with clients, in the order I walk through it. Steal it. Sit down with your own version of it this week if that’s more realistic than waiting for someone else to make you do it.

Start with what’s true right now, not what was true in January

Before we talk about numbers, we talk about life. Income changes. A promotion, a layoff, a partner switching jobs. Big expenses on the horizon, planned or not. Anyone new depending on you financially, or anyone who no longer is. Health. Insurance. Whether the goals you named in January still feel like your goals, or whether they were the right goals for a version of you that has since moved on.

This is not a formality. This is the part of the meeting that tells me whether the plan we built still fits the life you’re actually living. A plan built for a full life should flex when that life does. If it can’t, it wasn’t built right in the first place.

I have written before about why career decisions deserve the same scrutiny as investment decisions. The same logic applies here. A raise, a new role, a partner’s job change. None of it is just a number on a paycheck. Each one ripples into the plan, and mid-year is when you catch the ripple before it becomes a wave you didn’t see coming.

Check progress against the goals you actually named

Specific progress. Are you on pace for what you said you wanted, whether that’s retirement, a home, funding your kids’ education, or simply building a cushion that lets you breathe. And just as important: does the goal still feel right, or has your definition of enough shifted since you first said it out loud.

I ask clients this directly because most people never revisit their own goals once they’ve written them down. The goal from January is