Hardwood Floors October/November 2017

BUSINESS BEST PRACTICES

By Bree Urech-Boyle

FINANCE

e immediate outlook for the hardwood ooring industry is mostly positive. Most players in the industry have a feeling that spending on hardwood oors will remain strong into 2018. Despite these positive perspectives, anyone that has been in business for a long time, or has studied the market, knows that it works in cycles. Periods of growth on a macro level are not sustained forever. You must make yourself indispensable on a micro level and safeguard your assets to survive downturns. LPL Research (a part of LPL Financial Services) published a RecessionWatch Dashboard in June 2017. According to Forecasting for Your Future

preparing for the storm, but it can be a formidable topic for many. ere are a lot of unknowns in the process of predicting and estimating. Even with the uncertainty, there are easy steps you can take that build on each other until, one day, you have a protection plan that is easy to maintain and gives you some relief from day-to-day nancial worries. In addition to the forecasting steps within this article, I will sprinkle in some tax planning ideas that will help prepare you for a successful end to this tax year that could bene t you nancially going into next year.

this dashboard, we are in the mature phase of the market cycle. 2007-2008 was a recession, 2009-2014 a recovery, and 2015 to today is maturing. ey believe we are in the mid-to-late state of the current expansion. ey are showing an overall low risk of a recession starting within the next year, but what about past the next year? Peaks and valleys in the nancial markets have an impact on the overall con dence of consumers. ere are some relatively simple things you can do to protect yourself in the long-term by capitalizing on these times of surplus and weathering yourself for the shortfalls. Forecasting is one method for

This Recession Watch Dashboard is showing an overall low risk of recession starting within the next year. Source LPL Research.

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