Market Performance: December 19, 2023.

The S&P 500 rose Monday as the market maintained the momentum seen during its seven-week winning streak.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was little changed, gaining just 0.86 points, or 0.00%, to 37,306.02. The S&P 500 climbed 0.45% to 4,740.56. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.61% to 14,904.81. The S&P 500 is now 1.2% away from its all-time closing high at 4,796.56 that was reached in January 2022.

Communication services outperformed in the S&P 500, with the sector up 1.9%. Mega-cap tech names such as Meta Platforms gained nearly 3%, while Google-parent Alphabet jumped more than 2%.

Evaluating Your Personal Financial Statement

Many individuals look at their bank and credit card statements and are surprised by how much they've spent.

One simple method of accounting for income and expenditures is to keep personal financial statements just like the ones used by corporations. Financial statements provide you with an indication of your financial condition and can help with budget planning.

There are two types of personal financial statements: the personal cash flow statement and the personal balance sheet.

A personal cash flow statement measures your cash inflows and outflows to show you your net cash flow for a specific period. Cash inflows generally include: Salaries, Interest from savings accounts, Dividends from investments, and Capital gains from the sale of financial securities like stocks and bonds.

A balance sheet is another type of personal financial statement. A personal balance sheet provides an overall snapshot of your wealth at a specific period in time. It's a summary of your assets or what you own and your liabilities or what you owe. It results in your net worth: your assets minus liabilities.

You’ve spent decades saving money for retirement. Now comes the hard part — spending it.

After decades of squirreling away money for retirement, people can feel incredible anxiety when it’s time to shift into spending mode.

Having a strategy for spending money in retirement can alleviate some of that stress.

Major worries among retirees include not being able to spend as much as before retirement, not being able to leave money to beneficiaries, facing unknown healthcare expenses and outliving their money, said Corey Briggs, director of wealth planning at Plaza Advisory Group in St. Louis.

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