Welcome to our "New Normal"

By CB Mason

As we approach the one-year anniversary of the initial shutdown of businesses and schools in the effort to flatten the curve of the COVID-19 pandemic, your Timehop and memories will likely be flooded with business closure notices, Zoom screenshots, memes about March 32^nd or Blursday, photos of partially completed puzzles, and posts about distance learning. Like so many businesses, our office has made changes to how we do business. Fortunately, our firm was able to make quick and simple changes last March. We set up 5 of our 6 employees to work from home, leaving Janet to coordinate all on-site needs like answering the phone, sorting the mail, accepting paperwork from clients, scanning necessary documents.

In an article posted March 30th, 2020, Stephen Kissler, a researcher from the Harvard School of Public Health, commented, “It’s likely, then, that the new coronavirus will be a lingering part of American life for at least a year, if not much longer. If the current round of social-distancing measures works, the pandemic may ebb enough for things to return to a semblance of normalcy. Offices could fill and bars could bustle. Schools could reopen and friends could reunite.” [1] His assessment is starting to take shape.  Local students are returning to in-person classes, and restrictions on businesses have begun to lessen. For our office, we have settled into a “new normal” with 4 of us in the office throughout the week and two still working from home 99% of the time. And although we have switched to mostly zoom and phone call meetings, it seems that we have had more contact with clients in the last year than in pre-pandemic months. We hope to open our office to visitors soon again.  Until then, we are just a phone call or email away from you.  Let us know how we can help you with your investment needs.

While changes due to the pandemic may linger (and we hope that your social media memories don’t make you flinch with reminders of the initial shutdown), the real question is, how many rolls of toilet paper do you still have hoarded in your closets?