But while one family might own all of it outright, the next could be borrowing against next year to keep pace.

A family's financial situation is one of the few things you can't read from the street, though plenty of us keep trying. That gap, between what money looks like and what money is, came to mind when I saw a popular Empower Survey had started making the rounds again.

In the 2024 study, Gen Z said it takes about $587,800 a year to feel financially successful. Boomers put the figure just under $100,000. Gen X and millennials landed in between, somewhere in the $180,000 to $212,000 range. The average across every adult surveyed came to roughly $270,000.

Here's the head-scratcher: The same survey put the net worth Gen Z believes it needs at about $9.5 million.

The number is easy to laugh at and easy to scold. A 25-year-old naming a figure that high can sound out of touch. The conversation worth having sits underneath the headline, and it's about what a healthy relationship with money looks like and how one generation hands that down to the next.

The ground has moved, so where do you start?

Some of what Gen Z is reacting to is legitimate. I acknowledge that housing and education cost dramatically more than they did a generation ago, and comparing raw dollar figures across age groups without accounting for that isn't a fair fight.

A boomer answering this survey came up in a different economy than a Gen Zer entering the workforce today. Before we write the number off, it's worth noting that the ground under young people has moved and expectations may also have shifted.

Financial success has never required the premium version of everything, though. You can have almost anything you want.

However, you probably can't have the best house, the best car, the best vacation and the best of everything else at the same time. The freedom is in choosing. Pick the few things that matter most to you and be content being ordinary about the rest.

We also make personal finance more complicated than it needs to be. What I aim for is simple and low friction. Aim to save 20% of your net income and automatically allocate into the right places, like a Roth or taxable investment account.

The specific mix depends on the situation, but the automating is the part that does the quiet heavy lifting. It's hard to miss what you don't see.

Once that habit is running, the rest of your income covers what you need and want without second-guessing every dollar. This setup allows you to spend without crunching numbers and without regret.

When a target turns into a trap

Let's put some numbers on it. A household taking home $200,000 after taxes and saving a fifth of it sets aside $40,000 a year, about $3,333 a month, before that cash is ever in reach to spend.

Setting up automatic payments on your accounts so they coincide with your pay date is a quick hack.

Over a decade, that's $400,000 in contributions alone, with whatever it earns stacked on top. That's why a target like $587,800 is such a trap. It turns a private thing into a public scoreboard and invites you to measure your life against a driveway.

As income rises, a bigger paycheck mostly buys a bigger version of the same choice, and the trap tightens as the numbers grow. The bigger house, bigger car, bigger vacation… This is lifestyle creep.

Treat a figure like $587,800 as the bar, and you can spend a whole career earning well and spending to match, only to push the freedom you were after further down the road.

The families I see with the most freedom are the ones who decided early what enough looked like and let the rest keep working in the background.

Money is doing its job when it buys time, presence and choice. I want to take the trip with my school-age daughters while they're still young, and to sit through a game or a dinner without half my mind on work.

Building the accounts that pay for those moments is my job, and I take it seriously. The moment itself is what I am building toward.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

That's the mistake. A 15% return isn't a 15% return if you hand half of it back in taxes. The number that matters is the net-net, meaning what actually lands in your account after every layer of tax, and almost nobody runs it on their own portfolio.

I've spent two decades in private markets, and the biggest shift I watch investors go through isn't learning a new strategy. It's changing what number they look at. Once you start thinking in after-tax terms, a lot of things you were taught to chase stop making sense, and a lot of things you were taught to ignore start to make perfect sense.

This article isn't a set of moves to go execute. It's a way of thinking. The tax treatment built into different investments isn't a loophole or an aggressive play; it's a set of legal, widely used mechanisms most investors were simply never taught to look for.

The value isn't in memorizing them. It's in changing the lens through which you evaluate every opportunity.

The number nobody calculates

When you own a public stock or fund and it returns 15%, and you're a high earner, a large share of that gain can be taxed away, potentially cutting your realized return close to half depending on your income tax bracket, your state and how long you held it. You did the work of earning 15%.

You kept far less, and you probably never did the arithmetic to see it.

Now imagine the same headline return inside a structure built to be tax efficient. If some of that return arrives as long-term capital gains instead of ordinary income, or is offset by deductions that flow through to you, or comes back as return of capital rather than a taxable gain, the amount you actually keep can be dramatically higher, even when the gross return is identical.

Here's the part most people miss. Improving your after-tax return this way doesn't require taking on more investment risk. Normally, reaching for a higher return means accepting more risk — that's the basic trade every investor makes.

Tax efficiency is different. It improves what you keep by changing how the return is taxed, not by changing what you own. For someone in a high bracket, that difference can be worth the equivalent of a meaningful chunk of additional net return, without adding a single unit of risk to the underlying position.

That's the whole mindset shift. Stop asking only, "What will this return?" and start asking, "What will I keep, and how hard will I have to work to keep it?"

Short-term thinking gets taxed like a job

Think back to when fix-and-flips were the thing everyone was doing. People bragged constantly about clearing five or six figures on a single flip. What almost none of them mentioned was the tax bill or the labor.

A property you buy and sell inside a year is a short-term gain, taxed at ordinary income rates, which for a high earner can run north of 50% once you include federal and state taxes.

So, take the person bragging about a $100,000 flip and cut it roughly in half for taxes. Then divide what's left by the genuinely enormous number of hours they poured into demo, permits, contractors, financing and showings.

I used to joke that I wouldn't work that hard for two bucks an hour after taxes, and I wasn't really joking.

That's short-term thinking, and the tax code punishes it on purpose. Short holds mean frequent taxable events at the worst rates. The whole structure rewards churn and speed, and speed is exactly what gets you taxed like you're clocking in for a shift.

Long-term thinking flips the math. Assets held longer than a year can qualify for long-term capital gains treatment, which is meaningfully lower than ordinary income rates. Patience isn't just a temperament.

In the tax code, it's the difference between keeping most of your return and keeping half of it. The investor who holds for years and exits when it makes sense isn't just being disciplined — they're being taxed at a fundamentally better rate than the one flipping every few months.

Passive vs active, and why it matters more than people think

The flip example carries a second lesson that runs even deeper than the holding period. It's the difference between passive and active participation, meaning whether your money is working or you are.

An active investment is one where you supply the labor. You're the one managing the renovation, running the business, doing the work. Your return is real, but it's stapled to your hours, and it's often taxed at the least favorable rate on top of that.

You're essentially a highly paid employee of your own deal, and the government treats you like one.

A passive investment is one where you contribute capital and someone else runs the asset. You're not trading your hours for the return. And in the right structures, passive ownership is where a lot of the tax advantages actually live, because the assets that generate pass-through deductions and long-term gains tend to be ones you hold rather than ones you personally operate.

This is the shift I most want investors to sit with. Somewhere along the way, a lot of people absorbed the idea that a return only counts if they bled for it. That working harder is the same as investing better. It isn't.

The wealthiest investors I know spend very little of their own time on the assets producing their best after-tax returns. Their capital is doing the work, inside structures designed so the tax treatment works in their favor while they do something else with their life.

Whether any of that fits your situation depends on your own circumstances and the specific rules around passive activity, which is a conversation for a qualified adviser, but the mindset is available to anyone: Stop measuring an investment only by what it returns, and start measuring it by what it returns, after tax, per hour of your life it consumes.

Different assets, different tax character

Once you're thinking this way, you start to notice that no two asset types are taxed alike, and that the mix itself is worth paying attention to.

Some private assets, energy and manufacturing among them, can generate depreciation deductions, meaning the tax code lets the business deduct a large share of an asset's cost in its early years. In the right structure, that deduction can flow through to the investors rather than staying at the entity level.

Real estate carries its own version through cost segregation and bonus depreciation, which can create paper losses. Other assets deliver most of their return as long-term capital gains, and some distributions come back as return of capital, meaning your own contributed capital is handed back to you rather than a taxable gain.

You don't need to master any of that. The point is only that a thoughtful portfolio has a blended tax character, and that character is something most investors never look at because no one ever told them it was a variable they could think about.

Whether any specific deduction or treatment is usable by you depends on rules such as passive activity limitations and your own tax position, which is exactly why this merits a conversation with a professional.

How to have this conversation, and what to do if you can't

None of this works as a solo project. The real move isn't to go chase any of these structures yourself — it's to be able to have an intelligent conversation about them with someone qualified to guide you.

So, here's the conversation to have with your adviser:

• Ask them what your portfolio's after-tax return actually is, not the gross number on the statement
• Ask whether the tax character of your holdings is something they actively think about, or something they've never raised with you
• Ask how short-term vs long-term treatment is showing up in your returns, and whether any of your capital could be working passively in more tax-efficient structures instead of grinding through taxable events

Then pay attention to how they respond. An adviser who's fluent in this will meet you with real answers and better questions. An adviser who's never thought about it, or who waves it off as a detail, has just told you something important about the ceiling of the advice you're getting.

And if you don't have an adviser who can talk about any of this, that's not a dead end — it's a signal to find one. The right professional exists — they just tend to work with investors who know to ask.

Look for advisers who work with private markets and alternative assets specifically, who talk about after-tax outcomes without being prompted, and who are comfortable coordinating with your CPA or tax attorney rather than treating tax as someone else's department.

You are allowed to interview several. You are allowed to leave one who can't have this conversation. The cost of staying with an adviser who only thinks in gross returns is paid, quietly, every April.

Stop evaluating your portfolio on gross return alone. Run the net-net, the number you actually keep after every layer of tax and every hour of your own labor, because that's the number that pays for your life.

Private markets carry real tax mechanisms that can move that number, often without adding risk and without demanding your time. Whether any of them make sense for you depends entirely on your own circumstances, and that determination should always be made with qualified tax and legal counsel.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

According to a Harris Poll, more than half of Gen Zers have a side hustle, compared with 21% of boomers.

Advances in technology have made it easier to earn extra income. Thanks to rideshare and delivery apps such as Uber and DoorDash, you can earn at your own pace.

But data also show more Americans, including those with higher incomes, are struggling to pay their bills.

According to the 2025 Harris Poll done in collaboration with the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, the share of individuals who paid less than the required minimum on their credit cards rose to 13% in August, up from 9% in the spring.

Additional income can improve your situation, eventually leading to financial freedom when good behaviors are developed.

But before committing your evenings and weekends to a side gig, that extra time might be better spent growing your primary career or pursuing another opportunity that better aligns with your future goals.

See if you can optimize your current job

Before you search for another source of income, I encourage you to evaluate your primary job. Can it become a long-term career with opportunities to grow, or does it serve more as a paycheck to maintain? The answer can help determine the right strategy for you.

If your main source of income provides you with opportunities to get promoted, earn more or develop valuable skills, focusing your energy there might have a better long-term payoff, rather than splitting your time between multiple jobs.

However, if you're exploring different career paths, or your current role offers limited opportunities to advance, a side hustle can be a great way to earn more, get additional experience and build new connections.

The decision isn't just about making more, it's also about deciding where your time and energy are likely to have the best payoff long term.

Look for work that works for you

If you find taking on a second job makes financial sense, the next thing to consider is whether it fits your personality and work style.

Some people thrive in a flexible environment where they can juggle multiple projects and commitments at once. Others find they perform best under structure, routine and a clear path forward.

Neither style is better than the other, but knowing which works best for you can help you make a more informed, sustainable decision.

As you're deciding, ask yourself whether you're looking for a temporary way to boost income or whether you want to build toward a long-term career. If you find managing multiple jobs at once energizes you, a side hustle might be a natural fit.

But if the thought of holding down another job makes you feel distracted or overwhelmed, it might be worth focusing your time on growing in the role you already have.

Use your extra earnings wisely

If getting a side hustle is what you decide, the next step is making sure the extra money you earn is working toward your long-term goals. A common mistake that can be easy to make is increasing spending because your income is higher.

It's OK to enjoy some of that money, but don't forget to be intentional about how it's being used.

For many, that might mean starting an emergency fund. Having several months' worth of expenses saved will give you a cushion when the unexpected happens, especially if one source of income changes suddenly.

Once you have three to six months saved, consider putting some of the extra funds toward long-term investments. Consistently saving and investing not only helps your money grow, it can also support future goals, such as saving for a child's education or planning for retirement.

Earning extra income can be a valuable way to increase your income, but that doesn't mean it's the right fit for everyone. Before accepting another job, consider your long-term career goals, evaluate your personality and plan for how the extra money will fit into your broader financial plan.

The goal isn't just about earning more — it's earning an income that moves you closer toward long-term financial security.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

But it could be a costly mistake not to take some time to figure out how each life milestone could impact your life savings.

I'm not suggesting leaving the party early. But afterward, find out what, if anything, you should do as a result of having a teenager, getting married or turning another year older.

Here are 11 significant life events and financial considerations for each, coming to you from the vantage point of an experienced senior wealth adviser at Carnegie Private Wealth.

1. When your child turns 13

There's no need to throw cold water on your new teen's celebration but having a 13-year-old means that your Child and Dependent Care Credit expires on the big day.

You'll need to adjust your tax withholdings, stop using pretax Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account (DCFSA) funds for that child's care (any expenses incurred on or after the 13th birthday are ineligible) and prepare for higher out-of-pocket costs for such things as after-school care and summer camp.

Thirteen is when your child becomes eligible for teen-specific bank accounts, which is convenient, since it's also when they can start earning independent income. That's an opportunity to drive home the money lessons you've been teaching up to now.

Money in a piggy bank isn't earning interest. Money in a real bank can. If you want to get serious about saving, consider a brokerage account for your teen.

2. Graduating from high school/turning 18

This is when parents can transfer full control of custodial accounts to their (now adult) child.

At 18, you have the legal right to sign independent financial contracts, open standard bank accounts and apply for credit cards without a co-signer.

Your 18-year-old should already understand the value of saving and the slippery slope credit card debt can be. Does your young adult understand how credit cards affect their credit and the importance of paying off the balance each month?

Before they head to the bank to apply for what might look like "easy money," impress upon them what an 18% to 22% interest rate means — and that building a good credit history is going to make life a lot easier.

3. Graduating from college/starting a first job

You'll need a budget that includes an emergency fund. Saving for long-term goals is important, too, but don't lose sight of the immediate future. A flat tire, a visit to urgent care, reduced work hours or a layoff are all reasons to keep some of your savings readily accessible.

Continue building a solid credit history. If you took out student loans, paying them back should be a priority.

4. Getting married

First, have honest discussions about your current financial standing. Discuss attitudes toward debt. It's very important to sign a prenup.

Becoming a two-income household means it's time to update your budget.

• Maximize your savings
• Decide if you'll have a joint account or separate
• Determine who's paying the bills
• Start a financial organizational system so passwords and account information are safely stored but accessible to you both

Either of you should be able to step in and handle the other's financial "job" if necessary.

5. Having a baby

Along with sleepless nights, you're about to encounter sticker shock over the price of diapers, formula, baby food and everything else little humans require.

But you'll be so enamored with your baby, you'll hardly notice. Now's the time to:

• Open a 529 college savings plan
• Add Junior to your health insurance
• Consider buying life and disability insurance
• Update your will — or get one, if you haven't yet

6. Buying a first house

Time for another new budget. While you're building equity as you pay down your mortgage, you'll also want more cash on hand for the inevitable home repair — because when the HVAC goes out, there's no landlord to call.

Set aside money for maintenance and repairs so an expensive surprise doesn't have to go on a credit card.

7. Turning 50

In my experience, that's when people really start to get serious about firming up retirement planning. It's a good time to evaluate: Do I have enough? And if I don't have enough, what do I need to do to catch up? There's still plenty of time.

8. Turning 65

The Medicare birthday is a big one. You can stop worrying so much about the health insurance burden and shift your thinking to long-term care. Talk to your financial adviser about where to invest the money, you're suddenly not having to spend on health insurance premiums.

9. Turning 75

Depending on when you were born, you might already be taking required minimum distributions (RMDs) from tax-deferred retirement accounts. RMDs generally begin at 73, but the starting age rises to 75 for people born in 1960 or later.

The government eventually requires you to start taking money out of most tax-deferred retirement accounts, and those withdrawals generally count as taxable income.

Talk with your financial and tax professionals about what you're required to withdraw and what to do with money you don't need for living expenses. If charitable giving is important to you, ask whether qualified charitable distributions make sense.

Between 75 and 80 is also when seniors — and their adult children — need to think about quality of life. Community is important as we age. I believe what keeps people excited about life is having friends and something to look forward to.

Loneliness and isolation are devastating to health and well-being. If you don't have people you enjoy spending time with, all the money you set aside for retirement is going to waste.

• Try a new hobby
• Get outside
• Make time for old friends and cultivate new ones

Your longevity depends on it.

10. When you become a grandparent

If you're able to help pay for a grandchild's education, a 529 plan is often a great place to start. The money can grow tax-free, and withdrawals are generally tax-free when used for qualified education expenses.

Before you start writing checks, think about your family as a whole. If one adult child has children and another doesn't, consider whether your giving creates an imbalance you didn't intend. Fair doesn't always have to mean equal, but it should be intentional.

11. Death of parents/inheritance

Receiving an inheritance can be emotional as well as financially complicated, so resist the urge to make major decisions immediately. Start by understanding exactly what you inherited — cash, taxable investments, retirement accounts, real estate or other assets — because different assets come with different tax rules.

You'll want to work with a CPA and your financial adviser before selling, moving or withdrawing inherited assets.

For example, inherited property generally receives a new cost basis based on its fair market value at the owner's death, while many non-spouse beneficiaries of inherited retirement accounts must empty those accounts within 10 years and might have distribution requirements along the way.

Before spending an inheritance, consider how it could strengthen your own financial future.

Life's milestones are worth celebrating. Just remember that once the bubbly is gone and the cake is eaten, a little financial planning can help you focus on what matters and make the most of what comes next.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

Ray is 65 and Diane is 63. Both are working and earning well, but they plan to retire soon. They live in California, and they are uneasy about how much of their portfolio rides on one stock. So they asked their adviser how to diversify out of it without losing a third of the value in capital gains tax.

She told them what most advisers would. A large gain can be trimmed at the edges, harvested against losses or spread across tax years, but each leaves you still owning the gain. Only two things eliminate it: Hold the asset until you die, so your heirs inherit it with a stepped-up basis, or give the asset to charity.

Neither one fit. Waiting decades for the step-up meant holding one undiversified position, and giving away a million dollars was not an option. So: Sell, pay the tax, reinvest the rest.

What nobody asked was how long the Kesslers were likely to live.

The IRS thinks you're average

There is a third option. You transfer the shares into an irrevocable trust, called a charitable remainder unitrust (CRUT), and the trust sells them. Because the trust is tax-exempt, no capital gains tax is due on the sale, so the whole amount stays invested and diversified at once.

The trust then pays you a set percentage of its value, recalculated each year, for life, for both lives or for a term of years. Whatever remains goes to the charity you named, and you take an income tax deduction up front for the calculated value of that future gift.

The IRS determines that gift value on the day of funding, using actuarial tables built from census data, currently Table 2010CM. Those tables describe the general population.

But the people who fund these trusts, like the Kesslers, are affluent, insured and longer-lived than average. Insurance companies know this and price annuities off a separate annuitant table.

The IRS assumes you will live as long as the average American. If you live longer than that, the trust runs longer than the deduction was calculated for, and every extra year compounds.

Why the mismatch pays

Both the deduction and your maximum payout are fixed on the day of funding. The trust runs on your actual life.

If the Kesslers sell, they realize a $998,500 gain and pay 33.1% in combined federal and California tax, leaving $669,496 to reinvest. In a CRUT, the full $1 million stays invested. At a 6% payout, that is $60,000 in the first year against $40,170 from an equal draw on the reinvested proceeds.

The trust doesn't make the tax disappear. The payments are taxable, and in year one both paths deliver similar after-tax spending money. What differs is that the tax is spread across decades while a larger base compounds.

Better than what, exactly?

A trust isn't good or bad on its own, only better or worse than what you would otherwise have done. There are three realistic alternatives:

• Sell and reinvest. Pay the tax now, rebuild in a diversified portfolio.
• Hold and leave it. Keep the stock, live on other money, pass it to the children with a stepped-up basis.
• Hold and live on it. Keep the stock and draw the same 6% from it.

In research published in the August 2026 Journal of Financial Planning, I tested a trust against all three, simulating 10,000 market futures and running the same family down both paths in each one. A "win" means the family finished that future with more spendable wealth, in today's dollars, from the trust. So a 66% win rate doesn't mean 66% more money. It means the trust came out ahead in about two thirds of the futures tested.

What longevity does to the numbers

The third alternative is the hardest for the trust to beat: It pays identical income and still passes a stepped-up estate to the children. Under IRS life expectancy, a couple aged 63 and 65 beats it with a trust 28.2% of the time.

However, give that couple seven more years and the number is 96.4%.

No other variable came close. The deduction was locked at the start on an average life. The years the trust actually ran were not.

Where this doesn't work

All of this assumes you have no charitable motive and are measuring nothing but dollars. If you do want to give, any asset at any basis will do.

For everyone else, basis moves the answer more than longevity does. The trust beats all three alternatives when basis is under roughly 11% of current value and loses to all three above 25%. Long life improves those odds without reversing them. The Kesslers sit at 0.15%.

Across 500 randomly drawn household situations, varying age, basis, payout and home state, the trust was the better choice in about a third of them. That is not a coin you have to call blind. Every one of those variables is knowable before anything is signed.

The up-front deduction is what most people ask about first, and it matters least. Tax legislation in 2026 added a 0.5%-of-AGI floor and capped top-bracket filers at 35 cents per dollar. Over a long trust, the tax on the payments takes back much of what the deduction gives.

Outcome

The Kesslers funded a two-life trust in November, with the full million still invested. Buy an annuity and the insurer prices your health. Fund a CRUT and the government prices it off a table that assumes you are average. Few advisers will raise it on their own, because it is filed under charity. Ask.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

You own an ETF with hundreds of holdings. That number is not a measure of how diversified you actually are.

Diversification protects you when your money is spread across independent economic outcomes. It does nothing for you when it is spread across the same outcome wearing different tickers.

Look inside a growth ETF today and that is exactly what you will find: Dozens of companies whose fortunes trace back to a single assumption — that the largest technology companies in America will keep spending hundreds of billions of dollars building AI infrastructure.

What 'diversified' actually means

Take the Schwab U.S. Large-Cap Growth ETF (SCHG). It currently holds 197 stocks. On paper, that looks like broad exposure. In practice, its top 10 holdings account for around 51% of the fund, and technology alone makes up almost 50% of the portfolio.

At the time of writing, Nvidia (NVDA) is 10.83% of the fund by itself. Apple (APPL) is another 8.93%. Microsoft (MSFT) is 7.31%. Add Amazon (AMZN) and Alphabet (GOOGL) and five companies account for roughly 35% of everything you own in that single ETF.

Invesco's QQQ tells the same story with a different label. At the time of writing, its top 10 holdings run 45% of the fund, and technology alone makes up more than 50% of the total.

Nvidia is nearly 9% of the fund by itself. You did not buy the Nasdaq-100. You bought a concentrated bet on a handful of companies whose revenue increasingly depends on the same capital spending cycle.

The dependency investors don't see

Here is where it gets more concentrated than the ticker count suggests. Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta (META) are projected to spend somewhere between $700 billion and $725 billion combined on capital expenditures in 2026, an increase of roughly 60% to 77% over 2025.

The overwhelming majority of that spending funds AI data centers, chips and networking equipment.

That single number sits underneath nearly every AI-adjacent stock in your portfolio. Nvidia's revenue depends on it. Micron's (MU) revenue depends on it. Vertiv (VRT) and Equinix (EQIX) depend on it. Arista Networks (ANET) depends on it.

You may hold 10, 20 or 30 companies spread across a growth ETF, an S&P 500 fund and a semiconductor fund, and a meaningful share of every one of them is ultimately underwritten by the same four checkbooks.

One company's revenue is another's expense

This is the mechanic most investors miss. Microsoft's cloud revenue depends partly on selling AI capacity it built using chips bought from Nvidia. Nvidia's revenue depends on Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta continuing to buy those chips at the current pace.

Arista Networks and Micron sell into the same data centers. Vertiv and Equinix build and operate them.

None of these companies are competitors with each other. They are counterparties in the same transaction, repeated at scale. When you own several of them at once, you are not diversifying your exposure to AI. You are stacking your exposure to whether four companies keep spending at a pace none of them has ever sustained before.

Why this concentration keeps growing without you doing anything

Here is the part that catches most investors off guard. You do not need to buy more of these companies for your concentration to increase. It happens automatically, every day the market is open, as long as the stocks keep rising.

Most growth ETFs are weighted by market capitalization, which means the biggest companies automatically claim the biggest share of your money. When Nvidia's stock price doubles, it does not just hand you a stronger return. It also earns a larger slice of every new dollar that flows into the fund afterward, which pulls in even more of the next dollar behind it.

Your exposure compounds on top of itself, with no rebalancing decision required and no trade of your own.

This is not a flaw in how these funds are built. Cap weighting has tracked the real economy reasonably well for most of market history.

The problem is that the mechanism cannot tell a company earning a bigger share of the index because it is genuinely capturing more of the economy from a company earning a bigger share because enthusiasm has pushed its price ahead of its fundamentals.

The fund sees only price, and it keeps shifting more of your money toward the answer regardless of which one is true.

A fund that looked reasonably diversified a year ago can look considerably more concentrated today, without a single decision in between.

Compare your fund's current top 10 weighting against an old statement if you kept one. If that number climbed meaningfully, the climb happened to you, not because of anything you chose.

Why this concentration is easy to miss

A traditional concentration check looks at how much of your portfolio sits in any single stock. That check will tell you SCHG is fine, because no individual company crosses 11% of the fund.

It will not tell you that Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Broadcom (AVGO) and Micron collectively represent one economic bet dressed up as six separate ones.

Fund overlap tools miss it for the same reason. They compare ticker lists across funds. They do not ask whether the companies on those lists share a common revenue driver.

A tool can tell you that your growth ETF and your S&P 500 index fund both hold Nvidia. It will not tell you that they also both depend, through different tickers, on the same $700 billion capital spending assumption.

What to do with this

Pull the fact sheet for every fund you own and look past the top 10 list. Ask which companies derive a meaningful share of revenue from AI infrastructure spending, either directly or as a supplier into it. Add that exposure across every fund you hold, not just the one marketed as a technology fund.

You do not need to sell anything to benefit from this exercise. You need an honest number for how much of your total portfolio depends on four companies continuing to spend roughly $700 billion a year on a bet that has not yet fully proven out.

Once you have that number, decide for yourself whether it matches the risk you believe you are taking.

Count the dependencies, not the tickers. That is where your real concentration risk is hiding, and it will not show up on a standard diversification report.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

But somewhere along the way, "conversions can be smart" curdled into "conversions are always smart," and that's where I start to worry.

A Roth conversion is a tool, not a virtue. There are specific situations where they're the wrong move — and sometimes an expensive one. Knowing when to hold off is just as valuable as knowing when to act.

Here are five times a Roth conversion usually doesn't make sense.

1. You're in a high-income year

The entire logic of a conversion rests on paying tax now, at today's rate, to avoid tax later. That only works in your favor if today's rate is lower than the rate you expect to face down the road.

Convert during a peak earning year, when your income is already pushing the top of a bracket, and you're doing the opposite: Paying tax at one of the highest rates you'll ever see.

If you're still working and at the height of your career, or you had an unusually large income event this year, that's generally the worst possible time to stack a conversion on top.

The better move is often to wait for a lower-income year, which for many people arrives after they stop working but before required minimum distributions begin at age 73.

2. You'd have to use the IRA itself to pay the tax

This one is a quiet deal-breaker that people miss. A conversion works far better when you can pay the resulting tax bill from outside funds in a taxable brokerage or savings account.

If the only way to cover the tax is to pull extra from the IRA you're converting, you erode the whole benefit. You're shrinking the amount that actually makes it into the Roth, and if you are under 59½, the portion withheld for taxes could itself trigger a penalty.

Picture converting $100,000 and needing roughly a quarter of it to pay the tax. If that quarter comes out of the IRA rather than a separate account, only three-quarters of the money reaches the Roth, and you've lost years of potential growth that qualified Roth withdrawals would have delivered tax-free.

When there's no outside cash to pay the tax, a conversion frequently doesn't make sense. The answer is to wait until you have the liquidity to do it right, or to convert a smaller amount you can actually afford to cover.

3. You expect your tax rate to fall in retirement

Not everyone faces higher taxes later. Plenty of people will drop into a lower bracket once the paychecks stop, especially if they don't have enormous traditional balances generating large future RMDs.

If you genuinely expect your retirement tax rate to be lower than it is today, converting now means voluntarily paying a higher rate to avoid a lower one. That is backward. The conversion crowd sometimes assumes everyone's taxes are headed up, but that is an assumption, not a fact, and it deserves to be tested against your actual projected income.

For some people, simply taking ordinary distributions in retirement at a modest rate beats prepaying tax today. The only way to know is to project your retirement income honestly, including Social Security and any pension, rather than assuming the worst about future rates.

4. The money will pass to heirs who get a step-up anyway

Estate considerations can flip the entire calculation. Consider someone late in life with a serious health situation, whose assets are likely to pass to heirs before long.

Traditional IRA dollars left to heirs are taxed as those heirs withdraw them, which is a real consideration. But other assets, like appreciated stock in a taxable account, generally receive a step-up in cost basis at death, which can wipe out the embedded capital gains for the heirs.

In a case like that, spending energy and tax dollars converting a traditional IRA may make less sense than simply leaving the accounts as they are and letting the estate planning rules do the work.

This is exactly the kind of situation where a reflexive "always convert" instinct can cost a family money rather than save it. It is worth coordinating with an estate planning attorney before acting.

5. State taxes erase the federal benefit

Federal brackets get all the attention, but your state often wants a cut of a conversion, too. If you live in a high-tax state today and realistically plan to retire somewhere with low or no income tax, converting now can mean paying state tax you could have sidestepped entirely by simply waiting until after you move.

The federal math might look fine in isolation, but once you layer your current state's tax on top of the conversion, the case can fall apart.

The decision and your geography are tied together, and analyzing the conversion without your specific state in the picture can lead you somewhere you wouldn't choose if you saw the full bill.

The pattern worth noticing

Look at these five situations and a theme emerges. A Roth conversion isn't good or bad on its own. It's good or bad relative to your specific circumstances:

• Your current bracket vs your expected future bracket
• Whether you have outside cash to pay the tax
• Your estate plans
• Your state

Strip away those specifics and "always convert" is just a slogan. What makes the slogan dangerous is that it sounds responsible. It carries the glow of disciplined, forward-thinking planning, which is exactly why people follow it without checking whether it fits their own numbers.

I'm not arguing against conversions. Used in the right years, with the tax paid from the right place, they remain one of the more useful planning tools available to people heading into retirement.

I am arguing against treating them as automatic. The same move that helps one person in a low-income gap year can hurt another who is at peak earnings, short on outside cash or about to relocate to a no-tax state.

Before you convert, the honest question isn't "Should everyone do this?" It's "Does this make sense for me, this year, given everything else?"

Sometimes the answer is an enthusiastic yes. Sometimes the most valuable thing a conversion analysis produces is the decision to wait.

Both are wins, and knowing the difference is what separates a real strategy from a popular one.

A Roth IRA offers tax deferral on any earnings in the account. Qualified withdrawals of earnings from the account are tax-free. Withdrawals of earnings prior to age 59½ or prior to the account being opened for five years, whichever is later, may result in a 10% IRS penalty tax. Limitations and restrictions may apply.

Traditional IRA account owners have considerations to make before performing a Roth IRA conversion. These primarily include income tax consequences on the converted amount in the year of conversion, withdrawal limitations from a Roth IRA, and income limitations for future contributions to a Roth IRA. In addition, if you are required to take a required minimum distribution (RMD) in the year you convert, you must do so before converting to a Roth IRA.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

As they approach retirement, the question shifts. How much can we spend and keep the plan on track?

That shift catches more people off guard than anything else I see in the practice I founded, MOKAN Wealth Management. It centers on one portfolio decision that, made before you stop working, might be among the most consequential financial moves a preretiree can make.

The risk nobody considers

The first 10 years of retirement are the most consequential, financially speaking. If the market pulls hard during that stretch and you still need income, you're in a position when selling becomes unavoidable. Since every dollar pulled from a 401(k) or IRA is taxed as ordinary income, you often have to sell more shares just to cover the tax bill.

Consider a retiree who needs $60,000 a year from a $1.5 million portfolio, and the market drops 20% in year one. To generate that same $60,000, they now must sell a larger share of a smaller pie and pay ordinary income tax on top of it.

If they need $80,000 pretax to net $60,000 after taxes, that could mean liquidating more than 5% of an already reduced account in a single year, before the market has had any chance to recover.

The market pulls back. You sell more. You owe more tax. Those shares are gone before the recovery arrives. This isn't a rare scenario. It's predictable, and it has a name: Sequence of returns risk.

There are steps you can take to avoid having to deal with this issue.

Step No. 1: Buy yourself time

Time is the one thing that changes everything in a downturn. If you don't have to sell, you can wait for a recovery. The problem is that most retirement plans don't build in that time.

Downturns vary widely in length. The 2020 pullback took about six months to recover. The 2022 decline took roughly two years. The dot-com decline from 2000 to 2002 took about seven years, and the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis took about five and a half. A retiree who needs income every month doesn't have seven years to wait.

The solution is what I call a Retirement War Chest. About three years before retirement, set aside four to eight years of portfolio income in a separate reserve, sized to your specific income plan, tax strategy and spending goals. Not a vague percentage, not a target-date fund — your specific number.

That reserve funds your lifestyle and buys your growth investments time to recover without forcing a sale at the worst possible moment.

Step No. 2: Build it to hold up

The War Chest is not the place to chase yield or take on credit risk. It needs to be stable, liquid and predictable — which points to laddered short-term U.S. Treasuries.

Consider a hypothetical $825,000 War Chest:

Each rung matures and rolls forward, so the reserve keeps generating predictable income without ever touching the market.

This example is illustrative only. Every household's number looks different, depending on spending, Social Security timing and other income sources.

Step No. 3: Let the rest of the portfolio do its job

The War Chest is not the whole portfolio; it's the piece that buys time. The rest needs to stay invested and growing, because a 62-year-old couple could easily have 30 years of retirement ahead of them, and inflation doesn't take time off.

A hypothetical portfolio averaging a 10% return with an 18% standard deviation would produce returns from -8% to 28% in roughly two out of three years, and from -26% to 46% in about 19 out of 20 years. Occasionally it will perform well outside that range in either direction.

Those difficult years on the low end are exactly what the War Chest is built to absorb, so the growth portion of the portfolio never has to sell into them.

Past performance does not predict future results, and every portfolio's actual range will differ based on how it's built and what it holds.

The part most advisers miss

A market pullback can also open a better Roth conversion window. When account values are down, converting the same number of shares costs less in tax. The War Chest covers spending while the conversion happens, and when the market recovers, that growth occurs inside the Roth account, tax-free from that point forward.

Few advisers connect these two ideas. The War Chest is not only a spending reserve; it's what makes it possible to act on a tax opportunity during the exact years the market is presenting one.

The bottom line

The Retirement War Chest is not complicated. It is disciplined. The goal was never to sidestep market volatility. Markets will do what markets do. The goal is to ensure volatility never forces a sale at the wrong time.

One shift, made before you retire is what it takes to walk into the next 30 years on your own terms.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

Many of the families I advise are first-generation wealth creators. They're accomplished, analytical and deeply knowledgeable about their fields. Yet investing has its own language and principles. When I began learning about investing, baseball gave me a familiar way to understand new concepts.

Baseball and investing both reward patience, discipline and sound judgment over long periods. Both also invite overreaction, emotional decisions and misplaced confidence in a compelling story. The comparisons are not exact, but they can make important investment principles easier to grasp.

These five lessons from baseball illustrate how successful investors might think through uncertainty, risk and long-term decision-making.

1. Volatility and the consistency of a hitter

Which stock is better, one that returns 5% every year without fail, or one that averages 8% a year but is sometimes down 20%? The answer depends on the investor's objectives, risk tolerance and ability to remain committed through difficult periods.

Baseball poses a similar question. Which hitter is better, the consistent singles hitter or the player who bats .200 with 45 home runs? The power hitter may create more total value, but relying on that hitter can be uncomfortable.

A higher-returning investment may come with a more uneven path. For some investors, that path is acceptable. For others, the emotional cost of the volatility may cause them to exit prematurely. The quality of the outcome is not measured solely by the average return, but also by whether the investor can remain committed through the path required to earn it.

2. Lineup and portfolio construction

A baseball lineup is a portfolio in uniform. A manager doesn't want nine identical hitters. A good lineup needs different ways to score: Players who get on base, players who hit for power, players who can run, players who handle left-handed pitching.

Portfolio construction follows the same logic. The goal is not to own the same exposure in 10 different wrappers. It is to combine investments that serve distinct strategic purposes. Some may support growth. Some may provide stability. Others may help protect against specific risks or economic environments.

Diversification can be more illusion than reality if every part of the portfolio depends on the same underlying conditions. A lineup full of power hitters may look dangerous until it faces a pitcher who can exploit weaknesses across the group. The same goes for a portfolio. True construction requires understanding the purpose of each asset.

3. Long seasons and time horizons

Do you bench a great hitter who starts the season 0 for 20? Even great players have bad weeks. The fact that a hitter has struggled over a small sample does not mean the player can't hit.

Investing demands the same discipline and perspective. If an investment is down 10% in a month, selling may feel like action, but action isn't judgment. A short period of poor performance may be meaningful, or it may simply be part of the range of normal outcomes.

A smart baseball fan will look at an April slump and recognize that there are months of the season left to play. Investors often know the same thing intellectually, but losses feel different when they involve family capital, future goals and real consequences. Long-term thinking is easy to admire and hard to practice.

4. Fundamentals matter

So, do you bench the hitter in a slump or sell the investment? Patience isn't always the right response. Sometimes the underlying facts have changed. This is where fundamentals matter.

If a hitter is struggling because of an injury, diminished bat speed or a visible change in approach, the slump may signal a deeper problem. If the hitter is making hard contact but just getting unlucky, patience may be the better response.

With investing, price movement provides information, but it isn't everything. If an investment declines because the underlying thesis has changed, reassessment is appropriate. If the decline reflects temporary sentiment or a broader market selloff, the fundamentals may support staying invested.

The same is true on the upside. If an investment is up significantly, but no one can explain why, enthusiasm shouldn't replace analysis. In baseball, a bloop single still counts in the box score, but it doesn't tell you much about whether the hitter is seeing the ball well. In investing, not every gain is evidence of wisdom.

5. The pull of the narrative

Baseball is full of stories. A player is clutch. A team has momentum. A veteran knows how to win. A young prospect has changed the energy in the clubhouse. While these narratives make the game more enjoyable, they don't always have predictive value.

Markets have their own narratives. One commentator can make a compelling case for a bear market. Another can make an equally polished case for a bull market. Both might use data. Both might sound confident. Both might be wrong.

The danger is when the story becomes more persuasive than the evidence. In baseball and investing, the disciplined approach is to ask what the story explains, what it ignores and whether it should change your decision.

The discipline of staying invested

Baseball and investing both reward a certain temperament: Patience without passivity, confidence without certainty, and discipline without rigidity.

Whether evaluating volatility, building a portfolio, resisting the urge to react to short-term results, focusing on fundamentals or looking past compelling narratives, the common thread is disciplined judgment. The objective isn't to eliminate uncertainty. It's to make better decisions in the presence of it.

The season is long. The fundamentals matter. The story isn't always the evidence. And often the hardest part is staying disciplined long enough for a sound process to work.

Next up: Recognizing when the environment changes.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

According to a widely cited figure from the U.S. Census Bureau, the average age of widowhood is just 59.

Meanwhile, a recent study found divorce rates among adults age 50 and older — known as "gray divorce" — have more than doubled over the past 30 years and now account for nearly 35% of all divorces. The number of adults ages 40 to 59 marrying for the first time has more than quadrupled.

The result? More people than ever are entering — or re-entering — the dating world later in life.

For those who formally couple, an increasing number are choosing to cohabitate — either before marriage or instead of it. In 2000, fewer than 1 million adults age 50 and older lived with an unmarried partner.

The National Center for Family & Marriage Research found that by 2022, that number had grown to around 4.6 million, a nearly fivefold increase.

But living together without marrying doesn't eliminate financial risk. In many cases, it can increase it because fewer automatic legal protections apply, and those protections vary by state.

Married couples benefit from family law, which governs issues such as asset division and financial support if a relationship ends. Unmarried couples generally receive only the protections they put in writing.

If you move into a partner's home, contribute to renovations or commingle assets without a formal agreement, you could walk away with little — or nothing — if the relationship ends. You may also have no legal claim to assets if your partner dies without naming you in an estate plan.

Whether you marry or simply share your life with someone, there are important steps you should take to protect one another financially and build a stronger partnership — especially as you age.

1. Share the full financial picture

It's hard to know how to protect each other financially until you understand what each of you is bringing into the relationship.

Take the time to ensure both partners have a full financial picture of the other's net worth, income sources today and in retirement, obligations to children or ex-spouses, business interests, real estate holdings and current estate plans.

But don't stop there — talk about how each other's wealth was created and what challenges shaped that journey. These details make up your money story, which can explain your perspectives, behaviors and triggers around financial matters.

You may have inherited money after a contentious family dispute, making you guarded about transparency. Your partner may have gone through a divorce where finances were weaponized, making them anxious about merging accounts.

Understanding these histories — not just the numbers — can help both of you approach money conversations with more patience, less defensiveness and a clearer sense of where concerns are really coming from.

2. Agree on priorities and contingencies

Just as each of you brings a unique financial picture and personal history to the relationship, you also bring different priorities, concerns and goals. One partner may be focused on navigating a significant wealth disparity, while the other is concerned about preserving an inheritance for children while still building a shared future.

Perhaps you've moved into your partner's home and are wondering what would happen if they passed away before you, or how best to structure household expenses and shared financial responsibilities.

Whatever your concerns may be, open and honest communication is essential. Discuss not only what matters to each of you, but why it matters. Walk through potential "what if" scenarios together and identify solutions before they become challenges.

These conversations can help align expectations, reduce misunderstandings and create a plan that reflects the needs and priorities of both partners.

3. Formalize the plan

Good intentions aren't enough when life gets complicated. If you want your wishes honored and your loved ones protected, you need legally binding documents — and there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

The right strategy depends on your circumstances and may include a cohabitation or prenuptial agreement, wills, trusts, beneficiary designations, powers of attorney and property agreements.

For example, if you're living in a home owned by your partner or fiancé, a cohabitation agreement alone may not protect your right to remain there if they pass away.

Likewise, if you're remarried and want to provide for a spouse while ultimately preserving an inheritance for your children, that often requires a thoughtful combination of estate planning strategies, trusts and marital agreements.

It's about creating the right structure — not simply checking documents off a list. Regardless of your circumstance, it all comes down to understanding what you want to accomplish, then working with an estate planning attorney, tax professional and financial adviser, as appropriate, to put the right solutions in place.

The takeaway

The goal is not to protect yourself from your partner. It's to remove ambiguity so the relationship you're building together — whether it comes with a marriage certificate or not — is grounded in clarity rather than assumptions.

The couples who navigate this well aren't necessarily the ones with the least wealth disparity or the simplest family dynamics. They're the ones willing to have uncomfortable conversations early, put appropriate legal protections in place and view financial transparency as an act of love rather than a sign of distrust.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

The Small Business Administration has quietly rewritten several of the rules that determine who qualifies, how much collateral you need and how your application gets underwritten. Many business owners, and even some lenders, are still catching up.

As someone who works with business owners on financing every day for startups, acquisitions, expansions, refinances and working capital — I've watched these changes ripple through real deals this year.

Some of them make qualifying harder. One makes more capital available than ever before. Here's what's changed, what's driving it and what it means for your next move.

1. Automated credit scoring is gone for small 7(a) loans

For years, many smaller SBA 7(a) loans were approved using the FICO Small Business Scoring Service (SBSS). This is a blended credit score that lets lenders fast-track applications without a deep dive into the financials.

As of March 1, 2026, that shortcut is gone for 7(a) small loans. Every application now goes through the same full manual underwriting once reserved for larger, more complex deals, including debt service coverage ratio (DSCR) documentation and at least two months of bank statements.

In practice, this means a loan that might have cleared in a couple of weeks under the old scoring model can now take considerably longer, simply because a human underwriter has to work through the full financial picture rather than lean on an algorithm.

What this means for you: Approvals will generally take longer, and your financial documentation needs to be airtight before you apply. These documents should not be assembled after a lender asks for them.

Clean books, accurate information, current financials and a clear, written explanation for any revenue dips or one-off expenses are now essential, not optional.

If your bookkeeping has been informal, this is the year to tighten it up before you apply for a loan, not during underwriting.

2. Collateral requirements have expanded dramatically

Collateral used to be a non-issue for most smaller SBA loans — it was only required above $500,000. That threshold has dropped sharply, and the "simplified" small-loan path, which used to apply to loans under $500,000, now covers a narrower band of financing than before.

This change catches business owners off guard the most. A $150,000 working capital loan that once sailed through with minimal collateral discussion may now require a lien on equipment, inventory or even a partial pledge of personal assets, depending on the lender's interpretation of the new guidance.

What this means for you: If you're borrowing for equipment, working capital or a modest expansion, you may now need to pledge collateral you didn't expect to need. It's worth reviewing your business and personal assets — and talking through what you're willing to put up — before you apply, so there are no surprises in the middle of the process.

This is also a good moment to ask your lender directly what collateral position they'll require, since practices can vary somewhat by institution even under the same SBA guidance.

3. Larger equity injections for riskier start-ups and acquisitions

If you're buying or launching a business, the SBA now requires a 10% equity injection as standard practice for riskier transactions.

This isn't new in concept — lenders have long wanted to see borrowers with skin in the game — but it's now a firmer line, particularly on acquisition financing where it is a risky transaction.

I've seen this catch acquisition buyers especially hard. A buyer targeting a $2 million business acquisition on the riskier side now needs to plan for roughly $200,000 in equity before other closing costs — capital that has to come from somewhere real, not from optimistic projections.

What this means for you: Buyers need to plan their capital stack earlier, not once they're already under contract. Having strong personal liquidity is a great look for most lenders and helps with much more success achieving an approval.

If you're short on the equity piece, seller financing or a rollover of retirement funds (ROBS) can sometimes help bridge the gap — but that structure needs to be built into the deal from day one, not bolted on later once a lender flags the shortfall.

4. Ownership eligibility rules have tightened

Effective March 1, 2026, SBA loan eligibility now requires that 100% of a business's ownership — including indirect ownership through holding companies or trusts — be held by U.S. citizens or nationals.

Even lawful permanent residents (green card holders) no longer qualify for SBA-backed financing under the new rule, and indirect ownership through a passive investor or silent partner counts just as much as direct ownership does.

What this means for you: If your ownership structure includes any non-citizen investors, silent partners or trust arrangements, it's worth auditing your cap table before you apply. Look at every direct and indirect owner, not just the names on the operating agreement. Restructuring ownership can take time and may involve legal counsel, so this is not a step to discover you need in the middle of an application.

The good news: There's more capital available than ever

It's not all tighter belts. In one of the most significant shifts in SBA history, eligible borrowers can now combine 7(a) and 504 loans for up to $10 million in total SBA-backed financing — double the previous $5 million cap, effective July 4, 2026.

The two programs are also no longer linked the way they used to be: A 7(a) loan balance no longer reduces how much you can still access through a 504 loan.

That's a meaningful structural change, not just a bigger number. A manufacturer, for example, could previously use unlimited 504 financing project-by-project for real estate and equipment, but was capped on how much additional 7(a) working capital they could layer on top.

Now that same business can pair long-term, fixed-rate 504 financing with up to $5 million in 7(a) working capital — something that simply wasn't possible at this scale before.

For manufacturers specifically, the SBA has also waived upfront guaranty fees on qualifying 7(a) loans up to $950,000 for fiscal year 2026 — a meaningful cost savings for capital-intensive businesses that are already navigating tighter underwriting elsewhere.

What this means for you: If you clear the new underwriting bar, there's genuinely more room to grow than before. This applies particularly for businesses that need to pair real estate or equipment financing with working capital, or manufacturers looking to expand capacity. It's worth revisiting a growth plan you may have shelved a year or two ago simply because the old caps made it unworkable.

How to position yourself before you apply

The businesses getting approved smoothly in 2026 tend to do a few things before they ever submit paperwork:

• They get their financial statements current, accurate and reviewed
• They know exactly who owns what percentage of the business
• They've thought through what collateral they're willing to offer
• They've lined up their equity injection well before closing rather than scrambling for it at the last minute

None of this is complicated, but it does take planning. The businesses that skip it are the ones most likely to see a deal stall or fall apart mid-process.

The bottom line

SBA financing hasn't gotten harder across the board — it's gotten more precise. Lenders are asking for more documentation, more collateral and more equity up front, but they're also able to offer more capital to businesses that are prepared for it.

The owners who come out ahead in this environment are the ones who understand the new rules before they apply, not after they've been declined.

If you're weighing a loan for growth, an acquisition or working capital, it's worth a conversation before you submit an application — not after.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

They control a growing share of household wealth, typically outlive their spouses and increasingly hold full authority over the financial decisions that shape their later years.

For advisers, this isn't just a demographic shift. It's one of the most meaningful opportunities in the profession.

Women bring real strengths to the table. They tend to save diligently, take measured risks, plan for the people they love and stay the course when markets get loud.

As an adviser, your job isn't to fix them. It's to meet their readiness with experience, curiosity and genuine support. Then you can help them turn a lifetime of resilience into a lasting strategy.

Three forces that shape the planning conversation

Women's retirement math is shaped by three structural realities. Understanding them isn't about dwelling on setbacks. It's about spotting where thoughtful planning creates the biggest wins.

The pay gap has a compounding effect. Women working full-time still earn about 81 cents for every dollar a man earns, which amounts to roughly $542,800 in lost earnings over a 40-year career — and more than $1 million for many women of color. That ripples through Social Security, pensions and every retirement account.

The opportunity: Catch-up contributions, tax-efficient savings and income strategies designed to help close the gap on purpose.

Caregiving reshapes the earnings curve. Nearly half of all women who left their jobs in 2025 did so to care for children or aging parents (or both). That pause can mean lost income, halted contributions and zeros in the Social Security calculation.

Yet these same women are extraordinary planners. Show them how to rebuild momentum after a career break, and you become indispensable.

Longevity multiplies everything. Women generally live longer and are more likely to manage money solo later in life. Longevity is a gift, and it raises the stakes on long-term care costs, estimated at $171,000 for women over the course of retirement vs $98,000 for men, as of 2025.

Stress-testing a plan to age 95 or 100 isn't an uncomfortable question. It's a powerful one.

Life doesn't move in a straight line

Even the strongest plan needs room to adapt. A few transitions can reshape a woman's finances, and advisers who anticipate them are far better positioned to help.

Gray divorce. Divorce rates for couples over 50 have roughly doubled since the 1990s. Income often drops while fixed expenses hold steady.

The key moment is before the decree is signed, when you can help a client understand spousal benefits, pension sharing and separate property. These are proactive conversations, not reactive ones.

The sandwich generation squeeze. Many women support adult children and aging parents at once. Your most valuable contribution is often a simple, compassionate reframe: Children can borrow for education or a first home. No one borrows for retirement.

Helping a client hold that boundary, without judgment, is genuinely impactful work.

The confidence gap. Some women hesitate to engage with the math, shaped by decades of social norms and a fear of missteps. The good news? Confidence is built, not born. Small steps compound just like savings do.

Move your clients forward

A few straightforward approaches can help turn readiness into action for your clients:

• Encourage small, consistent learning. Fifteen minutes a week with a podcast or a well-chosen article gradually shifts how a client relates to her finances.
• Make fears specific. Vague anxiety overwhelms. Named, concrete worries become solvable problems.
• Create a low-noise environment. Retirement is a decades-long strategy. Clients who understand that don't react to every headline.
• Automate where possible. Removing willpower from savings decisions is one of the most practical moves in your toolkit.
• Make the relationship feel safe. A client who feels respected, heard and free to ask questions stays engaged. That's not just a warmth metric. It drives retention and referrals.

Transform their approach

While an independent do-it-yourself attitude is possible for many women entering retirement, the stakes in the planning process can be high, and a well-coordinated adviser and team deliver value that is hard to replicate.

A personalized strategy accounts for the specifics of real life: Career breaks, catch-up windows, spousal preservation and longevity projections tailored to the client in front of you. Templates don't serve this market well.

Technical depth is where integrated teams can shine. Tax-efficient income structuring, Social Security claiming and legacy planning aren't separate conversations. They're interconnected, and coordinating across them produces a meaningfully better outcome.

Emotional steadiness is the most undervalued layer. During divorce, widowhood or a major caregiving transition, clients need someone who can hold the long view calmly while everything else feels uncertain. That steady, objective presence is one of the most important things you can offer.

Practical next steps

A few places to sharpen your approach as an adviser:

• Audit your discovery process. Does it systematically address caregiving history, career-break gaps and longevity concerns? Build those questions in as standard practice, not a special track.
• Build a transitions playbook. Gray divorce and sandwich generation pressures rarely come with advance notice. Equip your team with a clear, thoughtful process before the call comes in.
• Lower the entry barrier. A 15- to 30-minute strategy conversation can help deliver more clarity than weeks of private worrying. Make that easy to access.

The time is now

Women are ready to take the reins of their financial futures, and they're doing it with strength, savvy and a clear sense of what matters. The barriers are real, but they're context, not destiny. What comes next is written by the choices made today.

The adviser who meets that readiness with experience, genuine curiosity and real support won't just help women reach financial sovereignty. You'll earn the trust, the loyalty and the referrals that follow for years to come.

Related Content

• How Financial Professionals Can Empower Their Female Clients
• Winning Strategies for Financial Advisers as Clients' Lives Evolve
• Addressing Your Clients' Emotional Side: Communication Techniques for Financial Advisers
• Women Are Better Investors Than They've Been Told: Here's How You Can Use That Edge
• How Advisers Can Establish Relationships With HNW Prospects

This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

The circumstances are different, but the arguments sound remarkably similar:

"Mom already gave him money for years."

"Dad told me something completely different."

"Why did she get more?"

"Who gets the house?"

"Was Dad even capable of making that decision?"

What I'm watching isn't unusual. Inheritance can bring out feelings that have been sitting there for years. In a 2025 Trust and Will survey, 38% of Americans who had shared their estate plans with family said those conversations led to disagreements.

Caregiving responsibilities among adult children aren't always shared equally, which further complicates inheritance decisions. One child lives 10 minutes away. The others live three states away. At first, she's helping Mom out. Then she's sitting through medical appointments, figuring out what the doctor said and what needs to happen next, managing medications and emergencies, handling bills and perhaps cutting back at work.

Business Insider (paywall) reports that daughters make up roughly 61% of family caregivers overall, and nearly 70% of those provide round-the-clock care. The financial toll even has a name: The "daughter tax."

It can mean reduced work hours, missed promotions, paused retirement contributions and more than $7,000 a year, on average, in out-of-pocket caregiving expenses, according to AARP. Over time, the hit from lost wages and retirement savings can approach $295,000.

Then Mom dies and the will says everything gets split equally.

The daughter is thinking, "I gave up years of my life and spent my own money taking care of Mom." Her siblings are thinking, "Mom said we split everything equally."

Was she supposed to be reimbursed? Compensated? Did Mom intend to leave her more?

Parents: Your money should take care of you

Before you start mentally dividing your assets among your kids, ask yourself: What if I need that money?

According to Kiplinger's Trillion Dollar Talk survey, conducted in partnership with Morning Consult, roughly two in five families have never discussed inheritance plans.

Of course, parents aren't obligated to tell their adult children how much they have or what they're going to inherit. But there's another conversation I think you really should have: What money will be used to fund my long-term care should it be needed?

What if you or your spouse require years of in-home care, assisted living or memory care? What if you need to retrofit the house so you can stay there? Which assets will pay for it, and who manages the money if you can't?

The inheritance your kids may have in their heads today could look very different after five or 10 years of care. And if you never talk about that possibility, you're setting everyone up for assumptions, surprises and, yes, conflicts.

My friend Beth Pinsker, CFP and MarketWatch columnist, wrote My Mother's Money: A Guide to Financial Caregiving after managing her own mother's finances and care. At one point, her mother's caregiving costs reached about $12,000 a month.

There may be much less inheritance after you pay for your own care. There may be none. That's ok. The inheritance is what remains after you take care of yourselves.

That's what I'd talk about with the kids: Here's how we intend to pay for our care. Here's who will handle the finances if we can't. Here's what we may need from you — and what we don't. That way, if the inheritance changes dramatically, nobody is left wondering what happened to Mom and Dad's money.

Equal isn't always fair

Parents often assume an equal split is safest. Two children? Fifty-fifty. Three? One third each.

But maybe you gave one child $100,000 toward a house. Was that simply a gift or an advance on an inheritance? Maybe another child has significant health or financial needs. Maybe one wants the family house while the others want cash.

If you decide on an unequal split, understand how it might be heard. "Sarah needs more help" can easily become, "Mom cares about Sarah more."

You don't need to disclose your net worth or give everyone a preview of the will. But if you're making a decision that could surprise one of your kids, tell them why.

Here are the steps I advise anyone in this situation to take:

1. Head off the big fight now

Keep your will, trust and beneficiary designations current. Be clear whether a substantial lifetime gift is simply a gift or something you expect to count against an inheritance.

If one child is spending significant money on your care, decide whether those expenses will be reimbursed.

Think carefully about whom you name as executor or trustee, especially if that person is also an heir. And ask who actually wants the house, jewelry, furniture or Dad's watch.

Don't assume you know. The point isn't to make everyone happy with every decision. It's to make your intentions clear while you can.

2. Bring in a neutral voice

This is also where a good fee-only financial adviser can do much more than manage investments. There are several qualified advisers in my Wealthramp network who are helping families navigate this situation.

The right adviser can model what several years of care could do to your finances, put numbers around different inheritance choices, look at whether one child can realistically afford to keep the family house, and help you think through these decisions without being emotionally involved in them.

Your adviser isn't your estate attorney. The adviser helps you work through the financial choices; the attorney makes sure those choices are properly documented. Ideally, they work together.

3. While you still can, talk about it

I keep coming back to my three friends. In these families, only one parent is still alive, and even then, it's too late for the conversation I'm talking about. The decisions have been made, and the lines have been drawn.

So to my friends who are parents with adult kids: Have these conversations now. Don't leave your kids to guess what you meant later.

And to my friends who are already in the middle of this, I hope you can find your way through it without losing each other in the process.

Related Content

• The Caregiver Penalty: What Women Need to Know Before Hitting Pause on Their Career
• Caregiving Is a Stealth Retirement Expense for Women: I Should Know
• How to Leave Different Amounts to Adult Children Without Causing a Rift
• The Three Biggest Fears Keeping Retirees Up at Night
• I Didn't Think I Needed an Estate Plan Until This Happened

This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

"You have a will — that's enough."

"You don't need an attorney."

"Just get a Lady Bird deed."

While most of the comments are probably coming from a good place, turning to social media for estate planning guidance overlooks one important fact: No two estate plans are the same. A strategy that worked well for one family may be inappropriate for another because everyone's goals, dynamics and circumstances are different.

Before taking advice from a fellow social media user, keep in mind that the most valuable part of estate planning isn't choosing the right documents — it's asking the right questions and seeking guidance from a licensed professional.

While there's a lot of misinformation on social media, the estate planning advice you'll get there isn't necessarily wrong — it might just be the wrong fit for your plan.

Consequences of poor estate planning

For example, let's consider a mother who signs a Lady Bird deed leaving her home equally to her children. This estate planning tool allows homeowners to transfer their property to chosen beneficiaries upon their death, maintaining complete control and ownership of the home while they're still living.

Unfortunately, one child passes before her, leaving their children behind. As the deed was never updated, it's unclear whether the surviving sibling or the grandchildren will get the deceased child's share. That decision could become an expensive battle that gets hashed out in court.

In many cases, parents know what they want to happen but don't update their estate plan to reflect those wishes as life changes. If plans aren't updated regularly, or properly drafted, the way assets are distributed may not align with what the owners intended.

Start by asking the right questions

The estate planning process doesn't begin with a document, it begins with asking the right questions.

To better understand your family, an estate planning attorney might ask questions such as:

• What do you want your plan to accomplish?
• If one of your children dies before you, who do you want to receive that child's share?
• Do any beneficiaries have a disability or receive government benefits?
• Could a beneficiary's divorce or financial difficulties affect an inheritance?
• Have there been any major life changes, such as marriages, divorces, births or deaths, since your plan was created?

The answers you give will help determine which estate planning tools are most appropriate.

Social media strategy

The next time someone online recommends an estate planning strategy, keep in mind that no one on social media knows your family's dynamics.

An estate plan that's worked well for someone else doesn't make it the right plan for you.

An estate planning attorney asks the questions that reveal what you want your plan to accomplish.

Simply having legal documents in place isn't enough, especially when they don't reflect your current wishes.

Once your plan is drafted, it should be reviewed periodically to ensure it aligns with your current circumstances.

Related Content

• 10 Things You Should Know About Estate Planning
• I Have Two Homes, But Three Kids. Can My Estate Plan Be Fair?
• An Overlooked Way to Pass Down Your Home Without Probate: The Life Estate
• Estate Planning in Six Manageable Steps
• Don't Disinherit Your Grandchildren: The Hidden Risks of Retirement Account Beneficiary Forms

This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

This transformation hasn't happened by accident — it's the result of years of strategic positioning as a wealth hub and a combination of several other factors, including capital inflows, technological innovation, favorable tax frameworks and lifestyle appeal.

The transformation is reflected in the growing influx of affluent individuals, institutions and private banks into Lisbon and greater Portugal.

Microsoft, for example, recently announced plans for a $10 billion investment in an AI computing data center in Sines, which the company describes as "one of the largest investments in AI computing capacity in Europe, positioning Portugal as a leader in the development of scalable, secure and sustainable AI."

Investors considering a move to Portugal, or making it part of a multi-jurisdictional wealth strategy, should examine its evolving tax and regulatory landscape before finalizing their decision. This will help ensure its financial environment aligns with their own wealth preservation objectives.

'Europe's Silicon Valley'

Microsoft's announcement coincides with Portugal's and Lisbon's growing importance as a tech hub, described by some as "Europe's Silicon Valley."

This reputation is being forged by tech-focused homegrown companies, such as Sword Health, which offers AI-enhanced physical therapy services and reached a $4 billion valuation in mid-2025, and Talkdesk, a global cloud call-center solution provider that was valued at $10 billion in 2021.

For entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and technology founders, Portugal's emerging AI ecosystem presents wide-ranging opportunities in cloud infrastructure, digital health and professional services supporting technology expansion.

Lisbon was ranked 26th on the global wealth map, the Savills HNWI Hotspot Index. Its popularity, alongside Portugal as a whole, confirms it's becoming a benchmark for those who value technological innovation, quality of life, security and opportunities for economic growth.

And for those involved in the tech industry in particular, this migration of tech talent owes a debt to the availability of Portugal's D8 Digital Nomad Visa, which offers remote workers and self-employed professionals with qualifying foreign income both short- and long-stay options in Portugal.

Lisbon's emergence as a center for wealth mobility

Lisbon is benefiting from a growing trend — international wealth mobility. But there's more to it than just the financial benefits. Lisbon, and Portugal in general, are ranked among the top global relocation destinations for affluent individuals.

Portugal has seen a rapid growth in foreign residents, and they now make up almost 1.6 million people, or 14% of the population — a figure which doubled between 2021 and 2025 according to Statistics Portugal (INE).

For many observers, this serves only to strengthen the perception of Portugal, and by implication, Lisbon, as an attractive landing point for globally mobile capital.

A beneficial fiscal environment

Portugal's fiscal environment has played a significant part in its rising popularity. It's introduced a range of residency, investment and tax incentives to attract international investors, global entrepreneurs and highly skilled professionals.

This has driven significant foreign direct investment and capital inflows into the economy and illustrates how the country has evolved from relying on volume to targeting high-end capital and talent.

Lisbon's emergence as a wealth hub owes much to the strength of its property market. It's proven to be highly attractive to affluent global investors, with 91% of respondents to 2025's Wealthy Expats in Portugal survey considering its real estate market as "highly appealing."

International buyers constitute a significant proportion of transactions, and CBRE predicted total real estate investment to surpass €2.5 billion (about $2.9 billion) in 2025, up 8% from the previous year.

Rising property values and a favorable lifestyle

Lisbon's prime districts, including Avenida de Liberdade and Chiado, now compete directly with global, well-established wealth centers. Its real estate is now recognized as both a monetary and lifestyle asset, with Eurostat reporting a 180% rise in Portugal's house prices between 2015 and 2025, compared to an EU average of 65%.

While this rise has been remarkable, investors need to consider property price inflation, regulatory changes and growing competition for prime assets and how it may impact long-term financial planning. It's also worth securing specialist tax advice before finalizing relocation decisions.

Lisbon's emergence as a tech and innovation hub is a major factor in its rising popularity. It's developing a burgeoning cluster of tech talent, innovative start-ups in high-value sectors and leading-edge digital infrastructure that's successfully attracted institutional investors. It's no surprise it's becoming renowned as a location where innovation meets lifestyle capital.

Burgeoning inward investment points to strong confidence

Another factor is the sheer volume of inward investment. Private banks, including Indosuez, Union Bancaire Privée and Julius Baer, have expanded their operations in Lisbon recently. RealEstate Lisbon reports that for the first half of 2025, foreign buyers' overall investment in residential property in Lisbon totaled more than €465 million.

While the evidence illustrates Portugal's ongoing popularity, industry observers will be closely monitoring whether it can maintain its current momentum. As competition grows from alternative wealth hubs, such as Dubai, Singapore and southern Europe, industry insiders will be hoping to see continued investment in infrastructure, innovation and talent attraction if Lisbon is to maintain its long-term upwards trajectory.

Lisbon has experienced a rapid growth in wealth management demand driven by high numbers of incoming high-net-worth individuals seeking capital preservation strategies. It's led to increasing competition for talent within the financial services sector and underpins Lisbon as an emerging European node for private wealth advisory services.

This burgeoning international community is also creating increased demand for specialist legal, tax, healthcare and wealth management services, which are contributing to a sophisticated ecosystem that supports globally mobile families and businesses.

Much more than just a financially beneficial option

While Lisbon's financial advantages are compelling, its culture and comparatively lower cost of living are also significant. Recent World Digital Foundation research highlighted the appeal of its climate, safety, healthcare access and rich culture. It underscores how Lisbon is becoming a byword for a redefinition of luxury — measured in time, well-being and security.

Lisbon is benefiting from a rare alignment of favorable government policies, inward capital investment, technological innovation and a growing reputation for a relaxed, safe and healthy culture and lifestyle. Lisbon's evolution presents opportunities far beyond its lifestyle appeal.

Its growing importance as a center for technology, wealth management and global mobility means those considering European expansion or relocation should be actively evaluating Portugal's place within their long-term strategic plans.

To reiterate. If your long-term wealth preservation strategy aligns with Portugal's financial landscape, you want to access a growing AI ecosystem, property valuations match your budget and you're prepared to seek advice from specialists that understand Portugal's regulatory landscape and its economy,

Lisbon could be the ideal location for securing your financial future — not just a lifestyle uplift.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

How do people approach Social Security strategy?

Nearly one third of people claim Social Security benefits as soon as they turn 62, according to the Congressional Research Service. When they do that, they permanently reduce the dollar amount of their Social Security checks by 30%.

On the surface, this seems short-sighted. After all, a few years of being patient can get you the entire benefit you're entitled to, and if you wait a few years beyond that, you can even increase your checks by 8% for every year you wait until you turn 70.

While it's definitely true that you leave Social Security money on the table each month when you claim early, sometimes there are extenuating circumstances that make it a sensible decision.

Involuntary retirement is all too common. A person in their late 50s or early 60s, working a good job and on track for their retirement savings goal, suddenly loses their job. Paychecks stop, and finding comparable employment at that age is undeniably difficult.

In cases like that, people often need to claim Social Security early for financial survival.

Other reasons to file early include receiving a serious diagnosis that may cut your life short; if you're unlikely to live for 20 more years, it might make more sense to start benefits now so you can begin using that money immediately.

On the other end of the spectrum, about 10% of people wait until age 70 to claim Social Security, gaining them an additional 8% in their checks for each of the three years they delayed their benefits.

That's a tempting proposition. After all, where else can you get a guaranteed 8% boost in today's market? That's potentially a large amount of additional money you will collect, especially if you live into your 90s.

Market conditions can also influence early claiming. If the market drops 40% right as you retire, your $500,000 nest egg is suddenly reduced to $300,000. That can understandably cause you to panic and jump at the quickest way to make up for that lost money.

However, in doing so, you risk the market recovering before you actually need to tap into Social Security to survive. If the market recovers a few days after it falls, but you've already activated Social Security, the extra income you'd planned on by delaying benefits will be permanently inaccessible.

How should you strategize your Social Security benefits?

Many people think Social Security decisions are just about simple timing: Start benefits early and risk getting less lifetime money, or start them late and risk passing away before the extra income makes up for the money you didn't get while you were delaying benefits.

This is known as the "break-even analysis." How long do you need to live to make the shorter collection of larger checks net you more money than the longer collection of smaller checks? That analysis needs to consider much more than just the simple math of lifetime benefit calculation.

For example, every year, Social Security adjusts its benefit checks to account for inflation in what's called the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA). If you get $1,400 a month in 2026 after starting benefits at age 62 and the COLA for 2026 is 3%, you will get $1,442 a month next year. If you delayed benefits until 70, you'd be making $2,480 a month in 2026, and the 3% COLA would increase that to $2,554 a month.

Those increases cause your benefits to compound dramatically over decades of retirement.

You also need to take taxation into account. Retirement accounts such as IRAs have required minimum distributions (RMDs). The government requires you to take a certain percentage of your retirement account as income each year after you turn 73. That income is taxable, which means the larger your RMD, the larger your tax bill will be.

In some cases, you can reduce your lifetime taxation by delaying Social Security benefits and living on your retirement accounts until you turn 70, as this means your RMDs will be smaller.

Seek professional guidance

This article is just a small taste of the often bewildering complexity of properly strategizing Social Security. Making this decision on your own is risky and could cost you lifetime benefit amounts, unnecessary taxation or both. It's important to work with a financial adviser to help chart the best path forward for your unique situation.

Related Content

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• Five Reasons You Should Take Social Security At 62 (and Five Reasons You Should Wait)
• Should You Claim Social Security Early or Late? A Financial Adviser Weighs In
• Four Social Security Myths Debunked
• 4 Steps to Take if You Lose Your Job Near Retirement

This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

This can apply to both accumulation for retirement and retirement income planning. For today's purposes, we are going to focus on retirement income planning, where our practice, Exit 59 Advisory (I'm the president), is focused.

Below are four areas where planning for women and men should vary and a few things you can do to prepare.

Longevity planning

The obvious fact that women live longer than men is the first domino that falls and creates many of the less obvious dominos falling in its wake.

If you're going to live a longer life, lifetime income sources are more valuable. Receiving $10,000 per month is more valuable if you receive that amount for 30 years instead of 25. (Duh.) So, what can you do about it?

• Consider delaying claiming Social Security or, if you're married, having your spouse delay claiming. That 8% delayed retirement credit you get paid to wait becomes more valuable the longer you collect the benefit.
• Pension options should be considered in the context of a longer life expectancy: Pension formulas are typically based on unisex mortality tables, so your pension benefit does not change because you're a woman. This makes lump sums less valuable typically than lifetime income streams. And single life annuities, all else being equal, are more advisable than joint options that may make more sense for men.
• Consider other lifetime income sources: A private annuity will factor in the fact that you are a woman. However, if you're married, it may make sense to consider joint income annuities. If you just find comfort in knowing you'll have basic expenses covered for a long life, it's worth getting a quote from an insurance agent.

Asset allocation vs asset purpose

Because women live longer, they should have more of their assets in equities as a hedge. However, this increases sequence of returns risk — the risk that the market drops significantly as you start withdrawing.

It also requires riding an investment roller coaster that is twice as scary when you don't have a paycheck.

The concept of asset purpose is similar to a bucketing strategy in that it will allow you to take more risk with buckets of money that you won't need for a long time. You can carve out a portion of your assets for end-of-life and long-term care. Those funds can be aggressively invested, and likely the risk endured, because you probably won't need them for a longer number of years.

Things like travel funds, an expense that spikes early in retirement, would be more conservative. Expenses needed within two years in this strategy would be kept in cash to account for the possibility of a significant market downturn.

In the aggregate, you would end up with a higher equity allocation over time as you spend down the more conservative buckets early in retirement.

Long-term care

I always used to joke in the continuing education sessions I taught on this topic that men who go into a nursing home hate it and then die. Women go in, make friends and live forever. I was only sort of kidding.

Women are not only more likely to need long-term care, since they don't receive the reciprocal care from their husband who has already died, but they tend to need care for about twice as long as their male counterparts. Not fair, I know.

When we build out financial plans, the long-term care expense we stress-test is about twice as high for women as it is for men.

If you don't have a plan, or want to stress-test it yourself, you can access a free version of the planning software we use.

Estate planning that actually matters for you

It is notoriously difficult to get male clients to tackle estate planning. I suspect that's because it's something solely for the benefit of someone else.

If you are a married woman, you should feel more confident that you are doing estate planning for you — and if you don't, things are going to get messy.

I typically encourage our clients to review beneficiary designations annually and a written estate plan (wills, trusts, etc.) every five years or if something material has changed.

This will almost never feel like a priority until something bad has happened. It pays to spray for weeds before they take over your lawn. Trust me: I know.

I really am just scratching the surface on this topic and plan to come back to it in future columns.

Notably not mentioned is the impact of being a caregiver and the outsized impact and obligation this comes with for women.

In this context, it can take you away from your peak earning years. That impacts Social Security, pensions and investment accumulation, not to mention the reality that mental and physical strain can make it easy to take your eye off the ball (your own finances). The former is hard to prevent; the latter is also difficult, but preventable.

This all seems very unfair to women.

Here's the silver lining and forgive the generalization: Women are also better planners.

Related Content

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• How the Tax Torpedo Targets Wealthy Retirees (and How You Can Step Out of Its Path)
• If You're a Wealthy Retiree Who Ignores These 3 Retirement To-Dos, You're Courting Significant Financial Risk
• 5 Mistakes to Avoid in the 5 Years Before You Retire, From a Financial Planner
• For High-Net-Worth Retirees, Tax Planning and Estate Planning Are the Main Events

This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

That is exactly why a vacation home deserves its own planning conversation — one that is fully integrated into the rest of your estate plan. Without a plan, a home that was meant to bring a family together can end up doing the opposite.

Why a vacation home is different from other assets

A primary residence often has a relatively straightforward path: It's sold or one person inherits. A vacation home can be more complicated because several family members may expect to share it. And "sharing" a single piece of property among siblings, cousins or in-laws is rarely simple once the original owners are gone.

A few things make vacation homes uniquely tricky to plan for:

• Shared but unequal use. One sibling may visit every summer; another may live across the country and rarely use it. Yet costs and decisions are often expected to be split evenly.
• Ongoing expenses. Property taxes, insurance, maintenance and repairs don't pause when the owners pass away, and often the children were not aware of how much it cost to maintain the property. Someone has to keep paying, and disagreements over who pays what — and how much — can quickly become a source of family conflict. Sharing actual numbers related to expenses is essential to helping the next generation make sound decisions.
• Out-of-state or out-of-country property. A vacation home located in a different state or country from the owner's primary residence can create additional estate administration, probate or tax considerations, depending on the jurisdiction and how the property is owned.
• Sentimental value vs financial value. Family members don't always agree on whether the goal should be to keep the property in the family at almost any cost or to treat it as another asset that can be divided or sold.

What can go wrong without a plan

Families that don't address the vacation home specifically tend to run into the same handful of issues:

• Co-owners disagree about selling, renting or remodeling, with no mechanism to break a tie
• One branch of the family uses the property heavily while another resents paying a portion of the upkeep
• Ownership becomes diluted over generations as the property passes to more heirs, each owning a smaller fractional share, until decision-making becomes unworkable
• One child is left managing the property and bearing the costs, without authority to make important decisions or sell the home if necessary

The common thread is that simply deciding who gets the house isn't enough. A good plan also needs to address how the house will be owned, used, paid for and, eventually, sold or transferred.

Planning tools families can consider

There is no single "right" answer. The appropriate structure depends on your family's goals, the number of heirs involved and how long you hope to keep the property in the family. That said, a few tools come up often in this kind of planning:

• A trust. Placing the property in a revocable living trust can help it pass to heirs without going through probate and allows the original owners to set clear terms for how the property should be used, maintained or eventually sold.
• An LLC or family entity. Some families place the vacation home into a limited liability company or family limited partnership, with each heir holding a membership share rather than a direct deed interest. A manager can be appointed with primary decision-making authority. This can make it easier to set rules around usage and buyouts, and can simplify what happens if one heir later wants to sell their share.
• A co-ownership or usage agreement. Whether or not a trust or LLC is used, a written agreement spelling out how the home will be used and paid for is one of the most practical tools available. It can address a usage schedule, how expenses are split, what happens if someone wants out and who has final say on big decisions, such as major repairs or a sale.
• Gifting strategies. Depending on the value of the property and the family's broader estate plan, gifting an interest in the home during the owners' lifetime may be worth considering. For some families with significant estate tax exposure, more specialized strategies, such as a qualified personal residence trust (QPRT), may also be appropriate. These strategies can have meaningful estate, gift and income tax consequences, so they should be evaluated with your financial adviser, tax professional and estate planning attorney.
• An honest conversation about selling. Not every family will decide to keep the vacation home. Sometimes the most practical plan is to sell the property and divide the proceeds, especially if heirs live far away, have different financial situations, have challenging relationships with each other or simply don't have the same attachment to the property as the original owners.

Before deciding on your approach, there is a more basic question to answer: Does the next generation actually want the house?

Parents sometimes spend considerable time and money creating a structure designed to keep a vacation home in the family without first asking whether their children even want to own it together. One child may treasure the idea while another would prefer to receive other assets. Knowing your children’s preferences in advance can shape the entire plan.

Planning is more than paperwork

Legal documents matter, but they aren't the whole solution. Some of the most effective planning and conversations happen around the kitchen table, not in an attorney's office.

• Talk to the next generation before drafting anything. Find out who actually wants to keep the property. Some heirs may prefer receiving a like amount of assets instead of a portion of the family home.
• Put usage and expense expectations in writing. Even within a formal ownership structure, clear expectations give family members something concrete to point back to when questions arise. Some families even use an app or shared calendar to reserve times and track usage.
• Name a decision-maker or manager. Whether it is one heir, a rotating role or an outside property manager, someone should have clear authority to handle day-to-day issues.
• Revisit the plan periodically. Family circumstances change. Children marry, move or have children of their own, financial situations evolve and the property itself may become more expensive to maintain. A plan that made sense 10 years ago may not fit the family today.

The takeaway

A vacation home can carry sentimental meaning that a typical asset does not, which is exactly why it deserves a deliberate plan rather than an assumption that "the kids will work it out."

The right legal structure — whether a trust, an LLC, a usage agreement or some combination — depends on the family's specific goals. What matters most is starting the conversation early.

Begin by talking with the people who may eventually inherit the home. Ask whether they want it, how they envision using it and whether they're prepared to share the tangible responsibilities and realistic costs that come with ownership.

From there, you can build a plan around what the family actually wants rather than what you assume it will want. That conversation may ultimately do as much to preserve the family vacation home — and the relationships surrounding it — as any legal document.

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• Your Estate Plan Isn't 'Done' Until You've Completed These Five Steps, From an Estate Planning Attorney
• An Attorney's Guide to Your Evolving Estate Plan: Set-It-and-Forget-It Won't Work

This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

There's a reason that framework has lasted. Stocks and bonds remain important building blocks for many investors.

But today, investors have more choices than they did a generation ago.

High-net-worth investors, family offices and advisers increasingly have access to private credit, real estate, private equity, infrastructure and direct energy investments that can provide exposure to assets and economic drivers outside the traditional public markets.

That doesn't mean the 60/40 portfolio has stopped working.

It means investors now have the opportunity to ask a broader question: What other assets may complement it?

Diversification: What drives the investment?

Owning multiple funds doesn't always mean a portfolio is truly diversified.

Stocks and bonds can respond to many of the same forces, including interest rates, inflation, economic expectations and broader market sentiment. In 2022, for example, investors were reminded that stocks and bonds can decline at the same time.

That's why I believe diversification should be viewed not simply in terms of how many investments someone owns, but in terms of what actually drives their value.

Alternative investments can introduce different sources of potential return.

Real estate may be driven by rents and property values. Private credit may be driven by contractual interest payments. Infrastructure may benefit from long-term demand for essential services.

Direct oil and gas investments can be tied to something different again: The development, production and sale of energy.

Where direct oil and gas can fit

I've spent most of my career in oil and gas, and one of the things I believe investors should understand is how different direct energy ownership can be from simply purchasing shares of a publicly traded energy company.

A public oil and gas stock is still a stock. Its price can be influenced by the broader market, investor sentiment, analyst expectations, interest rates and company-specific events.

A direct oil and gas investment can provide exposure much closer to the underlying assets themselves.

Depending on the structure, investor capital may be used to acquire acreage, drill and complete wells, bring production online and develop reserves.

That distinction matters.

When an operator deploys capital into drilling, the goal is to turn dollars invested today into producing energy assets tomorrow.

A successful well can potentially create several layers of value, including current or future oil and natural gas production, potential monthly cash flow, additional proved or undeveloped reserves, potential value from continued development and potential value if producing assets are ultimately sold or otherwise monetized.

That's one reason I believe direct energy deserves a place in the broader diversification conversation.

Instead of investing solely in financial instruments, investors can potentially participate in the development of tangible assets producing commodities the global economy uses every day.

Capital goes to work in the ground

This is an important distinction in the way I think about oil and gas investing.

When we raise capital for a drilling program, the objective is not simply to hold acreage and hope it appreciates.

The capital has a job. It can be deployed to drill wells, complete wells and move assets from undeveloped potential toward production. Each stage can potentially add information and value to the asset.

Before a well is drilled, much of its value may be based on geology, engineering and nearby production. Once it is drilled and completed, the operator has additional data. Once it begins producing, there is another layer of information: Actual production performance.

That production history can help engineers evaluate reserves and can give lenders, potential buyers and other market participants more information with which to assess the asset. In other words, drilling can be a value-creation process, not simply an expense.

That's the model I find particularly compelling: Putting capital to work with the objective of creating producing assets and building value through development.

Energy demand isn't theoretical

There's also a fundamental reason oil and gas remains relevant. The world continues to require enormous amounts of energy.

Transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, petrochemicals, electricity generation, data centers and countless parts of the modern economy depend on reliable energy supplies.

At the same time, oil and gas production is naturally depleting. Existing wells decline, which means new capital and new drilling are continually required simply to replace lost production. That creates an interesting dynamic for investors.

Energy is both an essential commodity and a capital-intensive business. The industry needs investment to find, develop and produce the resources the economy continues to consume.

For investors who understand the risks and have the appropriate time horizon, participating directly in that development can provide exposure to a very different part of the economy than a traditional stock-and-bond portfolio.

The tax treatment can be meaningful

Direct oil and gas can also offer potential tax characteristics that are different from many traditional investments.

Depending on the structure of the investment and an investor's individual tax circumstances, certain drilling and development expenses may qualify for deductions, including potential intangible drilling cost deductions.

Producing oil and gas properties may also qualify for depletion deductions over time. For certain high-income investors, these potential tax benefits can materially affect the overall economics of an investment.

I don't believe anyone should make an investment solely for a tax deduction. The underlying assets, operator, development plan and economics must make sense first.

But when a fundamentally attractive investment also offers potential tax advantages, those benefits can become an important part of the overall investment consideration.

Because the rules can be complex and investor circumstances vary, individuals should always consult their own tax professionals regarding how those provisions may apply.

Start with the asset

When evaluating an oil and gas opportunity, I've always preferred to start with the asset rather than the spreadsheet.

Projections matter, but they're only as good as the assumptions behind them.

I want to know what exists in the ground and what we know about the surrounding area. I ask if there is existing production, if nearby wells have successfully produced from the same formations, what the geology tells us, what the development plan looks like, and what the capital will be used for. I also want to know how experienced the operator is at drilling, producing and selling oil and gas.

These types of questions tell me far more than an attractive projected return by itself.

In our business, the objective is to acquire and develop assets where we believe operational execution can create additional value.

That means deploying capital into drilling and development, gathering real production data, building reserves and continually evaluating the best way to maximize the value of those assets.

The operator matters

Oil and gas isn't a passive business from the operator's perspective. Execution, drilling decisions, completion design, cost control, land and title work, production operations, commodity marketing and timing: These all matter.

That's why I believe investors evaluating direct energy should spend as much time evaluating the operator as they do evaluating the projected economics.

An experienced operator should be able to explain where investor capital is going, what milestones are expected, what can create additional value and how the assets may ultimately be monetized.

The investment isn't just in a commodity. It's also an investment in the operator's ability to execute a development strategy.

Private investments require patient capital

Direct oil and gas investments are generally private investments, which means they should be viewed differently from publicly traded securities.

An investor may not be able to sell an interest with the click of a button. Timing and patience are important.

Patient capital can allow an operator to execute a multi-stage development strategy: Acquire the asset, drill wells, establish production, build reserves and pursue opportunities to create additional value over time.

For investors who have sufficient liquidity elsewhere in their portfolios, that longer-term approach may fit well alongside more liquid public-market investments.

Is 60/40 enough?

For many investors, it may be.

There's nothing inherently wrong with keeping a portfolio simple.

But for investors with significant assets, longer investment horizons and the ability to accept the risks and illiquidity associated with private investments, alternatives can broaden the opportunity set.

I don't view direct oil and gas as a replacement for stocks or bonds. I view it as something fundamentally different. Stocks provide ownership in companies. Bonds provide contractual debt exposure.

Direct oil and gas can provide qualified investors with the opportunity to participate in the acquisition, drilling, development and production of real energy assets.

That is an important distinction.

The question shouldn't be whether every investor needs alternatives.

The better question is whether adding assets driven by different fundamentals can make sense within the investor's overall strategy.

For the right investor, I believe direct energy deserves to be part of that conversation. At the end of the day, diversification isn't about making a portfolio more complicated.

It's about putting capital into assets that have a clear purpose, a clear economic rationale and the potential to create value in different ways.

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• What the Oil Market Is Telling Us Right Now About Energy and Gas Prices

This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

"Mr. Beaver," Lisa began, "we have read your column for years and need your help. What can we do to prevent our mother from going forward with plans that will wind up killing our father?"

I, of course, asked them to please be specific. What plans? What's going on?

A matter of Mom's self-image

"Dad has been a beloved pediatrician his entire career in our town," Michael explained. "Mom's self-image has always been as 'Dr. Y's wife,' which, in her mind, gave her social status and made her feel important, a somebody. She always refers to herself as 'Dr. Y's wife.' That is her identity. Recently, Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and over her protests and denial ('Those neurologists don't know a thing! Dad is fine!' she insists), he had to close his medical practice.

"It was as if someone turned off a switch for her. In her mind, Mom no longer has the celebrity status of being married to a physician beloved by his patients and their families. Instead, she told people that Dad had embarrassed her! It was so upsetting, Mr. Beaver!

"Mom told us, 'I can't face people. We have to leave town.' She made a down payment on a house hundreds of miles away, where they do not know anyone, and she plans to move there with Dad. This will cut him off from all his friends, people who would want to help them in any way possible. He does not want to move but has always been passive in their marriage."

Lisa added, "This move will isolate him and impair his mental and physical health at a time when he needs support from the many people in town who care. We need direct, actionable advice from someone who has experience with these issues, a road map to follow on things we could do that might alter her desire to move away."

Listen before taking action and lead with empathy

Data on migration patterns shows that roughly 22% of people move to a different county following a dementia diagnosis — a rate significantly higher than for other major health events.

To get some advice to help Lisa and Michael, I spoke with Boca Raton, Florida-based Jill Poser, founder of Life Care Concierge of South Florida, a nurse-led care advocacy practice. Recognized as an expert in aging life care management, private duty home care and life care planning, she holds the Certified Dementia Care Partner (CDCP) designation provided through the Alzheimer's Foundation of America.

Poser began our Zoom interview by pointing out, "A diagnosis of Alzheimer's or another form of dementia severely impacts a couple's relationship, often causing a deep loss of identity."

She offered these four recommendations to consider, focusing on addressing Lisa and Michael's mom's grief and identity, continuing care for their father and legal issues.

1. Focus on Mom's grief and her identity fears

Listen to Mom and ask her what she fears. What is the basis of those fears?

View her behavior as an expression of grief and belief that she is losing her identity as "Mrs. Dr. Y."

Approach her from a position of empathy rather than accusation.

For example, don't say, "You are so wrapped up in yourself! Moving away where he has no one will shorten his life."

Instead, show compassion and avoid using "you must" statements: "We know how much you love Dad. How can we support you?"

2. Explore aspects of identity that will strengthen her public role as Dr. Y's wife

Suggest she get involved in social activities, philanthropy, clubs or sports.

Say: "You both loved tennis, and Dad is an excellent pianist, so create sports and music scholarships in both your names for students at our local college. This way, both of you will be so appreciated for giving back to our town."

3. Preserve routine and familiarity for Dad where possible

The siblings should stress the importance of stability and how a familiar environment is crucial for someone with cognitive decline. Routines, longtime friends and known surroundings reduce disorientation and the risk of behavioral decline or wandering.

Point out that in town Mom has a support system that is already in place, but moving away would be a major disruption and could accelerate Dad's functional decline. The responsibility of caring for Dad would be entirely on her shoulders.

Be strategic about this. For example, try something like, "Mom, let's assume that you decide to remain in town. Tell us about the support you would like and think about who you already lean on in times of stress. These are good reasons to remain here. We know the burden will be significant, and you can count on us to be here to help in any way we can."

4. Discuss care management and seek professional support

"A dementia diagnosis is one of the heaviest, world-altering moments (for couples)," Poser says. "It often triggers a fight-or-flight response — the urge to run away, to leave town to escape the reality of the situation. That's a common human reaction to fear and grief."

She adds, "For that reason, among many others, these adult children should suggest hiring a care manager or appropriate professionals to evaluate their father's home-care needs, provide ongoing counseling for their mother and help facilitate difficult family discussions. And be ready to act as a neutral mediator in family discussions."

The key to preventing the move

My advice? Lisa and Michael need to immediately consult with an elder law attorney/conservator who, in most states, could try to obtain a court order that would prevent their mother from isolating their father.

At a hearing, a judge can consider why the move is proposed and whether it is in their father's best interest. Dad's opinion can also be considered, if he is able to express it.

Poser concluded our interview with this observation that should apply to all of us who were raised by loving parents: "Growing up, our parents protect us. Growing older, we protect them."

Dennis Beaver practices law in Bakersfield, Calif., and welcomes comments and questions from readers, which may be faxed to (661) 323-7993, or e-mailed to Lagombeaver1@gmail.com. And be sure to visit dennisbeaver.com.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

Not only are people living longer, but roughly 11,000 Americans reach retirement age every day, according to the Alliance for Lifetime Income by LIMRA, and trillions of dollars are beginning to move from one generation to the next.

As a result, families are asking harder questions about retirement planning, how to make their savings last and how to leave something behind. Life insurance, when used well, can help answer all three of these questions.

Most insurers are now focused on developing products that solve real protection and long-term financial needs, with products that are less market-sensitive and more capital-efficient for the people who own them.

Consumers should view life insurance through the same lens. Before you buy a policy, here are five questions worth asking.

1. What do I want this policy to do?

Term life insurance is built to protect your family during your working years. It's affordable, straightforward and often the right first step. Permanent policies, including indexed universal life insurance, can do more. They build cash value over time that you may be able to access later in life.

It's important to be clear on what you want the policy to do. If you need coverage only for a set period, term may be the right answer. If you want a policy that can not only provide financial protection for loved ones, but also transfer wealth to the next generation, you are likely looking at a permanent product.

2. How does the cash value grow, and what happens when markets drop?

If you're considering permanent life insurance, ask how the cash value grows and what protects it when markets turn. Some products tie growth to a market index with a floor that limits losses in down years. Others carry more direct market exposure.

There is no single right answer. What matters is that you understand how your policy performs in both a good year and a bad one, how much risk you're comfortable taking and how that fits with the rest of your savings.

3. How can I use this policy during my lifetime?

A life insurance policy is not only for after you're gone. Many permanent policies let you access the cash value through loans or withdrawals while you're living. That flexibility can be useful as your financial needs change over time.

Also ask about riders, as some policies let you access part of the death benefit early if you face a chronic or serious illness. Those benefits can matter as much as the payout itself.

If you're working with a financial professional, ask them to explain how using a policy's living benefits could affect the death benefit.

4. How does this policy fit with everything else I'm planning?

Life insurance works best when it's part of a comprehensive plan. As part of your retirement planning, for example, assess your 401(k), your IRAs, your Social Security timing and all other assets together.

A financial professional can help you see how a policy supports the rest of the plan, including how it can:

• Protect a spouse
• Cover taxes on an inheritance
• Give you flexibility if one part of the plan doesn't perform as expected
• Help replace income that could be lost when a spouse passes away, including income sources for Social Security benefits

5. What do I want to pass on?

Life insurance has long been one of the most efficient ways to transfer wealth. In most cases, the death benefit is income-tax-free to your beneficiaries It can arrive at a time when families need it most, helping to replace lost income and provide financial stability during a difficult transition.

Think about what you want to leave behind and then ask whether your policy is built for that specific outcome.

Making life insurance part of your comprehensive financial plan is all about finding the right policy that can do real work for you over a long life, while helping to protect the people you care about most. Start with what you want and let the product follow.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

According to a report from the TIAA Institute, 76% of current retirees say they regret not starting to save earlier in their lives and 71% wish they'd saved more.

Whatever the case may be, we all experience financial setbacks. The key to getting back on track depends on how we approach the recovery.

1. What just happened?

Financial recovery starts with an honest look in the mirror. And it's easier said than done. Confronting debt, savings setbacks or feeling like you've missed important financial milestones is uncomfortable. But pretending the situation doesn't exist isn't going to solve it.

Take time to evaluate what's happened. What triggered the financial changes? An unexpected emergency expense? A sudden job loss? Spending habits that gradually spun out of control?

Understanding what caused things to take a turn can make it easier to figure out what needs to change moving forward. Identifying the problem allows you to begin finding the solution.

2. Start small

As you're working to turn things around, it can be easy to feel like you have to solve everything overnight. Remember: These problems weren't created overnight, so start small.

Setting up automatic transfers to a savings account, paying off one debt at a time or reducing a few monthly expenses are all great places to start. These changes may seem minor, but consistency is key.

Building better habits creates momentum, making larger goals feel more achievable. As time passes, the plan can be changed to keep up with the different phases of your life.

3. Adapt and adjust

When it comes to financial recovery, many people believe they can simply make a plan, set it and forget it. But life is constantly evolving and your plan should be able to adapt. Unexpected expenses, income changes and new priorities all happen more than once.

Instead of seeing these moments as failures, view them as opportunities to make changes and move forward. It's not about following the original plan exactly — it's about remaining consistent in pursuing your long-term goals even when the route changes course.

Financial plans aren't meant to be rigid. They're meant to grow alongside your life. The next time something comes along and alters your circumstances, identify what's changed, understand how it's impacted your goals and make the adjustments needed to bounce back.

4. Don't dwell on the past

Recovering from a financial setback isn't easy. But it doesn't have to happen overnight and you aren't expected to do it alone. If you're not sure how to adjust your plan or choose your next steps, work with a trusted expert to get professional guidance and accountability.

As you go through the process, don't dwell on past mistakes. What's important is taking action to get back on track.

Alex Duffy has been in the customer service and financial services industry since 1999. His expertise spans loans, debt consolidation and comprehensive financial planning, emphasizing smart money management and family protection.

Adam Coarts is the owner and senior agent at Goldfinch Financial Group in Des Moines, Iowa. He formed Goldfinch Financial Group to better serve clients as an independent financial professional.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

Countless articles, videos and financial discussions warn retirees to stay below the next Medicare premium threshold. But what if avoiding an IRMAA surcharge causes you to pay more over the course of retirement?

In many cases, that's what can happen when annual tax planning takes priority over lifetime tax planning.

The income-related monthly adjustment amount (IRMAA) is the Medicare surcharge higher-income beneficiaries might pay for Medicare Part B and Part D coverage.

Because IRMAA is based on your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) from two years earlier, many retirees become intensely focused on staying below the next surcharge threshold.

That focus is understandable — but it can also be expensive.

Many retirees reject Roth conversion strategies or other tax-planning opportunities solely because they might temporarily increase Medicare premiums. In some cases, avoiding an IRMAA surcharge can ultimately result in paying significantly more in lifetime taxes.

• The better question isn't: "How can I avoid IRMAA this year?"
• Instead, ask: "How can I minimize the total taxes and costs my family is likely to pay over the course of retirement?"

Those are two very different objectives.

Think beyond this year's tax return

Traditional tax planning often centers on reducing this year's tax liability.

Lifetime tax planning takes a broader view by evaluating how today's decisions affect taxes, retirement income and wealth in the next 20 to 30 years.

That distinction matters because strategies that intentionally increase taxable income today — such as Roth conversions — can sometimes reduce taxes substantially later.

Depending on the circumstances, converting part of a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA could:

• Reduce future required minimum distributions (RMDs)
• Lower taxable income later in retirement
• Reduce the taxation of Social Security benefits
• Provide additional tax-free assets for future spending
• Improve tax flexibility throughout retirement
• Reduce taxes for a surviving spouse
• Leave heirs with more tax-efficient inheritances

None of those benefits can be evaluated by looking at only one tax year.

Focus on the right goal

Key takeaway: IRMAA is an important planning variable — but it should rarely outweigh a well-supported strategy that meaningfully reduces lifetime taxes.

Understanding the tax valley

Many retirees experience a period after they stop working but before claiming Social Security and before required minimum distributions begin.

During these years, taxable income might be temporarily lower than it will be later in retirement.

Financial planners often refer to this as a tax valley — a window that might present an opportunity to recognize income at relatively favorable tax rates.

Consider a hypothetical married couple, both age 63, with $2 million in traditional IRAs.

Because they recently retired, they temporarily find themselves in the 24% federal income tax bracket. Their retirement income plan projects substantially higher taxable income once Social Security benefits begin and required minimum distributions become mandatory.

Suppose they convert $150,000 per year to Roth IRAs over several years. The conversions increase their taxable income enough to trigger higher Medicare premiums through IRMAA.

At first glance, paying higher Medicare premiums seems undesirable.

However, those same Roth conversions might significantly reduce future required minimum distributions, lower future taxable income, reduce taxes for a surviving spouse, create greater tax flexibility later in retirement and leave heirs with more tax-efficient assets.

If a temporary Medicare surcharge of several thousand dollars helps reduce projected lifetime taxes by six figures, many retirees would likely consider that an attractive trade-off.

The numbers — not the premium increase alone — should drive the decision.

IRMAA is one variable — not the objective

Retirement planning requires balancing many competing financial factors:

• Federal income taxes
• State income taxes
• Social Security taxation
• Required minimum distributions
• Medicare premiums
• Estate planning
• Legacy goals

Each deserves consideration, but the mistake is allowing any one of those to dominate the entire planning process.

IRMAA should be viewed the same way investors evaluate transaction costs or capital gains taxes. It is a legitimate expense to consider — but not necessarily a reason to abandon an otherwise beneficial strategy.

Waiting can be expensive

Many retirees assume paying less tax today automatically leads to paying less tax overall.

Unfortunately, that assumption often proves incorrect.

Traditional IRAs continue growing tax deferred. Larger account balances frequently produce larger required minimum distributions, which could:

• Push retirees into higher tax brackets.
• Increase the taxable portion of Social Security benefits.
• Trigger higher Medicare premiums later in retirement.
• Increase tax burdens after the death of a spouse, when the surviving spouse begins filing as a single taxpayer.
• Leave beneficiaries inheriting taxable retirement accounts that generally must be distributed within 10 years under current law.

Ironically, retirees who spend years trying to avoid modest IRMAA surcharges today might pay larger Medicare surcharges later because their required minimum distributions have become substantially larger.

Every recommendation should begin with a projection

No two retirees have identical circumstances.

The appropriate Roth conversion strategy depends on numerous variables, including expected investment returns, future tax rates, longevity, charitable giving goals, pension income, state taxes, estate-planning objectives and anticipated spending needs.

For that reason, sophisticated retirement planning relies on long-term projections rather than general rules.

Stopping a Roth conversion because it crosses an IRMAA threshold might feel prudent, but without a lifetime analysis, it's impossible to know whether that decision improves a retiree's long-term financial outcome.

The goal isn't to win this year's tax return

The Internal Revenue Service calculates your taxes one year at a time — your retirement plan shouldn't.

The objective of retirement tax planning isn't minimizing taxes this year — nor is it minimizing Medicare premiums this year.

The objective is maximizing after-tax wealth throughout retirement while preserving flexibility for future spending, charitable giving and legacy planning.

Sometimes that means staying below an IRMAA threshold.

Other times, the math clearly supports accepting a temporary Medicare surcharge because doing so produces substantially larger long-term tax savings.

The answer depends on the analysis — not the acronym.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) establishes IRMAA as an income-based adjustment to Medicare premiums, while IRS rules govern the taxation of Roth conversions in the year they occur.

Neither rule suggests retirees should automatically avoid Roth conversions because of a temporary increase in Medicare premiums. Instead, both reinforce the importance of evaluating tax decisions within the context of an overall retirement income strategy.

The most ideal retirement tax plans rarely optimize a single year — they optimize a lifetime.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

They haven't.

Every year, I meet intelligent, financially successful families who have done almost everything right. They've accumulated retirement savings, worked with financial advisers, signed comprehensive estate planning documents and funded a revocable living trust.

Then one spouse develops Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease or another chronic illness requiring years of home care, assisted living, memory care and eventually nursing-home care.

That's when they discover that their perfectly drafted trust is of no help, because it was designed to solve a different problem.

The ultimate question is not whether you have a trust. It's whether you have the right trust for the problem you need to solve.

A revocable living trust (often abbreviated as an RLT) is one of the best estate planning tools available. Unlike a will, an RLT trust protects your assets from probate and provides many other benefits, making it one of the most popular estate planning tools in the country.

But an RLT does not protect your assets from lawsuits or the potentially catastrophic expenses of long-term care.

Why doesn't an RLT protect assets?

The answer is simple.

An RLT works because you effectively remain the owner of all trust assets, and you retain complete control of those assets, including the ability to remove any or all assets from the trust at any time.

Because the assets remain yours, they remain available to pay any bills you owe, including long-term care bills. The assets in your RLT are treated as if they still belong to you and remain available to creditors, including the biggest creditor most people face in their lifetimes — a nursing home.

People often spend thousands creating and funding an RLT believing they've solved both the probate and the long-term care problem, when they've solved only the probate problem.

Unfortunately, many estate planning attorneys never explain this distinction because most don't practice in the area of Medicaid planning. They never discuss the irrevocable Medicaid Asset Protection Trust (MAPT) as an option.

As a result, many families discover the difference only after a health crisis, when planning options are limited.

What an RLT does well

None of this diminishes the value of an RLT.

I regularly recommend revocable living trusts to clients. My firm has prepared thousands of revocable living trusts.

A properly drafted and funded revocable living trust:

• Avoids probate
• Provides continuity if you become incapacitated
• Controls how and when beneficiaries receive an inheritance
• Keeps your affairs more private than a probate estate
• Can protect young or financially inexperienced beneficiaries from receiving large distributions outright
• Can provide ongoing asset protection to trust beneficiaries through the creation of spendthrift trusts, sometimes called dynasty trusts or beneficiary asset protection subtrusts

These are all important benefits. But none of them matter if you die broke because you spent all your money paying for long-term care.

As good as the revocable living trust is, in the past 15 years, my firm has prepared more MAPTs than revocable living trusts because once older clients understand the distinction, many choose a trust that not only avoids probate but also helps protect assets from long-term care costs.

We call our version the Living Trust Plus®. It's a proprietary MAPT system that we license to attorneys throughout the country to offer this type of planning to their own clients.

But most estate planning attorneys don't offer this type of trust planning. Helping clients protect their assets from long-term care costs is not on the radar of many estate planning attorneys.

Medicare won't pay the bill

Another common misconception is that Medicare will pay for long-term care. It won't.

Medicare doesn't pay a penny for long-term care. Families must rely on their own income and assets, long-term care insurance, certain veterans benefits or Medicaid, which is the biggest payor of nursing home expenses in the country.

What makes a Medicaid Asset Protection Trust different?

A MAPT is designed to solve not only the probate issue, but two additional problems. I call my version of the MAPT the Living Trust Plus because it protects your assets from probate plus lawsuits plus long-term care expenses.

Instead of retaining ownership of trust assets, you give up ownership and the ability to reclaim the protected assets. That creates the protection.

However, despite giving up ownership, you can retain a high degree of control of assets in the trust.

You can be the trustee of your own trust, meaning you can control how the assets are invested, whether your home gets sold and when assets get distributed to a trust beneficiary. You can even change the beneficiaries of the trust.

If you, as trustee, decide to distribute assets to a trust beneficiary, such as an adult child, that child can use the distributed money however they see fit, and you can't control what the child does with that money or have any type of agreement on how they use their money.

The child can spend the money for themselves, or they can, if they wish, spend the money for your benefit.

Planning using a MAPT must begin years before nursing home care is needed. The five-year Medicaid lookback period means waiting until a nursing-home admission or after a stroke could eliminate this planning opportunity.

Readers interested in learning more about Medicaid Asset Protection Trusts and other planning tools can find additional educational resources in our Elder Law Learning Hub.

For readers who want a more comprehensive discussion of probate avoidance, Medicaid Asset Protection Trusts and long-term care planning strategies, my bestselling book, Protecting Your Assets from Probate and Long-Term Care (Second Edition): Don't Let the System Bankrupt You and Your Loved Ones, explores these issues in greater detail.

Related Content

• Who Needs a Trust and Who Doesn't? A Financial Planner Explains
• Is Your Estate at Risk? The 5 Trusts You Need to Understand
• Revocable vs Irrevocable Trusts: It Comes Down to Control vs Protection
• What Assets Should Not Be Placed in a Revocable Trust?
• What You Need to Know About Long-Term Care Before You Need It

This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

A scroll through social media delivers budgeting tips, stock recommendations, tax strategies and conflicting opinions from influencers, friends and self-proclaimed financial experts.

While having access to more information can be empowering, it can also make it difficult to determine what advice is credible, relevant and worth acting on.

The reality is that building a financial plan doesn't require following every trend or implementing every strategy you encounter online. It requires understanding your own goals, evaluating information carefully and focusing on the decisions that will have the greatest impact on your financial future.

Before taking your next piece of financial advice, consider these four principles to help separate meaningful guidance from background noise.

1. Start with your goals, not someone else's

One of the biggest mistakes people make is looking for financial advice before taking inventory of their own situation. It's easy to become excited about investment strategies, tax-saving techniques or the latest market opportunity, but those decisions should come after you've identified what you're trying to accomplish.

A financial plan should begin with a clear understanding of where you are today and where you want to go. Are you focused on:

• Paying down student loans?
• Saving for a home?
• Building an emergency fund?
• Preparing for retirement?
• Supporting aging parents?

Your priorities should dictate your strategy, not someone else's timeline.

Consider two recent college graduates who are both beginning their independent financial lives.

One graduates debt-free, while the other enters the workforce with significant student loan debt. The first might be able to begin building an emergency fund and saving for retirement relatively quickly, while the second might need to prioritize paying down debt and establishing emergency savings before pursuing other financial goals.

Following the exact same financial advice might make sense for one person and very little sense for the other.

Financial planning isn't about keeping pace with your peers. It's about making decisions that align with your unique circumstances and long-term goals.

Once you establish that foundation, it becomes much easier to evaluate whether a particular piece of advice fits your unique situation.

2. Be selective about who you listen to

The internet has made financial education more widely available than ever before, but it has also made it easier for misinformation to spread. Social media platforms are designed to reward content that captures attention, not necessarily content that is accurate or personalized.

Before acting on financial advice, ask yourself a few simple questions:

• Who provides this information?
• What experience or credentials do they have?
• Are they offering objective guidance, or are they trying to sell a product or generate engagement?

The same level of skepticism should apply to advice from friends, family members and coworkers. A successful investment or tax strategy for someone else doesn't automatically make it appropriate for you.

Personal finance is exactly that. Your personal income, tax situation, family responsibilities, risk tolerance and goals all influence which strategies are most appropriate.

This doesn't mean you should ignore financial conversations altogether. Instead, use them as opportunities to learn what questions to ask rather than assuming every answer applies to your own situation.

3. Remember that financial planning is about more than investing

When many people hear the phrase "financial planning," they immediately think about investing or retirement accounts. While investments play an important role, they're only one piece of a much larger picture.

Investments aren't a replacement for inadequate insurance coverage, poor cash flow management or an unexpected tax bill. Likewise, focusing exclusively on retirement savings while ignoring other financial priorities can leave important gaps in your overall plan.

For some people, the most impactful financial decision is paying off high-interest credit card debt. For others, it might be building an emergency fund, reviewing insurance coverage, minimizing taxes or creating an estate plan.

A comprehensive financial plan considers how each of these pieces works together. Financial planning should evolve as your life changes. The strategies that make sense early in your career can look very different from the decisions you'll make as retirement approaches.

Rather than viewing your plan as a one-time project, think of it as an ongoing process that adapts alongside your goals and circumstances.

4. Learn the difference between news and noise

Financial headlines are designed to grab attention. Every week seems to bring a new "can't miss" investment, market prediction or economic warning that promises to change everything.

Some of these developments genuinely deserve your attention. Changes to IRS contribution limits, tax legislation, retirement account rules or other regulatory updates might warrant adjustments to your financial plan because they directly affect your available planning opportunities.

Many headlines, however, are simply attempts to create urgency. A trending stock, viral investing strategy or sensational market prediction rarely requires immediate action.

If a piece of financial advice makes you feel as if you need to act immediately or risk missing out, it's often worth slowing down instead.

Long-term financial success is built through consistent decision-making, not constant reaction. Filtering out distractions allows you to focus on the information that supports your financial goals.

The abundance of financial information available today is both a blessing and a challenge. While there are more resources than ever to help people make informed decisions, there is also more noise competing for their attention.

A thoughtful financial plan isn't built by following every piece of advice that crosses your screen. It's built by understanding your goals, seeking guidance from credible sources, considering every aspect of your financial life, not just your investments, and recognizing the difference between meaningful developments and passing trends.

When your decisions are grounded in your own circumstances instead of someone else's timeline, financial planning becomes less overwhelming and far more effective.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

A commonly cited starting point is the 4% rule. It suggests withdrawing about 4% of a portfolio in the first year, then increasing that dollar amount for inflation.

Using this guideline:

• A $1 million portfolio might initially support about $40,000 in annual withdrawals
• A $1.5 million portfolio might support about $60,000
• A $2 million portfolio might support about $80,000

These figures are illustrations, not guarantees. A sustainable strategy depends on retirement length, returns, inflation, taxes, healthcare costs, other income, spending flexibility and legacy goals.

A financial adviser can help determine how these factors work together and how the strategy should change over time.

The 4% rule is only a starting point

The 4% rule is appealing because it is simple. Retirement is not. Markets fluctuate, healthcare expenses rise, tax laws evolve and spending changes.

An adviser can help determine whether 4% is reasonable for a particular household or whether a higher or lower starting amount may be more appropriate.

Why the right withdrawal rate is different for everyone

No single withdrawal rate works for every retiree.

Retirement length and investment allocation. Someone retiring at 60 may need a portfolio to last 35 or 40 years. The portfolio must also balance stability and growth. Investing too conservatively may make it difficult to keep pace with inflation, while investing too aggressively may create large losses at the wrong time. An adviser can model longevity assumptions and build an allocation suited to the retiree's needs.

Inflation and taxes. Inflation gradually reduces purchasing power. Taxes also affect how much of a withdrawal is available to spend. Traditional retirement account withdrawals are generally taxable, qualified Roth withdrawals may be tax-free, and taxable accounts may produce interest, dividends and capital gains.

The order in which accounts are used can affect tax brackets, Medicare premiums, Social Security taxation and required minimum distributions. An adviser can help coordinate withdrawals across account types and work with a tax professional when appropriate.

Other income, spending and legacy goals. Social Security, pensions, rental income and annuity payments can reduce the amount required from investments. Retirees who can reduce discretionary spending during difficult markets may have more flexibility.

Some retirees want to spend most of their assets; others want to preserve wealth for family or charities. An adviser can coordinate income and balance lifestyle needs with long-term security and legacy goals.

Why average returns don't tell the whole story

Even when these factors are considered, the timing of market returns can significantly affect retirement outcomes.

A calculator may assume a portfolio earns a steady average return each year. Real markets don't behave that way. Two retirees can earn the same average return over 20 years and still have very different results depending on when gains and losses occur.

The importance of sequence of returns risk

This timing risk is known as sequence of returns risk.

Consider two retirees with the same starting portfolio, withdrawals and average return. One experiences strong returns early. The other experiences a major decline shortly after retiring and stronger returns later.

The second retiree may end up with far less money because withdrawals during a downturn require selling more shares at depressed prices. Those shares are no longer available to participate in a recovery.

Assume a retiree begins with $1 million and plans to withdraw $40,000 annually. If the portfolio declines 20% before the withdrawal, its value falls to $800,000. After taking $40,000, about $760,000 remains. The portfolio would then need to gain more than 31% to return to $1 million.

This is why a withdrawal plan shouldn't operate independently from the investment strategy.

How an adviser can help manage retirement income risk

Sequence risk can't be eliminated, but it can be managed.

Maintain an appropriate cash reserve. Cash for near-term expenses may reduce the need to sell stocks during a downturn. An adviser can help determine how much to hold without weakening long-term growth.

Create flexible spending rules. A retiree may temporarily delay a major purchase, reduce travel or pause inflation increases. Establishing guidelines in advance can make these decisions easier.

Rebalance systematically. An adviser can restore the portfolio to its intended allocation and help prevent short-term headlines from driving investment decisions.

Coordinate Social Security and pensions. Delaying Social Security may increase future guaranteed income but require larger portfolio withdrawals in the near term. An adviser can compare the trade-offs involving taxes, longevity and survivor benefits.

Use a dynamic withdrawal strategy. A fixed withdrawal may not remain appropriate throughout retirement. Guardrails can allow spending to rise after strong performance and decline when the portfolio falls below predetermined levels.

Why ongoing advice matters

A retirement plan shouldn't be treated as a one-time calculation. Markets, spending, tax laws, health and family circumstances change.

An adviser can review withdrawal rates, rebalance investments, update projections, coordinate tax-sensitive distributions and provide an objective perspective during volatile markets.

The value of advice is not predicting every market move. It is helping retirees make disciplined decisions based on a coordinated plan rather than short-term emotion.

The bottom line

The 4% rule can be a useful starting point, but it isn't a personalized retirement income plan.

A sustainable strategy must account for retirement length, investment allocation, inflation, taxes, healthcare costs, other income, spending flexibility, legacy goals and sequence of returns risk.

A financial adviser can bring these issues together and help adjust the strategy as circumstances change. The goal isn't simply to withdraw the maximum amount possible today. It is to balance enjoying retirement now with maintaining financial security for the years ahead.

This article is intended for general educational purposes and does not constitute individualized investment, tax, legal or retirement advice.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

Unfortunately, there is often a disconnect between the life people hope to enjoy and how prepared they feel to support it. While most expect to age well, many are still working to build the foundation needed to turn their vision into reality.

Closing that gap starts with an understanding of what lies ahead and planning accordingly, allowing you to approach those added years with greater clarity and confidence.

Redefining aging

According to Guardian's 2026 Mind, Body, and Wallet® report, people are focused not only on living longer, but on maintaining independence, purpose and stability along the way.

Working Americans have a clear picture of what they want that future to look like. Sixty percent anticipate having more free time, 55% look forward to traveling, and 52% want to spend more time with friends and family, reflecting a desire for a more active, connected and fulfilling stage of life.

Retirement itself is evolving, as well. Two-thirds of Americans expect to continue working in some capacity, whether for income, personal fulfillment or social connection.

Where preparedness often falls short

Despite these evolving expectations, many Americans aren't fully prepared for the realities of a longer life.

Guardian found that Americans' financial wellness is at its lowest point in 15 years, with just three in 10 individuals reporting "excellent" or "very good" financial health.

Many people continue to face challenges managing day-to-day finances, with only 32% saying they do so very well, and more than half reporting difficulty living within their means.

Looking further ahead, long-term readiness is also limited. Just 13% feel on track to achieve their desired retirement lifestyle, and planning for key aspects of aging, such as housing or care needs, often remains incomplete.

Broader well-being trends add another layer of complexity. Just 31% of working Americans say they get enough exercise, and only 34% report being good at taking care of their mental health, both of which can influence independence and quality of life over time.

Taken together, these patterns point to a growing disconnect: As lifespans increase, the need for thoughtful preparation grows as well, yet many are still figuring out how to plan effectively for what's ahead.

Building financial confidence for the future

Preparing for a longer life isn't about reaching a single milestone, but rather building habits and a strategy that can evolve over time. Starting early can create more flexibility down the road — yet progress at any stage can make a meaningful difference.

Ultimately, these steps help support the financial confidence needed to enjoy later life as intended.

A few core priorities can help you keep that effort on track:

Start early and build a strong financial foundation. Establishing good financial habits early, such as building emergency reserves, saving consistently, investing for long-term growth and participating in workplace retirement plans can create flexibility.

When invested, even modest contributions can compound, helping reduce pressure later in life and providing a buffer against unexpected events.

Strengthen and protect as life evolves. As income and responsibilities grow, financial strategies should expand, as well. Increasing retirement contributions, managing debt and ensuring appropriate protection such as life and disability coverage can help safeguard progress and reduce the risk of setbacks that could derail long-term goals.

Plan for income, not just accumulation. A longer retirement shifts the focus from how much is saved to how those savings will be used.

Creating sustainable income, addressing longevity risk and preparing for healthcare and caregiving costs are essential to maintaining independence and financial stability over decades.

Stay flexible and adapt over time. Longevity introduces uncertainty, making flexibility critical. Financial plans should be revisited regularly to reflect changing goals, market conditions and life circumstances.

Staying engaged, even in retirement, can help ensure that strategies remain aligned with both lifestyle needs and long-term security.

Finding support along the way

Preparing financially for a long, fulfilling life is more complex than ever. However, it's not a journey you need to navigate alone. More than six in 10 Americans who report high financial wellness also work with a financial adviser, highlighting just how valuable it can be to have a trusted partner each step of the way.

Whether retirement is on the horizon or still decades away, an adviser can provide personalized guidance tailored to your needs and goals. Through regular check-ins, you can gain clearer insight into your financial picture, track progress toward your goals and adjust your approach as circumstances evolve, all within a relationship that strengthens over years and even decades.

Planning for longevity with confidence

Living longer changes the financial equation, but what we know for certain is that the quality of later years is shaped by decisions made much earlier. Building strong financial habits, protecting against risk and planning for reliable income, especially when backed by the expertise of a financial adviser, can be the difference between simply living longer and living with confidence.

By focusing on income, protection and adaptability, you can be better positioned to turn longevity into a source of stability and opportunity.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

Schwab recently conducted a study that found 70% of teenagers ages 13-17 say they are very or extremely interested in investing, and nearly three-quarters of parents (73%) say it's very important for teens to learn about it.

Now here's something that may surprise you. Teens in the study cited their parents more than any other source for trusted investing advice, ahead of friends, social media or anyone else.

In other words, this isn't an area where finding the balance between independence and control inevitably becomes a point of friction. Rather, it's an opportunity for guided learning, and it's one that most families are more ready for than they may realize.

In my role leading Schwab's Branch Network, I've seen firsthand how many parents want to help their children build healthy financial habits but aren't always sure where to begin. The encouraging news is that teens are often more interested in these conversations than we assume.

It's also an amazing time to begin investing. Teens have more access to information, tools and choices than any generation before them.

But with that comes more exposure to speculative trends, hype and "get rich quick" content. That's what makes this moment so pivotal. We have a genuine chance to give our kids a head start on building wealth, but if they start down the wrong path early, it can be hard to undo.

More than building wealth, investing teaches patience, discipline, decision-making and how to think about the future. Those lessons can benefit teens long before they see their first meaningful investment gains.

So, it's critical that parents help their teens get off on the right foot. Here are seven ways to do it.

1. Talk about your own experience … including the mistakes

Being open about financial decisions you'd make differently is often more impactful than presenting a polished track record.

When teens hear a parent say, "Here's what I wish I'd done at your age," they listen.

It's more relatable than a lesson, and it makes the whole conversation feel less like a lecture and more like a shared experience.

2. Connect investing to actual goals

Our survey found that teens want to invest for concrete reasons:

• Getting started building money as early as possible (45%)
• Paying for college (34%)
• Saving for something big like a car (30%)

Anchoring the conversation in what your teen actually wants to accomplish makes investing feel purposeful rather than abstract.

3. Start with something that already interests them

Fractional shares have lowered the barrier to entry significantly. A teen who's a fan of a particular brand no longer needs $1,000 to buy a single share. They can invest $20 or $40 into it.

That turns an abstract concept into something personal and provides an ideal prompt to talk about what makes a company worth owning in the first place.

It's also a natural opportunity to introduce the idea that successful investing rarely depends on a single company or trend, but on building a diversified portfolio over time.

4. Let them practice before the stakes are real

Mock trading and stock market simulators give teens a sandbox to experience real gains and losses without real consequences.

It's often the first time they grapple with managing risk directly, which builds confidence for when the money is actually theirs.

5. Make a plan for risk, especially around social media

Separating what's genuinely relevant from what's just noise is challenging for investors of all ages, not just teens.

A practical rule to consider is a 24-hour pause before acting on anything your teen sees or hears online. If your teen can't clearly explain why an investment might be valuable beyond what they saw online, that's often a sign it's worth slowing down and learning more before making a decision.

6. Consider the right account for your family

Custodial accounts keep parents in control until teens become adults.

Joint accounts, like the Schwab Teen Investor account, give teens ownership and the ability to move money in and out starting at age 13, while parents stay involved.

The decision comes down to how much control you want your teen to have early on.

7. Take advantage of educational resources

You don't have to have all the answers. There are tools designed specifically for this moment, including content from Schwab, which covers investing fundamentals built for teens.

Working through a video or article side by side signals that this is a shared project, not a solo assignment. And it takes the pressure off parents to be the sole source of expertise.

The good news is that today's teens are already getting an earlier start than their parents did. Most parents (68%) in our study say they didn't become aware of investing until they were young adults or older, and half (51%) wish they'd started sooner.

Today's teenagers are well ahead of that curve. Most say they became aware of investing as preteens or in their early teen years. That head start matters because time is the greatest advantage young investors have.

The teens who start now, even with modest amounts, have decades of compounding ahead of them.

But the goal isn't simply to help your teen make their first investment — it's to help them develop the knowledge, judgment and confidence they'll rely on throughout their lives.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

Those are different questions, and the plan you build depends on which one you answer.

The on-ramp isn't the exit

Think of financial independence as merging onto a highway with an exit ramp available at every mile marker. You don't have to take the exit; you just need to know it's there and that you could take it if you wanted.

That's the point of the milestone: It's optionality, not an instruction.

Retirement is the decision to take the ramp. One is a number your plan produces. The other is a life choice you make with that number in hand. Reaching the first doesn't oblige you to do the second.

You don't need a perfect number

A common misconception I run into is that financial independence requires some enormous account balance before it counts. It doesn't. What it requires is a sustainable gap between what you have coming in and what you spend.

I've worked with clients whose modest spending got them to that on-ramp years before a higher-earning, higher-spending household with a much bigger portfolio.

Chasing a balance in isolation, without looking at the spending side, is how people miss their own exit ramp without realizing it was already within reach.

Flexibility deserves to be treated as an asset

The part of financial independence that gets underrated is what it does when life doesn't cooperate with your timeline. A health scare, a caregiving responsibility, a layoff, a market downturn — none of these sends you a calendar invite.

Clients who've already built in flexibility navigate those moments very differently than clients who were counting on working exactly as long as planned.

Reaching the ramp doesn't mean you must take it

One surprising thing I hear from clients who reach financial independence: Their relationship with work improves.

Once a paycheck stops being a requirement, plenty of people find they still want to do the work — just on different terms. Some stay full time. Others shift into consulting, board work or mentoring.

The point isn't that everyone should retire the moment they can. It's that they get to decide instead of defaulting.

The planning doesn't stop at the on-ramp

Financial independence isn't a finish line at which planning ends. Markets still move. Spending still shifts. A retirement, once you do take it, can run for decades.

Reaching independence changes the stakes of the plan. It doesn't retire the plan itself.

The real goal isn't racing to the earliest possible exit. It's building enough flexibility that when you do take the ramp, it's because you chose to, not because a number on a spreadsheet told you it was time.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

Ten years ago, the advice I was giving clients on LTC planning was totally different than it is today. Ten years from today, I'm hoping robots have made the cost of care significantly cheaper without, at the same time, taking our jobs.

Anyway, on to the reason we're here.

Like so many planning arenas where women should plan differently than men, this one stems from longevity. It's a fact that women live longer than men. Because of this, a married woman is often the one taking on the primary caregiver role for her husband.

Once he passes, there is no spouse to take care of the caretaker, so she is forced to hire someone or enter a community.

I often joke in the courses I teach that if both a husband and wife enter a retirement or nursing community together, the husband will hate it and die. The wife will make new friends and live forever.

The numbers actually support this. Over 70% of nursing home residents are women, according to the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance.

First targets: The benefit period and amount

The first thing I would adjust on an LTC policy is the benefit period. At Exit 59 Advisory, where I am the president, when we structure benefit periods for traditional long-term care insurance, we often use a starting point of four years for women and two years for men.

According to LongTermCare.gov, women on average need 3.7 years of care, while men need 2.2. Many of the newer hybrid LTC policies rely more on pools of money, or the total amount of coverage, than on a specific number of years.

"Long-term care" is a broad term. It often starts with custodial care, where someone comes to your home to help you cook, clean and get around. For women, it is more likely to end with skilled nursing care, which is medical care.

As you may imagine, these two levels of care cost very different amounts.

This is the second adjustment I would make: Whether it's a pool of funds or a monthly benefit, I would increase the amount for women, based on the statistic I stated earlier: 70% of nursing home residents are women.

Next target: The inflation rider

I have written more columns than I choose to admit on inflation over the past four years. Not exactly what I was picturing as a young boy aspiring to be a professional athlete. This one is no exception: Don't ignore the inflation rider on an LTC policy.

This is especially true for women, who are more likely to enter a facility later in life.

You've seen how inflation can erode your egg-purchasing power over the last few years. The same is true in this space. The longer down the line you plan to use the policy, the more important the inflation rider becomes — 3% vs 5% over a long period of time compounds to two very different numbers.

Simple interest inflation riders vs compounding interest riders will also look quite different 25 years from now.

The bottom line

We always start with the financial plan to see whether long-term care coverage is even necessary. For those with significant assets and low relative expenses, you may have no problem paying out of pocket.

First, assess your needs. If there is a need, measure it and build the policy to fit.

Just as you wouldn't buy a custom suit made for someone else, you shouldn't buy a long-term care policy that doesn't fit you.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

In many ways, families have never had more tools available to help make that happen. Yet many wonder, "Am I doing enough?" If that's a question you've asked yourself, you're in good company.

More than half of parents and grandparents (53%) believe today's children are less prepared for money management than they were at the same age, according to a new survey from Wealth Enhancement.

At first glance, those findings might not seem to add up. Today's children have access to more financial information than previous generations could have imagined. But most parents and grandparents know that financial confidence isn't built by downloading an app. It's built through experience, conversations and the values we pass along over time.

That might sound like a big responsibility, but it doesn't have to be. Helping children develop healthy financial habits often starts with small everyday moments rather than grand (or formal) financial lessons.

The important thing isn't doing everything perfectly. It's finding simple ways to make money a topic that feels approachable, practical and worth talking about.

Acknowledge today's financial world

One thing I've noticed as both a financial planner and a parent is that children experience money very differently from the way many of us did while growing up. My 5-year-old son has watched me tap my card to pay for groceries, swipe my card to make purchases and fill a Costco cart without ever exchanging cash. Outside the occasional dollar left by the Tooth Fairy, he's had very little reason to think about money as something tangible.

That isn't necessarily a problem, but it is different. Many of us grew up counting coins, saving cash in a piggy bank or watching money physically change hands.

Today, much of that happens behind the scenes. As a result, some of the money lessons previous generations absorbed naturally might require a little more intention.

At the same time, instant gratification has become part of everyday life. We can have almost anything delivered to our doorstep in a matter of hours. Even as adults, many of us aren't immune to the influence of social media, targeted advertising and one-click purchasing (I'm looking at you TikTok Shop).

Perhaps that's why 56% of parents and grandparents in Wealth Enhancement's survey said that avoiding impulse purchases and overspending is the hardest money lesson to teach.

Make room for regular money lessons

Most personal finance education doesn't happen through formal lessons. It happens in the everyday moments.

I've found that some of the most meaningful lessons happen during ordinary activities. When my family goes to the thrift store, my son gets a set dollar amount to spend. That's his budget. He can buy one larger item, several smaller ones or decide not to spend it all.

The amount isn't really the point. The lesson is learning how to make choices and think about tradeoffs.

If there's something he wants that's outside his budget, we don't turn it into a lecture. We simply acknowledge that it's hard when there's something you want and can't have right away. If it's something he still wants later, we might add it to a birthday or holiday wish list.

These moments might seem small, but they're often where the most meaningful money lessons happen.

Opportunities with allowances

Allowances can create similar opportunities. Our survey found that 63% of parents and grandparents have given children an allowance, with most starting around age 8. The age and amount matter far less than the conversations and experiences that come with it.

Children learn a great deal when they're given the chance to make real decisions with their own money. There's a unique sense of ownership that comes from deciding whether to spend, save or wait.

As children get older, those lessons can evolve. You might introduce investing by having them follow a company they recognize and watch how its stock price changes over time. The goal isn't to create the next investing expert. It's to help them connect the idea of ownership, growth and long-term thinking.

What works for one child might not work for another. Rather than searching for the perfect system, look for opportunities that fit your child's personality, interests and stage of development.

Most important, you're able to use these moments to pass along the values that matter most to your family. The lessons children learn about spending, saving, generosity and the relationship between work and reward often come from what they see us do every day.

Don't overlook your own financial foundation

More than half (53%) of parents and grandparents surveyed said they've never opened an investment account for a child. Investing can be one of the most powerful ways to help children build a financial foundation for the future. The earlier money is invested, the more time it has to grow.

When a parent asks me where to start, my answer is usually, "It depends on what you're hoping the money will do." A 529 plan, custodial account or a Roth IRA can all be effective tools, but the right choice depends on your family's goals and circumstances.

If you haven't opened an investment account for your child, you're not alone. Many families balance competing priorities, whether that's childcare, paying down debt, building an emergency fund or figuring out where to begin.

Before focusing on investing for the next generation's future, make sure your own financial foundation is secure. If your retirement savings aren't where you'd like them to be, start there. Your children can borrow for college, but there are no loans available for retirement.

Once your own future is on solid footing, you can decide how investing for your children and/or grandchildren fits within your family's goals and resources.

Make money conversations a part of everyday life

Financial education doesn't just come from what we teach children about money. It also comes from the way we talk about money at home.

Think about your earliest money memory. Maybe it was receiving cash in a birthday card or overhearing a conversation about household bills. Those experiences helped shape the way you think about money today.

The same is true for our children. The way we talk about financial decisions, priorities and tradeoffs influences how they think about money in the future.

Treat money as something that can be discussed openly rather than something that's off-limits. Talk about savings goals, explain financial choices and answer questions honestly (in age-appropriate ways).

Those conversations don't need to be formal, and they certainly don't need to be perfect.

Most important, remember that your children and grandchildren are watching. Long after today's apps and platforms have been replaced by something new, they'll remember the habits, values, and attitudes toward money they learned from the people around them.

Technology can be a useful tool, but it can't replace the influence of a trusted adult. We have an opportunity to be the guide that some of us may not have had ourselves.

That's one of the most meaningful ways we can help the next generation build a stronger financial future.

#2026-13422

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

Yet consumers frequently discover that what they receive is primarily investment management — not comprehensive financial planning advice.

That's why more people should know about the Garrett Planning Network — a nationwide network of around 200 fee-only financial planners who share a commitment to comprehensive, fee-only financial planning and transparent compensation.

While members may use different fee structures — including hourly, project-based, retainer or subscription arrangements — they are united by a client-first philosophy and a focus on advice rather than product sales.

I asked Tracy St. John, a Kansas City financial planner and long-time member of the network, to explain its role and how it can help you find a financial adviser whose business models are aligned with your interests.

Why the Garrett Planning Network was created

Financial planner Sheryl Garrett created the Garrett Planning Network around a simple but powerful idea: Quality financial planning should be accessible to ordinary Americans, not just wealthy investors.

As St. John says, "The problem was the average person feeling like they couldn't have access."

That mission remains central to the network today.

Rather than requiring clients to meet asset minimums, many Garrett planners are willing to work with consumers who are just getting started, are approaching retirement or simply need objective advice on a specific financial issue.

If you've never worked with a financial planner before, this can be a significant advantage.

What makes Garrett planners different?

When asked how Garrett planners differ from many other financial advisors, St. John immediately points to two characteristics. "We are comprehensive planners," she says, and "We are client first."

She also emphasizes the dedication many Garrett planners bring to their work: "Many of us will work beyond the scope of a project or plan just because we want the best outcome for the client."

Those comments reflect an important distinction.

Many financial professionals focus primarily on investment management. Garrett planners generally view investments as only one component of a much broader financial planning process.

Their goal is to help clients make better decisions across all aspects of their financial lives.

Understanding comprehensive financial planning

Many consumers assume they are receiving comprehensive advice when they are actually receiving investment recommendations.

St. John believes comprehensive financial planning goes much deeper. In her practice, comprehensive financial planning includes far more than portfolio management.

It may involve:

• Cash-flow analysis
• Retirement planning
• Tax planning
• Estate planning reviews
• Social Security strategies
• Medicare decisions
• Employee benefit evaluations
• Insurance reviews
• Investment planning
• Tax-efficient withdrawal strategies
• Family financial education

It may also go into details that seem small individually, but collectively can have a meaningful impact on your financial well-being.

For example, one client discussion involved reviewing unused credit card rewards, St. John says. Another involved verifying whether a client had designated representatives on Social Security and Medicare accounts, while another involved identifying tax inefficiencies in investment accounts.

As St. John explains, "Comprehensive for me is really covering the gamut."

An interconnected approach

Consumers often approach financial planners with a specific question:

• When should I claim Social Security?
• Should I invest in this fund?
• Can I afford to retire?

But, St. John says, truly comprehensive planners recognize that these questions rarely exist in isolation.

"The depth to which every area of your finances intermingles with each other" is something consumers frequently underestimate, she notes.

For example, determining when to claim Social Security benefits requires understanding:

• Cash flow needs
• Retirement income sources
• Tax consequences
• Longevity assumptions
• Investment resources
• Estate planning goals

"We can't just answer that basic question without looking at other areas," St. John explains.

Similarly, she doesn't like making investment recommendations without understanding a client's tax situation.

This interconnected approach is one of the hallmarks of comprehensive financial planning.

Why fee-only matters

The Garrett Planning Network has long emphasized fee-only compensation.

While consumers ultimately must decide which compensation structure they prefer, fee-only arrangements eliminate many of the product sale conflicts that can arise when advisors receive commissions from product providers.

For St. John, the decision was deeply personal.

"I felt like if I [charged] hourly, the client would only pay when I'm doing work for them," she says. "That just felt morally right."

She also wants clients to feel free to engage in her services when they need help rather than feeling pressured into ongoing arrangements that might not fit their circumstances.

Importantly, Garrett planners use a variety of fee structures today. Some charge hourly. Others use flat fees, subscriptions or retainers.

What unites them is transparency and a commitment to putting the client's interests first.

As St. John explains, "It's about the client and what they need for their situation."

A culture of collaboration

Another distinguishing feature of the Garrett Planning Network is its culture.

Unlike many industries where professionals guard their ideas and processes, Garrett planners have historically embraced collaboration.

St. John describes the organization as one where members openly share knowledge and support one another's success.

One member who attended a Garrett event remarked: "I feel like I come here and it's this big group hug."

St. John laughs as she recalls the comment, but she believes it captures something important about the network: "It truly feels like a family where everybody cares, and everybody shares."

That collaborative culture ultimately benefits consumers because Garrett Planning Network advisors continuously learn from one another and share best practices.

The needle in the haystack

People often ask how they can determine whether an advisor is providing comprehensive planning or simply managing investments.

St. John's answer is surprisingly straightforward: "If they aren't being asked for their taxes and there isn't any tax work done, if they're not being asked for their estate plan, if they're not being asked to look at what their lifestyle costs, that from a high level would not be comprehensive planning."

In other words, you should expect your advisor to be interested in much more than investment accounts.

A comprehensive planner should seek to understand your entire financial life. But they're not always easy to find.

St. John tells me: "I've had several clients say, 'We did so much research and you were a needle in a haystack, but we are so glad we found you.'"

That statement highlights both the challenge and the opportunity facing consumers today.

The challenge is that truly comprehensive, fee-only financial planners remain a relatively small segment of the financial services marketplace.

The opportunity is that organizations such as the Garrett Planning Network make it easier to identify advisors who embrace this approach.

The bottom line

For consumers seeking objective financial guidance, the Garrett Planning Network offers a valuable resource.

Its members share a commitment to comprehensive, fee-only financial planning, transparent compensation and client-centered advice.

While no single organization has a monopoly on quality financial planning, the Garrett Planning Network has spent more than two decades promoting a model built around accessibility, education and putting the client first.

When you evaluate potential advisors, you should ask an important question: Am I receiving investment recommendations, or am I receiving comprehensive financial planning advice?

The answer may lead you to a new advisor — and a more complete understanding of your financial life.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

Yet one of the biggest financial milestones in Americans' lives, buying a first home, has remained largely unsupported in the workplace. That is beginning to change.

A growing number of companies and benefits providers are exploring homeownership support as the next frontier of employee financial wellness.

The shift reflects a simple reality: For many workers, especially millennials and younger employees, homeownership feels further out of reach than ever. High prices, elevated interest rates and rising insurance and tax costs mean that even financially responsible workers struggle to turn "someday" into "this year."

Traditional benefits do little to solve that problem, since a 401(k) helps employees prepare for retirement decades away, a health savings account (HSA) helps manage healthcare expenses and student loan benefits help reduce debt.

Few employers, though, offer tools to help workers save for a down payment, improve mortgage readiness or navigate the homebuying process, leaving employees to piece together information on their own, often without clear guidance on what they can actually afford or how to trade off competing financial priorities.

That gap is exactly where employer-sponsored homeownership support can make a difference, and the mechanics are not complicated. Programs can help employees automatically set aside money from each paycheck toward a dedicated home fund, receive matched contributions or bonuses tied to milestones and access education on credit, debt-to-income ratios and local market conditions.

For many would-be buyers, simply having a structured plan, realistic affordability benchmarks and a single place to manage the process can be the difference between staying a renter and confidently taking the next step.

Benefits platforms are now trying to close that gap at scale. Partnerships between companies like Foyer (where I am the founder and CEO) and Nayya aim to integrate homebuying support directly into workplace benefits, offering employees savings tools, affordability planning and guidance throughout the homeownership journey.

Nayya has reported that roughly one in 10 users expects to buy a home within the next year. At the same time, HR Brew recently noted that only a small minority of employees currently receive any form of employer housing assistance, which suggests there is significant room for growth in this category.

There is also a broader workforce argument emerging. Employers increasingly compete on benefits that support major life milestones, not just base pay and a standard retirement plan. Housing affordability affects recruitment, retention, geographic mobility and overall financial stress.

Employees who feel permanently locked out of homeownership often carry that stress into work, which can influence everything from productivity to long-term loyalty. In that context, helping employees buy a first home looks less like a niche perk and more like a strategic workforce benefit.

The evolution mirrors what happened with student loan assistance a decade ago. A once-unusual offering gradually became part of mainstream financial wellness, as more employers recognized that workers cannot build a stable financial life while buried in debt.

Today, the pressure point has shifted. For many households, the largest single barrier to building wealth is not a lack of retirement vehicles, but the difficulty of getting onto the housing ladder in the first place.

If retirement benefits help employees build security for the future, homeownership benefits are the logical next step in helping them build wealth in the present.

For employers, integrating homeownership into financial wellness is an opportunity to stand out competitively and support long-term employee stability.

For workers, it is a sign that their workplace is not only focused on who they will be at age 65, but on the financial goals that shape their lives right now.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

Testifying before Congress in June, Postmaster General and Postal Service CEO David Steiner said the agency is running out of cash, deferring retirement obligations and relying on temporary financial maneuvers to continue providing service.

Those maneuvers include borrowing from employees' retirement funds, a move that should stop every postal worker in their tracks.

When Steiner says the agency is borrowing from those funds to stay afloat, he doesn't mean individual Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) accounts are being raided or that earned pensions have vanished.

However, it does mean the Postal Service is using deferred employer retirement obligations as a cash-management tool, which can impact every postal employee trying to make informed decisions about retirement, benefits, income and long-term security.

What postal workers can do to prepare

Postal employees have valuable benefits. This announcement isn't reason to panic, but it is reason to prepare.

Find out how potential changes could affect your pension, TSP, benefits and the financial protections you have chosen for your family. A qualified Federal Benefits Expert can help with that.

Calculate the retirement income you can realistically expect from the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), Social Security and your TSP, then compare it with what you actually spend each month.

The difference — whether a shortfall or a surplus — may determine how prepared you really are.

A Federal Benefits Expert can help you run that analysis, too.

Decide now how you would respond if the Postal Service announced another early-retirement offer, a restructuring or an involuntary separation. Understand what you would gain, what you could lose and whether your income, health coverage and savings could support that decision. Options are easier to evaluate before the pressure and deadlines arrive.

Prepare for the potential delay between your last paycheck and your full retirement income. We are seeing some retirement claims take six months (and occasionally as long as 12 months) to finalize.

A dedicated cash reserve can help you cover that gap without being forced into an unplanned, taxable withdrawal that depletes your traditional TSP savings.

That preparation matters because this is unlikely to be the last difficult decision involving Postal Service finances. Until the Postal Service and Congress agree on a durable plan for the Postal Service's long-term financial stability, employees should expect continued proposals that could affect operations, staffing and retirement planning.

Why we're in this situation

Deferring retirement obligations just to keep the lights on is not only indicative of a cash-flow problem for the Post Service, it's clear proof that the current funding model no longer works.

Under Title 39, the Postal Service must serve every American community, including routes that lose money year after year. Today, the agency delivers to roughly 170 million addresses, six days a week, across 233,000 delivery routes. This costs more than $65 million a week.

Steiner says 84% of city delivery routes and 52% of rural delivery routes are financially underwater, totaling a loss of more than $120 billion in the past decade.

In other words, the Postal Service is expected to operate like a business while providing service like a public utility.

The Postal Service isn't just cutting costs, it's fundamentally restructuring how it operates. Through its 10-year Delivering for America plan, the Postal Service is consolidating operations by moving letter carriers from local post offices to larger sorting and delivery centers.

These changes are already underway and have important implications for employees' careers, benefits and retirement planning. It appeared to improve efficiency on paper, but for the workers, it's often resulted in longer commutes, unfamiliar routes, new schedules and increasing uncertainty about future job security.

Although implementation has not met the Postal Service's original timeline, the restructuring has not stopped. In 2022, the Postal Service unveiled plans to consolidate up to 100,000 carrier routes into 400 to 500 larger sorting and delivery centers.

Today, with roughly half of those consolidations complete and about 133 facilities activated, its impact on employees is becoming increasingly evident.

The Postal Service says this change in operations has produced more than $1 billion in savings to date, potentially generating billions more annually if fully implemented.

But an audit from the United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General found it also created $1.4 million in added overtime costs and about $19 million in additional labor expenses.

This raises concerns about whether the savings are as clear as the Postal Service suggests.

Although postal workers' TSP accounts aren't being raided, nor are their pensions disappearing, suspending employer contributions to the FERS to save money isn't a sustainable solution.

While it might be saving the Postal Service roughly $100 million per week, or $2.5 billion in the current fiscal year, using those would-be contributions to employees' retirement funds is only multiplying future indebtedness.

Eventually, those missed payments must be restored, restructured or addressed by Congress.

For postal workers, it also raises an important question: How will the agency afford to pay back both missed and future payments?

Postal workers aren't the only ones impacted by this financial crisis. While taxpayers might not be paying the Postal Service's operating costs now, that doesn't mean they won't in the future. When a public service is legally required to serve every American address, but can't sustain itself financially, the bill gets pushed onto workers, customers, communities and potentially taxpayers.

The Postal Service can no longer afford to be expected to operate like a business while fulfilling a public mission. Unlike commercial carriers chasing profitable routes, the Postal Service is the only carrier legally obligated to deliver to every address in America — from densely populated cities to the most remote rural communities.

Unlike most federal agencies, the Postal Service does not rely on annual taxpayer appropriations to fund its day-to-day operations. Instead, it's expected to finance the majority of its operations through the sale of postage, products and services, all while fulfilling its legal obligation to deliver to every address.

It's a unique mandate that combines the responsibilities of a public service with the financial expectations of a self-supporting enterprise.

Until the Postal Service's long-term funding model is addressed, measures such as deferring retirement contributions are temporary solutions that postpone — not solve — the underlying financial challenges. If universal mail service is a national priority, then ensuring the long-term financial stability of the institution that delivers it must be a national priority as well.

If you're a postal employee, this isn't just another headline — it's your career, your retirement and your family's financial future. As the Postal Service continues to evolve, the decisions you make about your federal benefits today can have a lasting impact for decades to come. Understanding how your pension, TSP, Social Security, healthcare and insurance work together isn't just helpful — it's essential. The best time to prepare is before change leaves you with fewer options.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

I was raised to believe you suffer in silence, that asking for help is what weak men do. But my marriage was struggling, I was unhappy at work, and pretending had stopped working.

Her first question wasn't about any of that. She asked, "What are your values?"

I'd spent more than a decade guiding people through life's biggest financial decisions, and I couldn't answer. She told me most people can't.

Learning to answer that question changed my life, and it became the foundation of my practice, Narativ Retirement in Bellevue, Washington: Values first, portfolio second.

Nowhere has that approach resonated more than with the women I serve, who now make up more than half my clients.

They've taught me something the industry rarely says out loud: Most women are better investors than they've been led to believe.

That likely includes you. The research backs it up, and the reason comes down to something you can put to work deliberately: Knowing what you value.

Your instincts are better than the industry credits them

The financial world has spent decades talking to women as if they need to be taught how to invest. The data disagrees.

Research keeps finding that women's returns tend to match or slightly outperform men's. Fidelity research analyzing 5.2 million accounts found women outperformed men by about 0.4% annually and a 2025 Wells Fargo Investment Institute report found women's risk-adjusted returns came out ahead, as well. The edge is behavioral:

• Less impulse trading
• Less chasing the hot stock
• More due diligence
• More patience to buy and hold
• A healthy respect for risk

If you recognize yourself in that list, there's a reason. Women tend to be more naturally in touch with what they value than anyone else I work with, and they carry that clarity into their money decisions.

When your investments reflect what you care about, patience becomes your natural state.

You might already be doing this instinctively. What follows is how to do it on purpose.

A simple exercise for naming your values

My therapist gave me an exercise adapted from Brené Brown's book Dare to Lead, and I now use it with every client before any paperwork.

Ask yourself one question: What would I keep working toward if no one else ever knew about it? No audience, no credit, just you.

One rule makes the exercise work: You can't define yourself by your roles. Not "I'm a mother," not "I'm a nurse." Roles describe who you are to other people, and every one of them comes with expectations someone else wrote. Your values are what remain when nothing is expected of you.

With the roles set aside, sit with the question and write down every answer that surfaces. If you're staring at a blank page, a published values list, such as the one Brown offers, gives you raw material to react to.

Narrow the list to five. Take your time; I spent a week. Mine are curiosity, achievement, fortitude, adventure and authenticity. Yours will be different, and that's the point.

When you're weighing any significant decision, run it through your five. If it doesn't satisfy at least three, it's probably wrong for you. Leaving my old firm to start my own practice checked all five boxes, which told me everything I needed to know.

The reverse is just as useful: When a decision feels persistently uncomfortable, you're probably going against your own grain.

That applies to portfolios as much as careers. All the exercise really does is put language to the instinct you might have been investing with all along.

How your values become your financial plan

In my practice, the values conversation happens before any paperwork. I ask every new client for a moment of vulnerability: Tell me your five core values. We return to them in our planning conversations afterward because values help predict fit.

If your values center on security and protecting what you've built, an aggressive portfolio will feel like a constant low-grade violation. Protection-oriented strategies might serve you far better.

If you're wired for adventure and comfortable with risk, you need a different path entirely.

Neither answer is wrong, but a plan that ignores who you are is one you'll eventually abandon, and abandoning a plan midjourney is where real damage can happen.

If a recommendation has ever sat wrong with you and you couldn't articulate why, that was likely your values flagging a mismatch, and the feeling deserved more credit than it got. There is no one-size-fits-all financial plan.

The part of your plan that outlives you

A pattern among my female clients has changed how I think about what a financial plan is for. They introduce me to their kids and grandkids years, sometimes decades, before any wealth would change hands, because they want the people they love to know the person who will help carry things forward.

If that impulse sounds familiar, honor it. It's one more instinct the industry rarely gives you credit for, and it's values-based planning at its endpoint: Your plan covers more than your retirement. It's about the people and things you love most.

It's also a useful test: An adviser willing to invest real time in your next generation, knowing that money might not be under their care for 10 or 15 years, is showing you they value the relationship above the transaction.

Choosing an adviser is a values decision, too

Once you can name your five core values, you also have a filter for one of the biggest money decisions you'll make: Who to trust with them.

Many women tell me past experiences with financial professionals left them feeling talked over or treated like an afterthought. You don't have to settle for that.

An adviser worth keeping should hold up to the same three-of-five scrutiny as any other decision:

They ask who you are before they ask what you have. If the first meeting opens with your account statements, keep looking.

They listen more than they present. You should leave every meeting feeling heard.

They translate your values into a concrete, written plan, then meet the expectations they set consistently.

They make room for your family, opening the door to your children and beneficiaries without being asked.

They hold credentials that back up the discipline. The CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® (CFP®) certification, for example, requires rigorous education, examination, experience and a commitment to ethical standards.

I pursued that certification for one reason: A values conversation only helps you if the person across the table has the training to act on it across income planning, tax efficiency, insurance and legacy decisions. Credentials aren't everything, but they're evidence that someone chose the harder path on purpose.

Try it this week

All you need to start is an hour.

1. Ask yourself: What would I keep working toward if no one knew?

2. Write down every value that surfaces, then cut the list to five

3. Run your next money decision through the three-of-five test — a purchase, an investment, even the decision to hire or keep an adviser

Spend that hour, and you should start to feel it everywhere money touches: Decisions come easier, doubt gets quieter, and the plan you build is one that reflects who you are and what actually matters in your life.

The story your money tells

Your net worth is a number. Your values are the story your money is meant to tell.

You've spent much of your life stewarding other people's stories.

A plan aligned with your values is how your own gets told and, eventually, handed to the people you love. And you were never starting from behind: You've probably been investing this way by instinct all along.

Now you have the language and the test to do it on purpose.

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This article was written by and presents the views of our contributing adviser, not the Kiplinger editorial staff. You can check adviser records with the SEC or with FINRA.

When gold begins making headlines, interest builds. Then, after gold and silver have already rallied significantly, the questions inevitably shift to silver.

But when prices pull back, that interest disappears almost as quickly as it arrived. As a portfolio manager at Meristead Wealth, I have seen this pattern before, and it reflects one of the great challenges of commodity investing: Investors tend to become most enthusiastic when prices and expectations are already high.

The better time to get interested is often after both have come back down.

So, let's talk silver.

Silver is more than a precious metal

Silver is sometimes dismissed as "poor man's gold." That description badly understates what the metal has become. Like gold, silver has served as money and a store of value for thousands of years.

But unlike gold, silver plays a significant role in industry. It can be found in electronics, automobiles, medical equipment, electrical infrastructure and countless other products that have little to do with jewelry or investment demand.

Silver is particularly important to several technologies expected to shape the next generation of the global economy, including solar panels, electric vehicles, semiconductors and artificial intelligence data centers.

The reason comes down to the metal's physical properties. Silver is the most electrically conductive metal on Earth. In plain English, that means electricity can pass through it with exceptionally little resistance or wasted energy. It is also an excellent thermal conductor, allowing it to move heat away from sensitive components before they overheat.

Those qualities are valuable in everything from solar cells and vehicle charging systems to computer chips, servers and high-performance electrical connections. Industrial silver demand totaled 657.4 million ounces in 2025.

Although that was down modestly from the prior year's record, demand continued to benefit from investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure, automobiles and the power grid.

Here's the problem

The problem is that silver supply has not kept pace. The global market is projected to record its sixth consecutive annual supply deficit in 2026, with demand exceeding supply by an estimated 46.3 million ounces.

Since the current run of deficits began in 2021, about 762 million ounces have been drawn from above-ground inventories to bridge the cumulative gap between supply and demand.

That does not mean the world is about to run out of silver. It does mean that newly mined and recycled supply has repeatedly been insufficient to satisfy annual consumption, forcing the market to rely on metal accumulated in earlier years.

Mine production, meanwhile, has been remarkably stagnant over the past decade. Many of the world's premier silver districts are mature, and declining ore grades mean miners must move and process more rock to produce the same amount of metal.

Recycling can help, but only to a point. Some silver is concentrated in products such as jewelry, silverware and larger industrial components, making it economical to recover.

In many modern applications, however, each device contains only a tiny amount. A smartphone, medical instrument or electronic sensor may depend on silver to function yet contain so little that the recovered metal would be worth less than the cost of collecting, dismantling and processing the product.

As a result, much of the silver dispersed across millions of finished goods is unlikely to return to the market under current economics.

Diverse drivers of demand

The result is a precious metal with tight supply and a diverse collection of demand drivers. Better yet for silver producers, the small quantity used in many finished products can make demand relatively insensitive to price.

If the silver inside an expensive server, automobile or piece of medical equipment accounts for only a tiny fraction of its total cost, the manufacturer is unlikely to stop producing that item simply because silver becomes more expensive.

Supply can be equally unresponsive. Most silver is not produced by mines built primarily to extract silver. Instead, it is recovered as a byproduct from mines whose economics are driven by lead, zinc, copper or gold.

A sharp increase in silver prices will not necessarily convince a copper miner to expand production if copper prices, ore quality or the rest of the project economics do not justify it. Unlike commodities for which higher prices can quickly encourage greater production, silver supply does not always respond directly to the silver price.

For patient investors, that is an interesting setup indeed. Deciding how best to invest in it is more complicated.

Not all silver investments are equal

There is, of course, physical silver. Many of our clients at Meristead choose to own some precious metals directly, typically with the intention of holding them indefinitely or treating them as a form of "when stuff hits the fan" insurance.

That is a perfectly reasonable purpose for physical ownership. But owning more sizable quantities introduces practical problems, including secure storage, insurance and the risk of theft. Exchange-traded funds offer a more convenient alternative, but they charge fees and require investors to understand the fund's structure and custody arrangements.

Neither coins nor physical silver-backed funds provide the operating leverage that can make precious-metals equities especially rewarding when metal prices rise.

The obvious equity alternative is to buy a silver miner. Unfortunately, truly silver-focused mining stocks are in surprisingly short supply. Most of them are tiny companies that may own a mine but aren't currently pulling any silver out of the ground (which is to say, they aren't making any money).

This scarcity can also cause the few higher-quality silver companies to trade at premium valuations relative to the much larger universe of gold miners.

Even the "pure" silver miners are rarely as pure as the label suggests. Silver deposits frequently contain gold, lead, zinc or copper, and those other metals can represent a substantial share of a company's reserves, production or revenue. Investors who insist on seeing the word silver in the company name may therefore be restricting themselves to a small and sometimes expensive opportunity set without actually obtaining pure silver exposure.

Where silver hides in plain sight

At Meristead Wealth, we have found that investors seeking exposure to both gold and silver can often get the best of both worlds by looking beyond the narrow silver-miner category. A number of businesses thought of primarily as gold companies own meaningful silver-producing assets.

These companies can provide participation in higher silver prices without forcing investors to accept the limited choices or scarcity premiums that may accompany the most obvious silver stocks.

Newmont (NEM), for example, is known as one of the world's largest gold miners. Yet its Peñasquito operation in Mexico is also one of the world's largest silver mines. Peñasquito sold about 28 million ounces of silver in 2025, in addition to producing gold, lead and zinc. That is meaningful silver exposure hiding inside a company most investors place firmly in the gold bucket.

A different business model to consider

Another option is to move one step away from operating the mines altogether. In a previous Kiplinger article, I discussed precious-metals royalty and streaming companies, which provide miners with capital in exchange for a percentage of future production or revenue.

These businesses are typically highly profitable and capital efficient, and they avoid many of the day-to-day labor, equipment and cost risks faced by mine operators. They are not risk-free — their fortunes still depend on the underlying mines and operators — but I generally prefer the business model to traditional mining.

Here, too, investors can find both gold and silver exposure. Wheaton Precious Metals (WPM) is the clearest example. Longtime precious-metals investors may remember the company by its original name, Silver Wheaton — a nod to its roots as a silver-focused streaming business.

It has since broadened its portfolio, but silver still generated 36% of Wheaton's revenue in 2025, alongside 62% from gold. Its streaming agreements also provide exposure to hundreds of millions of ounces of attributable silver reserves and resources.

Royalty companies that appear more gold-oriented can offer silver exposure as well, although the degree varies by portfolio. Investors should examine the metals underlying each company's streams and royalties rather than relying on its name or headline gold-equivalent production.

That work can uncover silver assets within diversified businesses that offer stronger balance sheets, broader portfolios and, in some cases, more attractive economics than a narrowly focused mine operator.

Silver is still volatile

Investors who piled into silver when enthusiasm was at its peak earlier this year are now hurting. That is often the result of buying a volatile asset near record prices, when expectations are through the roof and it feels as though the rally can only continue. Just a handful of months ago, silver had both elevated prices and elevated expectations. Today, it has neither.

Make no mistake: Silver remains volatile, and I would hardly advise anyone to go "all in." Mining and royalty stocks also introduce company-specific risks that do not exist when owning the metal directly. But for investors possessing the right combination of patience and risk tolerance, a thoughtful allocation to silver-related equities after the recent pullback looks considerably more attractive than it did amid the excitement that preceded it.

In commodity investing, some of the best opportunities emerge only after the shine has worn off.

This commentary is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice or a recommendation. Any securities identified do not represent all securities purchased, sold, or recommended, and readers should not assume that investments in these securities were or will be profitable. Views and examples are subject to change and are not investment recommendations.

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