It's easy to set estate planning aside once you've done a version of it. You sign the paperwork. You name a beneficiary. You mentally close the file.
The only
You can do everything right on paper — save diligently, spend reasonably, stay invested for the long haul — and still land in a very different retirement than
Many people can tell you their portfolio balance. Far fewer can tell you what else determines whether their retirement actually works.
That's understandable. The
For decades, you trained one financial muscle: save, invest, don't touch it. Then retirement arrives and asks you to do the opposite.
Nobody teaches that part
What do you do when you earn well and have generally dialed in the fundamentals: save, invest, reduce debt, stay protected? The challenge was never knowing what
Retirement used to mean a short, quiet final chapter. For many people today, it's something else entirely.
For much of the last century, retirement followed a
I started this series because of a pattern I kept running into.
People would sit across from me, often coming from a large national brokerage firm, and when I
Nearly half of investors check their portfolio at least once a day.1
Many of them aren't reviewing anything.
They're refreshing a number. Watching it move
Hiring a financial advisor is one of the biggest decisions most people make without really knowing what comes next.
You hand over your financial life to someone
I have sat across from a lot of accomplished people who were certain their estate was handled.
They had a will. A good attorney drew it up. They read it, signed