Leaving your kids a traditional IRA is a gift. One that used to keep on giving.

Then the rules changed in 2020.

Some of you already know what it’s like to inherit an IRA, and are familiar with the tax bill that comes with it.

My hope is that after reading this piece, you’ll take a more thoughtful approach to how your IRA will pass to your beneficiaries. That you’ll ask whether there’s something you can do now, instead of waiting until it passes at your death.

What changed

It used to work like this.

Your grown child inherited your IRA. She had to take a little out each year. The rest kept growing for decades, and she paid tax only on what she took out.

It was commonly referred to as a “stretch” IRA.

The SECURE Act ended the stretch IRA for most heirs.

Now most non-spouse beneficiaries have to empty the account within 10 years of your death. And they likely have to take some out every year along the way.

A few people still get the old rules, such as a spouse. This chart shows who’s who:

I covered more of the details in “The IRS makes up its mind” back in July 2024.

Several of my clients inherited IRAs from a parent.

Each year they take out what they’re required to, and it has to be empty by year 10.

They know how this gift feels, tax bill and all.

A gift with the bill attached

An IRA is a wonderful thing to leave to your kids. And it’s great to inherit. Far better than nothing.

But the money in a traditional IRA has never been taxed. The IRS owns a part of every dollar in this account.

Leave the IRA to your kids, and the tax bill transfers to them. And it has to be paid within 10 years.

Margaret and Sarah

Margaret and Sarah aren’t real people, but their numbers are typical of what I see.

Margaret passes away at 88. She has $1.5 million in her IRA, and she splits it evenly between her two kids.

Her daughter, Sarah, is 55.

She and her husband earn about $400,000 a year. They’ve worked hard. They save as much as they can in their 401(k)s. Their son has one more year of college. And each November, they meet with their financial advisor to do some proactive tax planning.

Then Sarah inherits $750,000 in an IRA. And the 10-year clock starts.

Vanguard looked at this problem closely. For most heirs, the lowest-tax strategy was to take the money out in even amounts over the 10 years. For Sarah, that’s about $100,000 a year.

That extra $100,000 is added to their current income. It pushes them from the 24% tax bracket into the 32% bracket.

Their federal tax goes up by about $29,000 a year. For 10 years.

And they might have state tax too.

What if Sarah just waits?

The rules only make her take approximately $25,000 in the early years. But by year 10, close to $900,000 could still be sitting there if the investments grow. It all has to come out that year. Much of it would be taxed at 37%, the top rate.

Either way, the tax planning Sarah and her husband worked so hard on could get derailed.

Why we put this off

So why don’t more people deal with this sooner?

The people I work with cherish their kids. They want to take care of them and give them a better life.

But two worries keep coming up.

• “What if I need the money?”

• “What if something happens to me?”

And under both is the question I hear more than any other:

• “Am I going to be okay?”

That’s a fair question.

The easy answer is to leave your IRA alone, just in case.

But doing nothing is still a choice. It means your kids pay the bill.

They pay it at their tax rate, likely in their peak income years.

Your potential planning window

Margaret was retired for 20+ years.

For many of those years, her taxes were low. She lived primarily on Social Security and her savings.

Now picture her at 65.

Her Social Security is about $40,000 a year. That leaves room to add about $90,000 of income each year and still stay in the 22% bracket.

That might be an opportunity.

Each year, Margaret could move some of her IRA over to a Roth IRA. This is called a Roth conversion.

She pays tax on what she moves, at 22%. After that, the money grows tax-free, and Sarah won’t owe income tax once she inherits it.

What if Margaret had converted $100,000 a year, starting at 65?

Margaret would have paid about $22,000 in tax. Sarah, inheriting it, would pay about $29,000.

Do that for 10 years, and about $70,000 stays in the family (and doesn’t go to the IRS). That’s before any state tax, and before any tax-free growth.

The best part?

Margaret doesn’t give up control or access to the money. A Roth IRA is still her account. If she needs it, it’s there.

But the window doesn’t stay open forever.

At 75, Margaret has to start taking about $61,000 a year out of her IRA. That uses up most of her room in the lower tax bracket. The sooner she starts, the more choice she has.

Roth conversions aren’t for everyone.

They can raise your Medicare premiums. And they work best when you pay the tax from savings outside the IRA.

The only way to know is to run your own numbers.

What to do next

1. Check your beneficiary forms. Look at every IRA and 401(k). Are the right names there? Is anyone missing? Did you name backups? If it’s been a few years, look again.

2. Talk with your kids. Tell them what’s coming and how the 10-year rule works. If they know now, they’ll have time to plan. And if talking with your kids about this feels awkward, keep it simple. Try something like, “I want you to know how my IRA will work when it comes to you.” Or have a family conversation with your financial advisor.

3. Determine if you have a lower-tax window. A Roth conversion might help. So might leaving part of your IRA to a charity you care about, since charities don’t pay income tax. Run the numbers with your advisor to explore your options.

Bottom line

Your IRA will be a gift. The tax bill doesn’t go away.

But you can help decide who pays it and when.

If you’d like to look at your own numbers, reach out anytime.

Until next Wednesday,

Russ

Retirement Planning for Women

P.S. A quick personal update: as of October 1, I’ve joined TVAMP as a shareholder and wealth advisor. That’s why this email came from a new address, russ.thornton@tvamp.com.

The work itself isn’t changing. I’ll keep helping women plan for and live in retirement, and I’ll keep writing here. What’s new is a team of nearly 40 advisors and staff behind me, which gives the women I work with real continuity for the long run. You can learn more at TVAMP.com.

This piece is educational and informational only. It's not tax, legal, or investment advice.

Disclosures

In the early 1990s, my “GPS” was a giant spiral-bound Atlanta street atlas.

The map book

I was in my early 20s and just starting out as a financial advisor.

I spent hours every day cold-calling people at home. I called at all hours, often right in the middle of dinner, hoping someone would agree to meet with me.

When someone said yes, I would drive to see them.

First, I had to find their home.

So I’d flip to the right page, trace the route with my finger, and go fight Atlanta traffic.

Within a few months, that map book was worn and dog-eared.

I still got lost.

And being a guy, I was too stubborn to stop and ask for directions.

But sometimes I’d pull over, find a payphone (remember those?), and call the person I was on my way to see. I always hoped they wouldn’t use my call as a reason to tell me not to bother.

Now picture me in Atlanta in August, in a suit and tie. My car’s A/C never stood a chance.

I can’t imagine navigating Atlanta today without my phone.

But that map book made me pay better attention.

I learned how different parts of the city looked and felt. I saw where people lived, and how much that changed from one neighborhood to the next.

Retirement is new territory

I’ve been thinking about that big map book and the women I work with.

Most are in their 60s or 70s. Many are about to retire, or already have.

If that’s you, your career is gone, or soon will be. Your kids are grown, and maybe you have grandkids. Perhaps you’re helping care for your aging parents. It’s easy to get turned around.

When that happens, you need a guide.

The question is, what kind do you want?

GPS

She was 57 and eager to retire from a long career running a hospital department. She had about $2,800,000 saved.

Before we met, she typed her numbers into a free online planning tool. It asked a dozen questions and gave her an answer.

The answer was exact. She’d be financially independent at age 61.

She slid the printout across the table.

“I know I’m supposed to feel good about this,” she said.

Then she paused.

“But I have no idea where I’m going.”

That printout was a GPS.

Type in an address and it tells you every turn. It knows you’ll get there at 4:47. Miss a turn and it finds you a new route without skipping a beat.

But it never asks why you’re going.

It doesn’t care about the lake view around the next bend. Or the small town with the best barbecue in the state. It just wants to get you there quickly.

So you watch the blue line, you arrive on time, and you don’t remember much about your trip.

Map

A printed financial plan is more like my old map book.

A thick binder or a long PDF that shows your life the way it looked the day it was printed.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how every plan is out of date as soon as it’s done.

Once it’s out of date, a map ends up folded in a drawer. So do most financial plans.

Compass

She was in her early 60s, recently divorced, with about $4,000,000. She came in with no plan at all. No printout. No binder.

What she had was a direction.

“I want to live close enough to my daughter to pick up the grandkids from school,” she said.

“I want to keep painting. And I never want to ask anyone’s permission to spend my own money again.”

She never asked when she’d be financially independent.

A compass doesn’t pick your path. It doesn’t give you an arrival time. It just shows you which way is north. The path is up to you.

Being her compass is my job.

I keep pointing her back to what she told me that first day. When the market drops. When her daughter’s family moves to Charlotte. When a small gallery offers her a show, and she wonders if she can afford six months off to paint for it.

Her route will change many times. Her direction hasn’t changed at all.

And since she isn’t staring at a blue line, she gets to look around. She sees her grandkids grow up. She finishes the painting on her easel.

Why direction wins

I run plenty of numbers for clients.

But in 30+ years, I’ve seen women with precise plans feel lost.

And I’ve seen women with nothing but a clear direction feel calm and confident.

The difference is where they look.

A GPS keeps your eyes on a screen. A compass lets you look up, appreciate where you are, and decide if you want to take a new route.

My old map book is long gone. What stayed with me is the city, and the people who let a sweaty kid in a suit into their homes.

You know who you are. 😉

Your turn

Before you try one more planning app or ask for one more “what if,” write one or two sentences about where you’re headed.

No numbers. No deadlines.

Just where you want to be, who you want with you, and how you want your days to feel.

Then read it to someone who is taking the journey with you, like your spouse, one of your adult children, or a trusted financial advisor.

Until next Wednesday,

Russ

Retirement Planning for Women

P.S. Zilly is the best compass I know. We often take a different route on our walks. She always knows the way home, and she enjoys every step.

Disclosures

“We’ve been married for more than 30 years and my husband just told me he wants a divorce.”

Here’s what’s probably running through your mind right now:

What do I do? What will my parents think? My friends?

Am I going to be okay? Whose side will our kids take?

Will I get to stay in our home? Or will I have to move?

These and 1,000,000 other questions are likely bouncing around in your head and creating a knot in your stomach

I’ve had this conversation before

Over the years, I’ve seen many women cry. Sometimes they sob.

A friend, a sister, a CPA, or a divorce lawyer sent them my way.

The life they pictured for themselves is falling apart. They didn’t choose this.

Many of these women weren’t very involved in the family finances. Not because they weren’t capable. But for 20, 30, even 40 years, their husband handled it.

Now they carry a new financial responsibility on top of the grief, the anger, and the fear.

They feel embarrassed to tell friends and family their marriage is ending. They don’t know what to say to their kids.

Some women feel so angry they want to spend big and fast, just to prove they’re OK. I get it. But it’s still a bad idea.

More than one woman has told me, half joking, that she’s scared of ending up broke and alone, eating cat food under a bridge.

She chuckles when she says it.

But there are threads of truth and fear in her words.

First, define “okay”

You can’t answer “am I going to be okay” until you know what “okay” means to you personally.

That’s the starting point.

For some women, okay means keeping the house.

For others, it means never asking anyone for money again.

Maybe for you it’s simply knowing what you have and what you can count on.

I’ve shared this Thomas Keating quote before:

“The chief act of the will is not effort but consent.”

In other words, most of us chase goals we never really chose for ourselves.

Someone else handed them to us.

In a divorce, that can happen again.

The life you were planning was built around your marriage. Your family.

Now it’s time for you to choose what “okay” means in your life.

You don’t have to do this alone

The biggest mistake I see is a woman deciding she has to handle this all on her own.

Instead, be your own best advocate. Learn where you stand today. Explore where you’re headed. Understand your choices.

But you don’t have to figure it all out by yourself.

Find a good family law attorney or mediator. Bring in a financial advisor who helps you understand and plan for the financial impact. Many women also talk to a therapist.

Some bring in a forensic accountant to help sort out what you and your husband actually own.

It takes strength to ask for help.

If your heart races or your stomach drops when you think about money right now, you’re not alone.

Money fear shows up in the body, not just the mind.

That reaction is common.

The four numbers that matter most

Here is where clear thinking starts.

Ask yourself four simple questions:

• What do you own?

• What do you owe?

• What is your income?

• What are your expenses?

You’ll need two sets of numbers:

1. what you and your husband hold together right now and

2. your best guess for what your numbers will look like after the divorce

That combined picture often matters most when it’s time to talk about spousal support. And how you split what you own and what you owe.

A few things can get tricky with these numbers.

Splitting a retirement account may need special paperwork called a QDRO.

Your health insurance may change if you were on your husband’s plan. COBRA has its own rules and deadlines when it comes to divorce.

Accounts and beneficiaries will need to be updated.

You don’t need to master all of this today. Just know it’s coming. This is where your team of professionals can help.

The sooner you know your real numbers, the sooner you can make decisions from a place of knowledge instead of fear.

This helps whether your husband is willing to discuss these matters with you or not.

And it’s smart to have everyone on your “divorce team” communicating and working together on your behalf.

I say this as a former Certified Divorce Financial Analyst. For some reason, their organization still lists me on their website.

Your turn

Start this week.

Write down what you own, what you owe, your income, and your expenses.

Do it for what you and your husband hold together.

Then make your best guess for your life after the divorce.

You don’t need every number to be perfect. You just need to start.

Once you have the numbers, ask yourself:

What will actually make you happy, weeks, months, and years from now, once the dust settles?

Think about your own life first.

Caring for the people you love still matters. So does caring for yourself.

Even if you’re also caring for and supporting your aging parents and/or your adult children.

During a divorce, that balance is easy to lose.

Knowing your numbers is a good start.

Having a plan matters too.

So does having someone in your corner who sticks around after the divorce papers are signed. And life goes on.

When you have all three, you’ll be okay.

If any of this brings something up for you, hit reply. Or reach out anytime.

And if you know a friend, a sister, or a coworker going through a divorce right now, feel free to send this her way. It might help her too.

A few more of my articles that might be helpful:

• How women can protect their retirement after a divorce

• Money mistakes during divorce

• Advice for the suddenly single

• Are we a perfect fit: women dealing with divorce

• Am I going to be OK?

• Am I REALLY going to be OK?

And if you’re happily married, please, please, please make sure you understand and are engaged in your family’s finances and decision making…

Until next Wednesday,

Russ

Retirement Planning for Women

P.S. My Mom & Dad divorced more than 30 years ago, right around the time I finished college. My brothers and I have watched my Mom face some challenges that likely could have been avoided if she’d gotten some thoughtful advice along the way. That’s a big part of why I do this work.

Disclosures

When your husband dies, you might expect less income.

You probably don’t expect a bigger tax bill.

The assumption

Here’s what women tell me:

Once it’s just me, my expenses will go down, so my taxes probably go down too, right?

Yes, your expenses might drop.

Your income may or may not.

• The RMD from the IRA still comes out.

• A pension might continue.

• Social Security is deposited into your bank account each month.

The income might not change a lot.

But your filing status does.

From Married Filing Jointly to Single.

The shift

The year a spouse dies, the survivor usually files one final joint tax return.

The next year, the surviving spouse files as Single, on income that often looks like the year before.

Single tax brackets are different than Married Filing Jointly brackets.

Same tax rates.

But the income thresholds are lower for Single filers, so more of the same income gets taxed at a higher rate.

The result is a higher tax bill.

The story in numbers

Picture Carol and Jim.

Together they bring in about $140,000 a year between RMDs, a pension, and Social Security.

They’ve filed jointly for decades.

Then Jim dies.

The next year, Carol’s income is $120,000.

But she’s filing Single now, and more of her income gets taxed at a higher rate than it did the year before.

Her tax bill goes up even though her income dropped by $20K.

Carol didn’t do anything wrong.

The IRS simply taxes one person earning $120,000 more than two people earning $140,000.

Based on 2026 tax brackets, here are the numbers:

• Filing jointly on $140,000, their tax bill is $13,140. An effective tax rate of 9.4%.

• Filing Single on $120,000, Carol's bill is $17,570. Her effective rate is 14.6%.

Less income.

A bigger tax bill.

The unpleasant surprise

If you've lost a spouse, a tax bill is the last thing on your mind.

But eventually, you’ll have to file your taxes.

By the time these numbers show up on your tax return, it’s too late to do anything about it.

The years still ahead are a different story.

What you can do

1. Model it now, together. You and your husband should run the numbers now to see what the survivor’s tax bill would look like. Seeing the numbers is the best way to prevent surprises.

2. Consider Roth conversions. Converting money from a traditional IRA to a Roth while still married filing jointly can shrink future RMDs. This can lower the tax bill for a widow.

3. Use Qualified Charitable Distributions. If giving is already part of your plan, QCDs reduce taxable RMD income now, which can lower future taxes for a survivor.

4. Look at where your money sits. Some accounts pay taxes now, some later, some never. Different account types can change how much choice a survivor has over her own tax bill each year. That’s worth reviewing sooner rather than later.

Bottom line

Nothing went wrong here.

This is simply how our tax code works. Thankfully, it can be planned for.

If this is relevant to you or someone you love, I’m happy to have a conversation.

Hit reply or reach out anytime.

Until next Wednesday,

Russ

Retirement Planning for Women

P.S. — If you know a couple where one of them handles “the money stuff” and the other doesn’t, this is a good one to share with them. The spouse who isn’t usually into the numbers is exactly the one this one surprises.

Disclosures

“All models are wrong. Some are useful.”

That’s a quote from George Box, a British statistician.

It’s also the best one-sentence description of financial planning I’ve ever come across.

Re-running the numbers

Over the years, I’ve noticed something.

A client and I build a plan together.

We look at it. Consider two or three alternate scenarios. Then we move forward. Take action.

But some people want more.

They want to look at eight or ten scenarios, often changing a single variable by a small amount, to see what happens.

• What if you save $2,000 more per year?

• What if you retire at 63 instead of 62?

• What if you live to 97 instead of 95?

My answer is always the same: planning should be directionally correct.

It isn’t accurate. It can’t be.

I don’t mind doing the work to look at alternate scenarios, but it isn’t possible to capture every possible future.

Your plan is a reflection of what we know and understand right now, combined with our best guess about what might happen and where you’d like to go.

Some clients hear that and let go of the extra scenarios.

Some can’t.

I regularly hear about advisors and consumers alike, committed to diving deep down every rabbit hole, exploring every permutation of what their plan and their life might look like.

That’s not wrong.

I understand the impulse.

But watching it happen, I think of Don Quixote, lance lowered, charging a windmill he’s certain is a giant.

Usually it’s not about the spreadsheet or the software.

It’s the feeling — the fear — that you can’t afford to get this wrong.

Don’t misunderstand me… one of the benefits of working with an advisor is the ability to consider alternatives in your plan and your life.

And sometimes there’s value in going through 8 or 10 scenarios.

But at some point, too many alternatives can lead to confusion or indecision.

Wrong doesn’t mean useless

Wanting that certainty isn’t irrational. It’s human.

But accuracy and usefulness aren’t the same thing.

A financial plan can’t predict your future.

It’s like judging a map by whether it matches the terrain exactly, down to every rock and rut.

A map was never meant to be the terrain.

It’s trying to get you where you’re going.

No matter how much data you add or how many scenarios you run, your plan will be wrong.

Not eventually wrong. It’s already wrong, the moment you finish building it.

• The market will move.

• Tax law will change.

• Your husband wants a divorce.

• A diagnosis will surprise you and turn your life upside down.

That’s not a flaw in the plan.

That’s the nature of any model involving the future.

The wrongness isn’t something you can engineer away with more inputs or more precision.

The future is simply unknowable.

Two mistakes

Once you see it this way, two different mistakes often arise.

One is the person who keeps refining the model, running scenario six, then seven, then eight, trying to solve a problem that was never solvable: making the plan perfect.

The other is you, three years ago, building your plan, filing it away, and not opening it since. That plan went wrong the day the market moved or your life changed.

Both are chasing the wrong goal.

One tries too hard to make the model right.

The other doesn’t attempt to make it useful.

What planning is actually for

The real value was never the model.

It’s the process behind it: build the best plan you can with what you know today, decide, then adjust it when the information changes.

That’s it. That’s financial planning.

Accept what you don’t know. Use what you do.

Make the decision in front of you.

Then get on with living and loving your life, instead of living in a spreadsheet trying to account for things that can’t be accounted for.

I’ve written before about why those regular adjustments matter more than the plan itself.

Bottom line

A plan that sits in a drawer is useless.

A plan you keep rebuilding incrementally as life moves is the only kind that stays useful.

That’s the real case for ongoing planning.

It's not that perfect is the enemy of good. It's that the model was never going to be perfect in the first place.

If you’re someone who wants to run yet another scenario before deciding anything, here’s what I’d suggest instead: make the decision in front of you with what you know right now.

Whether that’s when to claim Social Security, when to actually retire, or how much to gift your kids this year, decide with what you have.

You can always update the model next time something actually changes.

Until next Wednesday,

Russ

Retirement Planning for Women

P.S. — Curious where you land: are you a run-it-once-and-decide person, or is there a scenario you're still turning over in your head? Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.

Disclosures

Your closet is missing that coat you never bought.

Absent from your calendar is the full-day spa visit you keep putting off.

Not because you couldn’t afford either one.

Because some part of you isn’t sure you’re allowed.

You can afford the cabin with the balcony. You book the one without a view.

You can afford to fly first class. You buy the coach ticket and tell yourself it’s practical.

At dinner, you skip the appetizer that has your mouth watering.

You order the second-cheapest glass of wine. You can afford the good one, but it feels like breaking an unwritten rule to choose it.

I see this same pattern show up again and again: in married couples, in widows, in women dealing with divorce.

People who could comfortably spend 25%, 50%, sometimes 100% more than they currently do.

Two numbers, one retirement paycheck

Many financial plans I build with clients have two spending numbers.

The first is the number you’ve become comfortable spending. The number you’ve settled into, sometimes without thinking.

The second is the amount you can comfortably spend each month. This depends on your income, savings, and lifestyle.

I call this your retirement paycheck.

For many of the people I work with, these two numbers aren’t close, and inertia is almost always the reason why.

A confession

I’ll admit something here: I’m fairly frugal myself.

I’ve built my career helping people enjoy their money. But I often struggle to follow my own advice when it comes to spending.

Writing this week’s essay, I had to ask myself the same questions I’m about to ask you.

The habit that built the wealth

For most of your working life, saving was the focus.

Save more. Spend less.

Watch your money pile up.

You kept saving, year after year, and you got good at it.

Retirement changes the rules.

The primary goal isn’t to keep growing your money.

It’s to use it.

And the discipline that made you a great saver doesn’t automatically know how to become a good spender.

You never trained that muscle.

Why would you have?

I touched on this once before, in passing, in a piece called Living Rich vs Dying Rich.

Many people reach retirement and find it hard to switch from saving to spending. This change can make some savers more frugal and worried when their paycheck stops.

The deferred life plan

Ask most people why they haven’t loosened up their spending, and you’ll hear some version of:

I’ll feel more comfortable spending next year.

Once things settle down.

Once I know for sure I won’t need it.

It’s like saying you’ll start living once you retire.

But now you’re retired, and your goalpost has moved again.

Lawrence Yeo describes this trap as the Nothingness of Money.

It’s making sacrifices for a future that always seems out of reach. Eventually, the sacrifices become the main focus, and the future never arrives.

This is almost always fear, masquerading as prudence.

• What if I run out?

• What if I’m not going to be okay?

• What if I make the wrong decision at the wrong time?

All fair questions.

But if your plan already addresses them, and for many of the people I work with, it does, you’re probably spending in fear.

Test it, don’t flip a switch

I’m not suggesting anyone go from careful to reckless overnight.

Nobody rewires forty years of habit in a weekend.

Try something smaller.

In a previous article, I discussed money dials.

Pick one.

Turn it up by 50 to 100 percent for a month.

Try spending $80 or $100 on a birthday gift for your grandchild instead of the usual $40.

See how it makes you feel.

If you usually book the interior cabin, book the one with the balcony next time.

Keep it small. This is a test, not a lifestyle overhaul.

Then pay close attention.

Not whether you enjoyed it, but what came up while you decided.

If it felt easy and natural, that’s useful information.

If it made you anxious or fearful, that’s useful information too.

Get curious about where the anxiety comes from.

Sometimes, it connects to a lesson about money you learned as a kid but never thought to question.

And if you do run a test, keep it a test.

One nicer dinner or one travel upgrade is data. Feedback.

A spending spree is different. The goal is to learn about yourself, not to compensate for past frugality in one weekend.

Retiring the muscle that got you here

The saving muscle isn’t the villain in this story.

It’s the reason you have a spending choice to make at all.

Forty years of using it built the wealth that makes this whole conversation possible.

But a muscle built for one job doesn’t automatically know how to do a different one.

You’re allowed to be proud of the discipline and still decide it’s done its job.

It’s time to let it rest, at least a little, now that you’re retired.

Ask yourself this

What are you waiting for? What’s the future trigger or event that will allow you to begin spending more comfortably?

What fear lies beneath your spending decisions? Not the story you tell yourself or how you rationalize it in your head, but the real thing that scares you?

Do you spend based on lessons you learned about money long ago from parents and grandparents?

If your portfolio balance doubled tomorrow, would you actually spend (and live) differently?

Bottom line

You spent decades saving and building wealth.

Paying down debt.

Living well within your means.

What you do with it now is a different skill, and it’s a skill worth practicing on purpose, starting today.

If you want to discuss your retirement paycheck, hit reply or reach out anytime.

And if someone in your life could use this same nudge, feel free to pass it along.

Until next Wednesday,

Russ

Retirement Planning for Women

P.S. — If you try your own money dial test this month, I’d genuinely love to hear how it went. Hit reply and share your story.

Disclosures

Your portfolio has been doing well.

Eventually it will do poorly.

You know this, but it’s easy to forget when you see your portfolio balance going higher and higher.

I hate to rain on your parade, but it’s an important part of my job.

Keeping you invested and your plan (and life) on track.

The current run, in numbers

The stock market has been going up since October 12, 2022.

Stocks had dropped about 25% from their highest point, about nine months earlier.

Since that low, stocks are up about 83%.

That’s a strong run.

Since 1950, the average bull market has lasted about five and a half years.

Nobody can predict what happens next, including how long this run lasts.

Even this run had a scare.

In spring 2025, a fast, sharp drop hit stocks.

But it never fell 20% from its high. So it didn’t count as a new bear market.

Most market trackers still call this one continuous run, from October 2022 to today.

Every run before this one has come to an end.

This one will too.

What pullbacks actually look like

You don’t have to look back far to find one.

In 2022, stocks fell about 25% from their high.

In early 2020, stocks fell by about a third in weeks. That was one of the fastest drops in history. Stocks climbed back to new highs a few months later.

Both times, it felt scary.

Both times, gritting your teeth and staying invested was the smart choice.

Not every drop is the same size, nor do they happen with the same frequency:

• A drop of 5% to 10% is a pullback. These happen almost every year.

• A drop of 10% to 20% is a correction. These happen roughly every year or two.

• A drop of 20% or more is a bear market. These happen roughly once every five to six years.

When a bear market does hit, the average drop is close to 30%, top to bottom.

Market drops are the short-term price you pay for higher returns over time.

The chart below provides some visual context.

Your portfolio’s job

When your portfolio does well, you want more. To chase what’s working.

You might think, “This time is different.”

When the market drops, you want to stop the pain.

You want to get the hell out. You want to wait until things feel calm.

You tell yourself the same thing: “This time is different.”

These both miss the real point of your portfolio.

Its job is to fuel and fund your plan. Your life.

That means trips. Help for your grandkids. Living how and where you want. More choice and autonomy. Freedom and independence. Not being a burden on your family.

What the market does today isn’t important.

Your life and the plan that supports it is what matters.

The best portfolio for you isn’t the one with the highest return.

It’s the one you can stick with.

In good markets and bad.

In great markets, and markets that redefine fear in your heart.

A few questions

• If your portfolio dropped 20% tomorrow, would your spending need to change?

• Are you taking on more risk because it fits your plan? Or because the market has done well lately?

• Think back to 2022 or 2020. What did you actually do? Would you make the same choice again?

• If the next drop started next week, how hard would it be for you to hold on?

Bottom line: markets go up more than they go down. That’s why we invest.

But never forget that they can go down quickly. Violently. When you least expect it.

Acknowledging and planning for that makes sense.

If this brings up a question about your plan, hit reply. I’m always glad to talk it through.

Until next Wednesday,

Russ

Retirement Planning for Women

P.S. — People ask me all the time: “What do you think the market will do?” My answer never changes. I don’t know. Nobody else does either, no matter how confident they sound.

Disclosures

A couple of years ago, I met with a client to review her retirement plan.

The plan’s probability of success score: 85%.

Her first question: “How do I get that number up to 90?”

Five points. That's what she was focused on.

I’ve had this conversation more times than I can count over the years.

And I get it.

An 85 out of 100 looks like a solid B on a test. Of course you want an A instead.

But the score isn’t measuring what most people think it’s measuring.

What the score actually measures

Probability of success measures one thing: whether you’ll still have money left when your plan ends.

And your plan ends when you run out of blood pressure, though we don’t know exactly when that will be.

It has nothing to do with how well you lived.

It only tracks whether your money lasts.

To guarantee money remaining in every possible future — every bad market, every inflation spike, every longer-than-expected life — you have to plan to spend less than you could in many of those potential futures.

Here’s what surprises most people: the spending level most likely to be right for you produces a score of around 50%.

A 50% score is the middle of the distribution of potential outcomes.

This means you have the best chance of spending an amount that isn’t too much or too little.

That’s just how the math works.

But 50% is also a letter grade of “F” and no one wants to fail their retirement, right?

So if you’re targeting a score of 80%, 90% or higher, you’re deliberately planning to spend less (maybe MUCH less) than you could afford.

You’re leaving your life on the table. Not just your money.

This is Goodhart’s Law in action, which states:

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Flip the number around and it gets a little more useful.

An 85% probability of success could also be considered a 15% likelihood that your plan will need to be adjusted at some point.

That’s closer to how retirement actually works than a single pass/fail score.

But don’t stop there.

Even a plan with a 100% score will inevitably need adjusting.

Markets move.

Spending needs change.

Life happens.

No score, however high, gets you out of that.

The risk hiding on the other side

We spend almost all our energy worrying about running out of money.

But there’s another risk: spending so carefully (or fearfully) that you’ll eventually look back with regret.

The Disney trip with the grandkids you kept postponing.

The things you passed on because you were worried when the numbers would have been just fine.

That’s the real cost of chasing a high probability score: playing it so safe that you miss your own retirement.

And your own life.

A better way to think about it

Instead of a score, think of guardrails.

One guardrail keeps you from running out of money.

The other keeps you from spending so little that you’re not really living.

A good retirement income plan sets and monitors both.

It starts with a spending level that’s reasonable and sustainable, then monitors if you’re spending needs to be adjusted based on your personalized guardrails.

If the portfolio falls below the lower guardrail, that’s the signal to trim back on the discretionary spending — travel, gifts — until things recover.

If it exceeds the upper guardrail, that’s the signal to spend some more, not less.

Either way, it’s planned (and we discuss it) in advance.

You’ll know what would trigger a change and what that change looks like.

In dollar terms. Not percentage scores.

This means fewer surprises.

That’s a different conversation than watching a percentage score bounce around and wondering if you should be worried.

And you can’t spend your percentage score at the grocery store.

Questions worth asking about your plan

• What spending level are we actually planning for, in dollars per month?

• What would trigger a change, up or down?

• Am I spending within my means, or well below them?

• What does a good retirement look like for me, and is the plan built around that?

That client who wanted 90%?

We talked through what the score actually meant, then rebuilt her plan around guardrails instead.

She’s spending closer to what the math always said she could — and she took the grandkids to Disney a few months ago.

Bottom line

The goal isn’t a higher score. It’s a well-lived, regret-free retirement.

— Russ

Retirement Planning for Women

Disclosures

A client recently wrote a $5,000 check to a charity.

It cleared.

And then the problems started.

Cleared doesn’t mean safe

She almost stopped there.

Cleared means done, right?

But she looked at the check image online.

Not just the amount. The actual picture of the check.

Someone had changed the payee. They changed the memo line too.

Her $5,000 never reached the charity.

The check cleared. It just didn’t go where she sent it.

She called her bank right away.

The check had been changed somewhere between her mailbox and the bank that cashed it.

The bank put a hold on the account. They said they’d move everything to a new account.

But the account was titled in their trust.

That meant the fix had to happen in person, at a branch.

My clients were traveling and not in the state where their trust was domiciled. They would have to work on this once they were back at home.

Now every autopay and direct deposit on that account is frozen. Bills are still due.

The bank said they’d investigate. They hoped to fix it soon.

Hope is no guarantee.

Big banks aren’t immune

This happened at one of the largest banks in the country. Not a small local bank. A brand name you know.

My clients have accounts at Charles Schwab. Another big name. I’d like to think that keeps them safe.

It doesn’t.

Fraud like this can happen anywhere a check travels through the mail. A big financial brand lowers some risks.

It doesn’t erase them.

So don’t panic. And don’t trust your bank less. Just pay closer attention.

I’ve been there

It’s easy to think this happens to other people. I thought that too.

Back in 2014, I opened the mail and found a letter from Best Buy.

They were congratulating me on my new credit card account.

An account I never opened.

More letters came over the next few days.

Each one was for an account I didn’t opened.

Thankfully, we didn’t lose any money.

But I lost hours upon hours cleaning it up.

Police reports. Phone calls. More phone calls.

That year, I froze our credit.

Mine and Elizabeth’s have stayed frozen ever since. That’s more than a decade now.

It hasn’t made either of us immune, just harder to target.

And it’s given me one less thing to worry about.

What you can actually do about it

There’s no way to guarantee you’ll never be targeted.

The people doing this are patient. They get better every day.

But there are steps you can take.

Most cost nothing. Together they take less an hour.

And they make you a much harder target.

1. Pull your credit reports. Go to AnnualCreditReport.com. By law, it’s the only site that gives you free reports from all three credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. No credit card. No subscription. No sales pitch. Just look over each report for any account or details you don’t recognize.

2. Turn on free alerts. This is a separate step. Go to each bureau’s own website and set up a free account. Turn on alerts for new credit checks and score changes. AnnualCreditReport.com won’t do this part for you.

3. Freeze your credit at all three bureaus. It’s free. It takes about ten minutes per bureau. You can temporarily lift the freeze in minutes any time you actually need to apply for credit. And it stops most new-account fraud before it starts.

4. Lock your Social Security number with the Social Security Administration. Here’s a good explainer on how and why. If you care for minor children or grandchildren, freeze their credit and lock their Social Security number too.

5. Mail fewer checks. Use direct deposit and online bill pay when you can. If you must mail a check, try to drop it at a post office box, not your own mailbox. If you have a trust account, ask your bank about Positive Pay. It’s typically a business tool, but some banks may offer it for trust or large accounts. And if you give to charity often, look into a donor-advised fund. That’s a giving account that sends money to charities for you, so you write fewer checks yourself.

Bottom line

None of this guarantees you won’t be a fraud victim.

But it’s free or low cost, doesn’t take much time, and makes you a harder target. That’s worth doing now, before you need it.

I’ve written about parts of this before, here and here. But it’s worth saying again, because most people still haven’t done it.

If you know someone this could help, forward it to them. A parent. An older relative. A friend.

This kind of fraud catches people off guard. A five-minute email might be what finally gets them to act.

Her check cleared. It just didn’t go where she meant it to. Don’t let that be you.

Hit reply and tell me: have you frozen your credit yet? If not, what’s stopped you?

Until next time,

— Russ

Retirement Planning for Women

P.S. ~ Good news! Thankfully the funds are now back in my client’s bank account!

Disclosures

You can afford the trip.

The math says so.

You book it anyway with a knot in your stomach.

That’s not a math problem.

It’s a psychological and/or emotional problem.

Most retirement plans can tell you whether your money will last.

Almost none tell you what adjustments you’ll have to make along the way. And what would trigger those adjustments.

That gap is where the knot in your stomach lives.

Most retirement projections are either a straight-line fantasy — a steady 6% or 7% return, simple and absolutely wrong — or a Monte Carlo score that hands you a number like “87% probability of success” and stops there.

Both skip the part that actually matters: what do you do if things start moving the wrong direction? At what point? By how much?

That’s where guardrails come in.

Think of it this way: a weather forecast tells you the probability of rain. A GPS tells you when to turn, which direction, and whether you’re going to arrive later (or earlier) than planned.

Most retirement projections are weather forecasts.

A guardrails-based plan is a GPS.

The guardrails approach builds a dynamic spending strategy around your specific situation.

First, it tells you a specific dollar amount you can afford to spend each month and from which sources (Social Security, investment accounts, etc.).

This is your retirement paycheck.

It also establishes, in advance, the conditions under which you’d increase your retirement paycheck, or reduce it, and by exactly how much.

I’ve written before about a hypothetical client I call Jane Sample — a 64-year-old single woman with a $1.8 million portfolio, a mortgage-free home, and a monthly spending need of around $6,900.

Read the case study here.

When we ran Jane’s numbers through a guardrails analysis, here’s what we found.

Her sustainable monthly spending — factoring in her portfolio, her Social Security benefit starting at 67, taxes, and realistic return assumptions — came to approximately $7,812 per month. That’s roughly $900 more than she thought she needed.

The retirement paycheck amount is useful.

The guardrails around it are even more useful.

Her lower guardrail: if her portfolio (not the market) dropped by 31%, to about $1.24 million, she’d need to reduce her monthly spending by about $390 — roughly 5%. A specific, known adjustment, not a lifestyle overhaul that has her living off cat food.

Her upper guardrail: if her portfolio grew by 19%, past $2.14 million, she’d be eligible for a $1,480 monthly increase.

That’s the information that was missing when you booked that trip with a knot in your stomach.

Not just odds… an exact answer for what would need to happen before anything changes, and what you’d need to do about it.

When you know your spending is mathematically sustainable, and you know precisely what would need to happen before an adjustment is required, you can spend with more comfort and confidence.

You can actually use the money you spent your career saving and investing.

With less anxiety and worry.

A few questions worth considering, whether you’re approaching or already retired:

1. What would trigger a change to my spending — up or down?

2. If an adjustment were needed, do I know, in dollars, roughly how much?

3. Is my current spending level based on what’s mathematically sustainable, or just what feels comfortable?

   1. For many people, those are two different numbers. The sustainable one is often higher.

4. How would my spending plan have held up in challenging market periods in the past?

You worked a long time for this chapter. Spend it living, not scared to spend.

Until next Wednesday,

Russ

Retirement Planning for Women

P.S.~ You might be interested to check out my recent conversation about the challenging retirement transition from saving to spending with Josh Patrick on his Long Strange Trip podcast.

Disclosures

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.”

That old saying could have been written for the new 530A accounts (also known as Trump accounts).

Just not for the reason most people think.

I get some version of the same question from clients all the time: how can I help my kids or grandkids financially?

Most often, that question is about college.

A 529 plan. Tuition. Books.

But there’s a new tool, and it opens up something bigger than college.

Back in June, I wrote about the new Trump accounts: what they are, the $1,000 the government deposits for children born between 2025 and 2028, and how the basic tax rules work.

If your child or grandchild was born in that window, go claim it. It’s free money.

Actually it’s Treasury-funded, taxpayer money. So not entirely “free.”

But here’s what I really want you to hear: that $1,000 is a headline that’s distracting almost everyone from the bigger idea.

The better question

Most people hear about Trump accounts and ask: does my child qualify for the $1,000?

Fair question. Free money is free money.

But it only applies to kids born in a three-year window. If your grandchild was born in 2019, or won’t be born until 2030, that seed money was never on the table for them.

Here’s the better question:

Could you open and fund one of these accounts for any child in your life under 18, seed money or not, and let them benefit from the power of compounding over the next several decades?

The answer is yes!

And it changes what these accounts can do.

What you can do

Any U.S. citizen under age 18 with a Social Security number can have a Trump account. Not just babies born in the last couple of years.

Anyone can contribute up to $5,000 a year on that child’s behalf.

Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, or friends can contribute.

It doesn’t matter whether they ever received the free $1,000.

That money grows tax-deferred in a low-cost index fund until the child turns 18.

At that point, the account simply becomes a Traditional IRA in their name.

Then it keeps growing, for as long as they’re willing to leave it be.

What this could actually look like

Say you have a 5-year-old granddaughter.

You decide to contribute $3,000 a year on her behalf, starting this year, through the year she turns 18.

That’s 14 years of contributions. $42,000 out of your pocket, total.

At a hypothetical 6% average annual return, that account could grow to somewhere around $67,000 by the time she’s 18.

Then the contributions stop.

But the money can continue compounding.

By the time she’s 60, another 42 years down the road, that same account, still growing at that same hypothetical rate, could be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $770,000.

From the $42,000 you contributed.

Nothing about that is guaranteed. It’s simply what the math shows if a 6% average holds for 55 straight years.

But that’s not how investment markets work, so your reality will absolutely be different.

I built an interactive calculator to show how this could work:

Click here to access the interactive calculator and play around with your own numbers and assumptions.

Using the account

You contribute to these account with money you’ve already paid tax on.

So the dollars you put in come back out tax-free later.

Only the growth inside the account gets taxed as ordinary income when it’s withdrawn, the same as any Traditional IRA.

A window for Roth conversions

Once your grandchild turns 18, the account becomes a Traditional IRA in her name.

It’s likely she’ll have little-to-no income those first few years out of high school, so that’s often the lowest income tax bracket she’ll ever be in.

That can be a good window to convert some or all of the account to a Roth IRA.

She’d pay income tax (at her presumably low rate) on the conversion of the growth and earnings so it can grow and be accessed tax-free for good after that.

The account could be converted to Roth all in one year or spread over multiple years.

We won’t work through the Roth conversion mechanics here.

But it’s a real strategy, and one I can write more about if you’re interested.

And a quick word on gift taxes

One more note...

Contributions to these accounts count as gifts.

Earlier this year, the IRS clarified that contributions like the $3,000-a-year example above won’t require a gift tax filing, as long as your total gifts to that child stay under the annual exclusion for the year.

I wrote about how the annual and lifetime gift exclusions fit together here, if you want the fuller picture.

None of this is tax advice. Talk with your tax advisor about your specific situation before you contribute.

One important caveat

This isn’t a strategy to pursue in isolation just because it sounds appealing.

It only makes sense in the context of your own retirement plan.

You need to first consider what you need for yourself.

What you can comfortably set aside for the people you love, second.

And nobody actually knows what the next 14 years hold, let alone the next 55. Growth could run higher than 6%. It could run lower.

Markets will do what markets do.

That uncertainty isn’t a reason to avoid this.

It’s the reason a real financial plan gets reviewed and adjusted regularly, not set once and forgotten.

Is there a child or grandchild in your life this could help?

Not because they qualify for the $1,000, but because they could benefit from the power of compounding. And time.

What would $42,000, turned into something like $770,000, actually mean for them at age 60?

And is there a version of “helping family” you’ve been waiting to do later that you could start now instead?

You can’t buy a fifty-five-year-old tree. You can only plant one today and let it grow.

Bottom line: The $1,000 is a nice bonus, if your family happens to qualify.

The real gift is compound growth over the coming decades.

And almost any child in your life still has time for compounding to work for them.

If any of this sparks something, hit reply or reach out anytime.

I’m always happy to help you think through whether it fits your family and your plan.

Until next Wednesday,

Russ

Retirement Planning for Women

Disclosures

A writer I follow, Dan Haylett, calls it the Permission Paradox.

His argument: successful people arrive at retirement and find they can’t authorize their own enjoyment.

The job title is gone.

The paycheck stopped.

The external signals that once said “you’ve earned this” have been unplugged — and without it, spending can feel reckless.

Indulgent.

Like something that needs to be justified.

He’s right.

But in working with women for 30+ years, I’ve noticed something he doesn’t quite name.

For many of the women I work with, the problem isn’t that they lost permission somewhere along the way.

It’s that they were never given it.

For a lot of women in their 60s and 70s, the earliest lessons were clear: be careful, be modest, don’t be extravagant. Save for a rainy day. Think of others first.

Those messages came from parents.

They came from careers where women learned to ask rather than decide.

From marriages and partnerships where one person handled the finances and the other deferred.

None of that was malicious.

But layer after layer, year after year, the message sunk in for many women: someone else will take care of this.

This is how we develop our own money scripts.

And now here she is.

Capable. Accomplished. Four million dollars in savings. A paid-off home. More financial security than she imagined in her 40s and 50s.

Still waiting for someone to say go ahead.

I’ve written recently about what sometimes breaks this pattern: a diagnosis. A loss. A relationship that ends.

Painful events that force a woman to step into the driver’s seat — not because she’s ready, but because there’s suddenly no one else to take the wheel.

But it shouldn’t take a crisis to sit in the driver’s seat of your own life.

That seat has always been yours.

Thomas Keating puts it simply:

The chief act of the will isn’t effort. It’s consent.

That’s what’s actually missing — not a new investment strategy, not a different balance sheet.

Consent to your own life.

No one is coming with a permission slip — not a parent, not a partner, not a doctor’s report.

If you’ve been going through the motions — spending less than makes sense, deferring decisions that are yours to make, waiting for some signal that hasn’t come — take an honest look at that.

Not to assign blame. The people who shaped your relationship with money were doing their best.

But you are responsible for what you do next.

Here’s where to start:

Take some quiet time. Away from your phone and anyone else’s agenda. Sit with a blank piece of paper. Think about financial decisions you’ve pulled back from — not because the money wasn’t there, but because it didn’t feel like your call.

Name one thing. Just one. A choice you’ve been deferring. Write it down. Naming it turns a feeling into something real.

Bring it to a conversation. Share it with someone you trust — your advisor, a close friend. A conversation is how it becomes a plan.

The driver’s seat has always been yours.

You just need to take the wheel.

Until next time,

— Russ

Retirement Planning for Women

Disclosures

At 18, your child becomes a legal stranger to you.

You lose the automatic right to see their medical records, weigh in on their care, or even get their grades from college.

It doesn’t matter if you’re still paying the bills or they still live under your roof.

A story that’s hard to read, but worth it

In 2018, Baylie Grogan was a 19-year-old pre-med student at the University of Miami.

A car hit her, and she suffered a severe brain injury.

Her parents, Shawnee and Scott Baker, rushed to the hospital.

Without a signed health care proxy, the hospital wouldn’t share details about her condition or her treatment.

A hospital ethics committee — not her mom and dad — decided her care.

The Bakers went to court to get legal guardianship of their own daughter.

That process takes months. Baylie didn’t have months.

WBUR reported her full story here.

Here’s the key idea

The day your child turns 18, you lose the automatic legal right to help in a crisis: medically, financially, even academically. Unless they’ve signed paperwork that hands some of that authority back to you.

It doesn’t matter if she’s still on your health insurance, still living at home, or you’re still paying tuition.

Age eighteen means adult in the eyes of the law.

If your own kids are already in their 40s or 50s, here’s who this piece is actually for: your granddaughter, the one who just left for her sophomore year.

Or your grandson, three states away at his first job.

Pass this along to your own kids — they’re the ones who need to act on it now.

Think of it like the fire extinguisher under your sink

Nobody requires you to have one.

You hope you never need it.

If a fire starts, it’s the only thing in the room that can help — and by then, it’s too late to go buy one.

These documents work the same way.

No law requires an 18-year-old to get them.

Most families never think about them until a crisis forces the question, and by then it’s too late to sign anything.

Why most families haven’t done this

More than 70% of adults haven’t done their own estate planning.

If you haven’t finished yours, it’s no surprise your 20-year-old hasn’t started theirs — and that’s exactly why this needs to be a family project, not one person’s job to remember.

The three documents every adult child needs

• HIPAA authorization — lets doctors and hospitals share medical information with you. Without it, they legally can’t tell you anything, even if you’re standing in the waiting room.

• Medical power of attorney — lets you make health care decisions if they can’t make those decisions themselves.

• Financial power of attorney — lets you handle money matters (rent, a bank account, a landlord or lender) if they’re incapacitated.

If your child is in college, add one more:

• FERPA release — lets the school share grades or disciplinary records with you. Without it, privacy law treats an 18-year-old student’s records as theirs alone.

How to actually get this done

You don’t need a complicated estate plan to knock this out.

Three ways to go:

1. The simple route. A tool like Five Wishes covers the medical side in plain English. It costs about $5 and takes about 20 minutes. I wrote about it here.

2. The attorney route. A local estate attorney can draft these documents in one meeting, usually for a few hundred dollars.

3. Either way, keep it accessible. Signed copies belong somewhere you can reach them — not in a safe deposit box your child can’t get into at 2 a.m.

Pick one. Get it done this month.

You can refine it later. Done beats perfect.

This doesn’t end at graduation

This isn’t only a college issue.

The need doesn’t disappear when your child graduates, gets a job, or moves into their own place.

It runs from 18 until the day they marry, or otherwise have a partner who can legally step in for them, however many years that takes.

Bottom line: Turning 18 gives your child independence. It also takes away your legal right to help them if something goes wrong, unless you both sign a few pieces of paper first.

Your challenge

If your kids are in their 40s or 50s with children of their own, call them this week. Ask if your grandchildren have these documents in place.

If not, help them get it done.

If you know other parents or grandparents who need to hear this, send them this article.

It’s far easier to talk about before a crisis than during one.

I’m not an attorney, and this isn’t legal advice. This is something every family should prioritize alongside their own estate planning.

Until next Wednesday,

— Russ

Retirement Planning for Women

P.S. If you want the simplest starting point, Five Wishes is still my first recommendation — here’s the piece I wrote about it. Reply and tell me: does your grandchild already have these documents in place, or is this the first time you’re hearing about it?

Disclosures

Your financial plan was built for someone else.

Your priorities have shifted.

Maybe your marriage has.

Maybe your health has changed in ways you didn’t see coming.

The plan you made 3 years ago is for the person you were 3 years ago. Not the person you are today.

Psychologists call this the end-of-history illusion.

Dan Gilbert put it plainly:

“Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished.”

Watch Gilbert’s 2014 Ted talk about this idea:

We’re good at seeing how much we’ve changed in the past decade.

We’re terrible at imagining we’ll keep changing just as much in the next one.

Your financial plan has the same blind spot you do.

I’ve watched women navigate real disruptions — a diagnosis out of nowhere, a divorce at 67, health changes in their 70s that rewrote everything the next decade was supposed to look like — with a financial plan built for a life that no longer existed.

Not because the plan was wrong when it was made.

Because no one had touched it since.

There's a difference between a one-time financial plan and ongoing financial planning.

A plan built once is a snapshot.

It was accurate the moment it was made.

It gets less accurate with every passing day.

After a year or two — maybe less, if life moved fast — it may be a plan for someone you no longer recognize.

This is why I no longer offer one-time financial plans.

Not because going through the process once has no value, but because the true value isn’t in the plan.

It’s in the ongoing work: the updates, the adjustments, the ability to respond when your life changes.

And it will.

What to do right now:

• Assess: Pull your plan out and read it like you're meeting it for the first time. Ask whether any of these have shifted since it was made: your health, or a spouse's; how close retirement feels and what you picture it looking like; your family situation; how you think about spending and what "enough" actually means to you. If you couldn't tell someone what your plan assumes about your spending or your timeline — or if any of those things have changed — that's your answer. It needs to catch up with you.

• Act: Put a review date on your calendar — at least once a year, ideally twice. Treat it as a real conversation, not a number check. And don't wait for the scheduled date if something significant happens. A health change, a family shift, a major decision you're wrestling with — those are exactly the moments when an outdated plan is most costly. That's what I'm here for.

The plan you have is only as useful as it is current.

— Russ

Retirement Planning for Women

P.S. ~ When was the last time you actually reviewed your financial plan? Hit reply and tell me — I’m curious how many of you are working from something more than a year or two out of date.

Disclosures

Most people spend their working years accumulating money.

Saving, investing, growing.

But somewhere along the way, accumulation becomes the goal itself.

The money stops being a means to an end and starts being the end.

And most financial advisors, if we’re being honest, make this worse.

We talk about portfolio returns.

Allocation percentages.

Withdrawal rates.

Tax efficiency.

But none of it is the point.

Money is fuel. And fuel only matters if you’re going somewhere.

Think about your car.

You don’t fill the tank just to watch the gauge stay full.

You fill it because you have somewhere to be — somewhere worth going.

Your money works the same way.

It’s in service of something.

The question worth asking — the question most financial planning conversations never get to — is:

What is YOUR something?

I’ve had this conversation with clients more times than I can count.

Often not by design.

Usually because something happened — a health scare, a loss, a fractured relationship — that cracked things open.

And suddenly the conversation shifted from “what should I do with my portfolio” to “what am I actually doing with my life?”

Those are the most important conversations I have.

Not because I have the answers.

I don’t.

But because having a financial advisor who’s willing to ask the question — and sit with you while you think about it — is rarer than it should be.

Most of us spend far more energy optimizing money than we do thinking about time: how much we have, how we’re spending it, and whether we’re spending it on what matters most.

But time is the actual resource. Money is just what makes certain choices possible.

The financial industry is built around a simple story: accumulate as much as possible, then figure out what to do with it.

But that story has it backwards.

The better question is: what kind of life do you want to live, and what will it take to support that life?

It means knowing what you want your days to look like.

Who you want to spend them with.

What you’d regret not doing.

What “enough” actually feels like — not as an abstract number, but as something real you can point to.

What are you actually here for?

That’s not a question with a right answer. But it’s the right question to be asking.

When you get clear on even a little of this, the financial decisions get easier.

Once you know what you’re planning for.

Because you know when enough is enough.

What to ask yourself:

• If money weren’t a concern at all, how would you spend your time? What would you stop doing? What would you start?

• When did you last feel like you were truly living — not just managing life, but actually present in it?

• Is your financial plan organized around a number you’re trying to reach, or a life you’re trying to live?

• When something hard has happened — a loss, a scare, a moment of real perspective — what did it clarify for you?

• What are you waiting for?

A plan built around a life you can describe is a completely different thing than a plan built around a number you’re trying to hit.

One is a tool. The other is a map.

I’m here to help you use your money to live a great life.

Your great life.

Not use your life to pile up a bunch of money.

If that’s the conversation you want to have, I’m ready to have it.

That’s the work I find most meaningful.

Until next time,

Russ

Retirement Planning for Women

P.S. ~ I was happy to share my thoughts in this recent article about the fear of running out of money. And no, I haven’t changed my name to “Ross” despite the article indicating otherwise. 😉

Disclosures

You sit down with your advisor.

The market is doing whatever the market is doing. Up, down, sideways.

But you’re not really thinking about the market.

You’re thinking about your mother’s diagnosis last month.

Or the call from your daughter that you’ve been turning over in your head all week.

Or the conversation with your husband last weekend that ended without a decision about when he’ll retire.

You scheduled a meeting to “talk about the portfolio.”

But that’s not really what you want to talk about.

A new report says you’re not alone

Earlier this year, a company called Jump — they make AI tools for financial advisors — analyzed roughly 12,000 advisor-client conversations across the country.

They were looking for patterns.

What clients actually bring up. What shifts their mood during a meeting. What makes them feel better — or worse — by the time they leave.

One finding stood out:

Life events shape how clients feel walking into a meeting. Far more than markets do.

• Bereavement.

• A serious medical diagnosis.

• Caring for an aging parent.

• An inheritance — yep, even that one.

These show up most often in planning conversations.

And almost all of them correlate with clients arriving in a noticeably lower emotional state — before a single word about the market is spoken.

The report1 put it bluntly:

“It is disruption and responsibility — not milestone moments alone — that most affect how clients feel entering advisory conversations.”

In other words: it’s not the wedding. It’s not the new grandchild.

It’s the things you didn’t see coming.

And those life events don’t arrive empty

They bring something with them.

The same report found that nearly half of all meetings — 48% — included at least one stated client fear.

Some of the most common ones:

• Outliving your savings

• Medical costs

• Supporting family members

• Covering the bills

Look at that list again. Notice how closely each one tracks with the life events that came before it.

A diagnosis brings medical cost fears.

An aging parent brings questions about elder care — and another question underneath: is this going to be me someday?

An inheritance brings complexity, maybe some guilt, and the loss it came with.

A spouse’s retirement timing brings the oldest fear of all: once the paychecks stop, will the money last?

These aren’t financial questions in the technical sense.

They’re financial questions wrapped around something else.

What most planning misses

Most planning conversations don’t start here.

They start with the portfolio. The asset allocation.

Your money and how you want to spend it.

Which is fine.

Until it isn’t.

Because if what was weighing on you when you joined the meeting never gets named, no amount of planning makes it lighter.

I’ve written before about why a real plan goes beyond the portfolio.

This is what I mean.

A real plan accounts for the fact that you’re not a balance sheet.

You are not your money.

You’re someone in a particular season of life. Carrying particular weight. Worried about particular things.

The portfolio is the easy part.

The rest of your life is where the real work happens.

Try this

Next time you meet with your advisor, don’t lead with the portfolio.

Lead with what’s actually on your mind.

The diagnosis. The conversation you’ve been having with your sister. The question you keep almost asking.

You don’t have to have it figured out. That’s not your job.

That’s what the conversation is for.

The point

You are not the same person you were five years ago.

And whatever is making this season different is, by definition, part of your plan now.

A good advisor will want to know what you brought in with you — before they say a word about the market.

If you’re carrying something heavy into your next planning meeting, don’t let it be a distraction.

Make it the conversation.

Russ

Retirement Planning for Women

P.S. ~ What’s on your mind right now? If you’d like to talk about it, I’m happy to listen.

Disclosures

You know the number.

It’s the dollar amount that would feel like too much to spend on yourself this year.

The trip.

The renovation.

The gift to your daughter that’s bigger than your husband would approve of, if you still had to ask.

You know exactly what it is.

And you’ve never said it out loud.

I’ve sat across from women with $4 million, $6 million, $10 million, and more in savings and investments who can tell me their grocery budget down to the dollar but can’t bring themselves to say what they’d actually love to spend on what they actually want.

Oh, they know.

The problem is that saying it makes it real, and real feels reckless.

Here’s what most advisors will tell you: the math works.

You can afford it. Your plan supports it.

They’re not wrong.

They’re also not helping.

The math has never been the problem.

The problem is that nobody ever taught you how to spend money you’ve learned to accumulate and protect over the last 40+ years.

You were rewarded for saving and praised for not being the kind of woman who is irresponsible when it comes to money.

Now you’re sixty-seven, sitting on a portfolio that does its job whether you watch it or not, and the muscle you spent a lifetime building, the one that says not yet, not now, is the same muscle keeping you from the life your money was always for.

This pattern is what’s reckless.

Living small to protect money you’ll never spend is a slow surrender of the years that were supposed to be the whole point.

So here’s the assignment, and I mean it:

Pick the thing.

Say the number out loud.

To yourself, to your partner, to me if you want.

The trip, the gift, the renovation, the 2nd home — whatever’s been sitting in the corner of your mind for two (or twenty) years.

Saying it doesn’t commit you to anything.

Just say it.

The spell breaks on its own.

— Russ

Retirement Planning for Women

P.S. Hit reply and tell me your number. I read every message. No advice back unless you ask — sometimes you just need to put it somewhere that isn’t your own head.

Disclosures

Most retirement plans answer the wrong question.

They tell you how many years you can afford.

But they don’t tell you how many of them you’ll actually remember.

It’s the difference between a long retirement and a retirement that feels long.

Mitch Thrower’s recent LinkedIn essay “Your Brain Is Quietly Deleting Your Life” captures the neuroscience: your brain files routine lightly and novelty deeply.

Weeks that all look the same compress in memory.

A single new experience can stretch for years.

His essay is worth a read.

But the lesson lands differently for a woman in her 60s than it does for a triathlete in his 40s.

The average American gets about 27,375 days from birth to death.

A typical 25-to-30 year retirement is roughly 9,000 to 11,000 of them.

That’s nearly a third of your life, and it arrives at the moment you finally have full control of your calendar.

So let me say it plainly.

You don’t have one portfolio in retirement. You have two.

The first is your financial portfolio. You’ve worked on that for thirty or forty years. You probably know its numbers inside and out.

The second is your experience portfolio.

Most people never consider it.

Which is exactly why it never gets managed.

The deferred-life problem

There’s a line often credited to Confucius:

We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.

In 30+ years of doing this work, I’ve watched what usually triggers that second life.

Almost always, it’s something hard.

• A death.

• A diagnosis.

• A friend who got the news first.

Suddenly the trip that was always “next year” gets booked.

The conversation that was always “someday” happens.

The money that has been sitting still starts moving toward something that matters.

I am asking you to skip the catalyst.

Please.

I am asking you to stop waiting for a wake-up call.

Because in retirement, the costliest risk is a deferred life. The slow accumulation of “I’ll do it next year” until the next years run out.

What feels like prudence is often a withdrawal from the one account you cannot replenish.

Why routine is more expensive than it looks

Years that all look the same compress in your memory.

The same Saturday morning routine, the same drive to the same restaurant, the same weeklong trip to the same place every August.

None of it is bad, and some of it is truly wonderful.

But your brain files repetition and routine much more lightly than it files first-time experiences.

Think back five years and ask honestly: where is the novelty, the surprise, the breaking of your own routine?

Most of what is still vivid is the trip to a new destination, the milestone, the unexpected day, the new face.

The rest, however pleasant, has gotten fuzzy. Less memorable.

This quote captures the idea:

“The most common way to not see something is to see it too many times.”

Two portfolios, one life

Both of your portfolios deserve a plan.

Your financial portfolio funds the days.

Your experience portfolio decides whether the days register at all.

Whether or not they create memory dividends.

The mistake I see is over-optimizing the first while leaving the second on autopilot.

Smart, careful women are especially prone to it — because the financial portfolio rewards caution and the experience portfolio punishes it.

This is not a rehearsal.

You don’t get a do-over.

You don’t get to come back next time and try the version of your life where you took the trip, made the call, told the person.

You get this one.

Starting right now!

What to do next

If any of this resonates, here are six places to start. None of them require you to abandon your plan. All of them require you to actually use it.

1. Look at your calendar 90 days out. If nothing on it would be worth remembering, you have your answer.

2. Book one trip, class, or event this month that you have been putting off. Put real money behind it so it sticks.

3. Make a list of three people you have been meaning to see in person. Pick a date for one of them this quarter.

4. Audit one weekly routine (the same restaurant, the same Saturday, the same drive) and break it once.

5. Ask yourself whether your spending plan reflects the life you dream of — or just the life you’ve settled for.

6. Tell someone what they mean to you. Don’t wait.

One life, two portfolios

Planning for tomorrow still matters. Nothing I’ve said here changes that.

But planning for tomorrow at the cost of today is a trade most people make without meaning to, and then regret without saying so.

Fear is not a financial plan.

You have two portfolios. Both deserve to be managed on purpose.

A life deferred is the most expensive thing you’ll ever own.

Until next Wednesday,

Russ

Retirement Planning for Women

Disclosures

A client called me recently about her grandson.

He’s graduating college, headed to medical school, and she’d love to help — probably by gifting him some appreciated stock.

My clients are wonderful people and family is important to each of them.

But it got me thinking about my clients’ younger grandchildren — the ones still in car seats.

Because there’s a brand-new option that could do something for them her grandson is already too old to enjoy.

Here’s the truth about helping the youngsters in your life: with a small child, time matters even more than money.

Money is only the seed.

Time is the ingredient compounding can’t work without. And a newborn has more of it than anyone else.

Starting July 4, 2026, there’s a new account built almost perfectly for that idea.

They’re called “Trump accounts.” Here’s the official website.

Yes, that’s the official name, and I’m using it the way the IRS does.

Let me explain what they are, and then give you an honest look at whether one makes sense for the children, grandchildren, nieces, or nephews in your life.

What they are

A new kind of long-term savings account for children.

Think of it as a retirement account that starts in childhood.

The money is invested in a low-cost index fund that tracks the U.S. stock market, and it grows without being taxed along the way.

The part that’s basically free money

If a child is born between 2025 and 2028, is a U.S. citizen, and has a Social Security number, the government will deposit $1,000 to get the account started. No contribution required from you.

Those deposits begin July 4, 2026. Someone just has to open the account first.

If you have a grandchild (or child or anyone else) who qualifies, that $1,000 is the closest thing to found money you’ll see this year.

Who can have one, and who can add to it

Any U.S. citizen child with a Social Security number who hasn’t turned 18 can have a Trump account, not just babies. Only children born 2025–2028 get the free $1,000, but any eligible child can receive contributions.

And here’s the part that matters for you: family can chip in.

Up to $5,000 a year, from parents, grandparents, anyone.

So this can absolutely be a vehicle for the kind of help you might want to give.

How the taxes work

• You contribute with after-tax dollars. This means no income tax deduction.

• The money grows tax-deferred year to year.

• The child can’t touch it until 18. At 18, it becomes a regular Traditional IRA.

• When money comes out later, any growth (and that $1,000 seed) is taxed as ordinary income, like a retirement account. The dollars you personally put in come back out tax-free.

One important caveat: these rules are brand-new and still being finalized, so some details may shift.

Please treat anything specific as “check with your tax advisor,” not gospel.

Now the fun part: what time can do

What if you never add another dollar beyond the free $1,000?

Left alone in the market, at a relatively conservative, hypothetical 6% a year return, here’s roughly what that single $1,000 could become:

• About $2,850 by age 18

• About $5,700 by age 30

• About $13,800 by age 45

• About $33,000 by age 60

From one $1,000 deposit that was never touched. Time did all the work.

Now add a modest commitment.

Say you add $2,000 a year, well under the $5,000 limit, until the child turns 18.

At that same hypothetical 6%, about $36,000 of contributions could grow to roughly $65,000 by college age. A real head start on school, a first home, or simply launching into adult life.

Note: 6% is below the broadly diversified stock market’s long-run average, and nothing is guaranteed. Some years will be down. And money decades from now buys far less than it does today.

The lesson here is simple: time, more than the size of the gift, does most of the heavy lifting.

Is it the best place to save for a child?

Not always.

• If the goal is education, a 529 plan is likely more tax-efficient: it grows tax-free and comes out tax-free for school.

• If the child has earned income from a job, a custodial Roth IRA is often the strongest long-term deal. (A newborn can’t use one, since you need earned income, which is exactly the gap the new Trump account fills.)

• A custodial investment account offers the most flexibility, with its own tax quirks.

So my honest take: the free $1,000 is a clear win.

If you have a child or grandchild who qualifies, why not claim it?

Beyond that, whether to keep funding a Trump account or steer those dollars to a 529 or a Roth depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.

If you’d like to explore it

• Mention it to your children. For a child or grandchild born 2025–2028, someone needs to open the account to claim the $1,000. You can start the process here.

• Mark the date: accounts and contributions begin July 4, 2026.

• Get clear on the goal first, whether that’s education, a general head start, or long-term security, because that points to the right account, which may or may not be this one.

• Loop in your tax advisor before contributing, since the rules are still settling.

• Or bring it to our next conversation, and we’ll see if it fits your family and your own plan.

Most of the women I work with have more than enough for their own lifetimes.

What they want is to do something meaningful for the people coming up behind them.

This is one simple, powerful way to do exactly that.

You can’t give a grandchild more time on this earth.

But you can give their money more time to grow. Started early enough, that may be the most generous gift of all.

If you have a question, just reply — I read every one.

Until next Wednesday,

Russ

Retirement Planning for Women

Disclosures

A client emailed me recently with a question.

“We’d like to hear your knowledge about overseas travel health insurance.”

Smart question.

And one I’d guess a lot of you have wondered about too — especially if there’s an trip outside the U.S. on your calendar (or one you’ve been dreaming about for years).

With summer travel season upon us, let’s talk about it.

The trip you’ve been waiting for

Maybe it’s Italy. Maybe Portugal. A safari. The Greek islands.

Or somewhere else around the globe.

You’ve planned the flights, the hotels, the rental car. You’ve made room in the budget. You’ve earned this.

And then — somewhere over the Atlantic — most retirement plans stop working.

I’ve written before about keeping healthcare costs down when you travel within the U.S.

Consider this the international version of that conversation.

Your Medicare card doesn’t have a passport

Here’s the part most people don’t realize until they need to.

• Original Medicare: Covers next to nothing outside the U.S.

• Medicare Supplement (most plans): Include a foreign travel emergency benefit — but it’s capped at a $50,000 lifetime maximum, and only covers 80% after a deductible. A serious hospital stay can chew through that in a few days.

• Medicare Part D: Doesn’t cover prescriptions you buy abroad.

• Medical evacuation: A flight home with medical staff onboard can run from $25,000 to well over $250,000. Out of pocket.

That’s the hole.

Why this matters

There’s an old folk song some of you will remember.

There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza...

Your bucket list might have a hole too.

Not because you didn’t plan. You did.

You saved, you invested, you got the portfolio right.

But planning isn’t only about portfolios.

I’ve written before about why a real plan goes beyond the portfolio — this is why.

It’s about all the parts of the life you’re actually trying to live.

The trip is part of your plan. Which means the healthcare on the trip is part of your plan too.

And here’s the asymmetry that matters: a quality travel medical policy for a typical international trip might cost a few hundred dollars.

The bill if something goes wrong can run into six figures.

That’s a trade most people would make without thinking — if they realized it was a trade at all.

Next steps

Four steps that handle most of it:

1. Ask the question. Before your next international trip, ask your advisor (or me): “Does my plan account for healthcare outside the U.S.?” If the answer is fuzzy, that’s your first clue.

2. Check what you already have. Pull up your Medicare Supplement and look for the foreign travel emergency benefit. Know the cap. Know what it covers and what it doesn’t.

3. Make sure any travel policy you consider includes medical evacuation. This is the line item that turns a bad day into a six-figure problem. It’s also the one most people overlook.

4. Get a quote. I work with Move Health on health insurance for many of my clients. They recently added travel insurance options through Blue Cross Blue Shield Global Solutions (formerly GeoBlue). If you’d like an introduction to Move Health, let me know.

A note on scope: this piece is about medical coverage on international trips.

Trip cancellation insurance — for the flight you can’t take, the deposit you can’t get back — is a separate conversation worth having on its own.

There are other considerations depending on the trip, your health, and how often you travel.

That’s a conversation, not a checklist.

But these four cover most of the ground for most people.

However, another client pointed out that some tour groups like Tauck offer Travel Protection which includes:

Medical Expenses – reimburses covered medical expenses incurred in the event you become injured or sick during your trip.

The point

You don’t buy travel insurance because you expect something to go wrong.

You buy it so a small problem stays a small problem — and so a big one doesn’t follow you home in the form of a bill.

Patch the hole. Then go enjoy the trip.

That’s what the plan is for.

If you’ve got a trip on the horizon and want to talk it through, hit reply.

Happy to help.

Thank you for reading!

Have a question? Reply to this email — I read every one and I’ll respond personally.

Until next Wednesday,

Russ

Retirement Planning for Women

Disclosures