The argument split almost perfectly by age. One side: “I paid in for 40 years. I was promised this.” The other side: “I’m paying a chunk of every paycheck into a system that won’t pay me back. Let me invest it myself.”

Both sides have a point. And the purpose of today’s newsletter isn’t to pick one.

It's to talk about the part that actually matters for your plan. Today, about half of Americans 65 and older get at least half their income from Social Security. If you're in your 30s or 40s, that can't be your plan.

Let’s dig in ↓

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The Numbers Behind the Noise

Here’s where things stand, straight from the 2026 Trustees Report.

The trust fund that pays retirement benefits is projected to run out of reserves in late 2032. That’s six years away.

That doesn’t mean checks stop. It means incoming payroll taxes would only cover about 78% of scheduled benefits. Without a fix from Congress, every retiree takes a roughly 22% cut overnight.

Why is this happening? Simple demographics. In 1960, there were about five workers paying in for every retiree. Today it’s under three - and that number keeps falling.

So Social Security isn’t disappearing. But the version you’ve been promised on your annual statement? That’s the version most likely risk.

“Let Me Invest It Myself”

The younger generation’s argument isn’t emotional. It’s totally reasonable based on simple projections.

Every paycheck, you pay 6.2% of your wages into Social Security, on income up to $184,500 in 2026. Your employer matches it, but let’s just look at what comes out of your pocket.

Earn $150,000? That’s $9,300 a year.

Invest $9,300 a year for 40 years at a 7% average return and you’d have roughly $2 million. And unlike a Social Security check, every dollar of it is yours - to spend, invest, or pass on to your kids.

So yes, purely as an investment, the deal looks less than ideal for high earners today.

But It’s Not Just a Retirement Account

Here’s what the viral arguments leave out.

Social Security isn’t only a pension. It’s also disability insurance, life insurance for your spouse and kids, and a lifetime annuity that adjusts for inflation and that you can’t outlive.

If you are buying all of that privately. It isn’t cheap.

I’ve seen what happens when a young family loses a parent. Survivor benefits can be the difference between staying in the house and selling it. In my own families situation this was in fact the case when my father passed away as the sole income earner for our family.

So the honest take: Social Security is a bad investment and a pretty decent insurance policy. Judge it as only one of those and you’ll get the wrong answer.

And either way, it’s not optional. You’re paying in. The real question is how much of your plan you let it carry.

So What to Do? Person A vs. Person B

Lets take two 35-year-olds. Same income. Same projected benefit: $3,500/month at 67, or $42,000 a year.

Person A builds their retirement plan around the full $42,000. It’s on the statement, so it’s in the plan.

Person B plans for $0. They act like the check will never show up, and save to replace it.

Replacing $42,000 a year of income takes about $1.05 million, using a 4% withdrawal rate. Person B gets there by investing roughly $860/month for 30 years at 7%.

That’s a real commitment. It’s money Person B isn’t spending today. But here’s how it plays out at 67:

• Benefits come in full: Person A is on plan. Person B has an extra $42,000 a year - more travel, more giving, more help for their kids.

• Benefits get cut to 78%: Person A is short $9,240 a year and would have needed about $231,000 more saved. Person B barely notices.

• Benefits shrink even further: Person A’s plan breaks. Person B’s plan never depended on it.

Person A finds out which scenario they’re in at 67, with no compounding left to lean on. The options are working longer, spending less, or pulling harder from a portfolio that wasn’t built for it.

Person B wins every scenario. The only question is by how much.

How to Build a Plan That Works Without It

Here’s the good news. Planning for $0 doesn’t need a special Social Security strategy. It needs the same 8 foundational steps we walk every client through. Done right, they build a plan that never needed the check in the first place.

1. Set your goals and build a system. Log in at ssa.gov/myaccount and look at your projected benefit. Then set your retirement goal as if that number were zero. Use 50/20/30 as the framework - 50% essentials, 20% financial goals, 30% lifestyle - and automate it so the plan runs without you.

2. Build a cash reserve. 3-6 months of expenses in a high-yield savings or money market account. In retirement, a cash buffer is what keeps you from selling investments in a down market. It’s the job a lot of people assume Social Security will do.

3. Eliminate bad debt strategically. Avalanche or snowball - pick the one you’ll stick with. Every payment you carry into retirement is income you have to replace. No debt means a smaller number to hit.

4. Invest at least 20% of your after-tax income. This is where Person B’s $860/month comes from. On a $150,000 income, 20% of take-home pay covers it with room to spare. Spread it across 401(k), Roth IRA, HSA, and brokerage. If future benefits get taxed more heavily, tax diversification gives you control.

5. Protection planning. Social Security can include disability and survivor benefits. However if you’re not counting on the retirement check, don’t count on those either. Term life and long-term disability coverage close that gap on your terms.

6. Have a basic estate plan. A will, power of attorney, healthcare proxy, and updated beneficiaries. Social Security survivor benefits follow a formula. Your estate plan follows your wishes.

Master steps 1-6 and you’re ahead of 90% of your peers. Then it’s time to optimize.

7. Pay off your home early (if it fits your plan). A paid-off home is one of the most powerful ways to shrink what retirement costs. Retire without a $2,500/month mortgage and you need $30,000 less income every year. Just don’t sacrifice retirement savings to get there faster.

8. Build wealth while living a great life. This is the payoff of planning for $0. If the full check shows up, it’s not covering bills. It’s funding travel, giving, and the things that matter to you.

Just Don’t Be Dependent

Here’s what I keep coming back to.

My grandparents’ generation could reasonably build retirement around a pension and a Social Security check. That world is gone for most of us. Pensions mostly disappeared first. Now the other “pension” is beginning to fade.

That’s not a reason to panic. It’s a reason to take ownership.

Because the anxiety around Social Security isn’t really about the program. It’s about feeling like your retirement depends on decisions made in Washington that you can’t control.

The fix is building a plan where those decisions don’t decide your future.

The Bottom Line

• The retirement trust fund is projected to run short in 2032, with benefits cut to about 78% unless Congress acts

• For high earners - Social Security is a weak investment but valuable insurance - it’s worth understanding both sides

• Plan for $0 by building the foundation - the 8 steps - while time is on your side

• Treat Social Security as a bonus to your plan, not the plan itself

Nobody knows exactly what the fix will look like. Higher taxes, a later retirement age, reduced benefits, or some mix.

You don’t need to predict it. You just need a plan that doesn’t depend on it.

Because the goal isn’t to hope the system holds. It’s to build a retirement that holds either way.

See you next week.

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— Fran

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways we can help you:

1. Join The Opulus Method Newsletter — Every Tuesday, I share strategies that help high-income millennials build wealth without sacrificing their life. Join 3,200+ readers.

2. Work With Us 1-on-1 — We’ll build your personalized strategy to cut your taxes, maximize your income, and grow your wealth month after month. You focus on living your life. We handle the financial strategy and execution.

Opulus, LLC (“Opulus”) is a registered investment advisor in Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any specific level of skill or training.

The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, or accounting advice. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investments, nor does it endorse any specific company, security, or investment strategy. Readers should not rely on this content as the sole basis for any investment or financial decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment strategies discussed will result in profits or avoid losses.

All information is provided “as-is” without any warranties, express or implied. Opulus does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, Ryan Greiser and Francis Walsh, and are subject to change without notice.

Opulus is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages resulting from the use or reliance on this information. Use of the content is at your own risk. This content is not intended as an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal.

Every vest brings back the same question.

Do you hold and let it run, or sell and move the money into an index fund?

Hold, and the stock drops, and you feel like an idiot for not getting out. Sell, and it takes off, and you spend years wondering what could have been.

The standard financial advice says never let one stock grow past 10% of your investments, maybe 15%, and put the rest in an index fund.

It sounds responsible.

But hand that number to someone who watched one company make them wealthy, and it doesn’t feel right. And the number isn’t as solid as it sounds. Ask a few different firms where the line is and you’ll hear 5%, 10%, or 20%.

So if the number isn’t the answer, what is?

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Why “cap a stock at 10%” doesn’t land

The cap makes perfect sense on a spreadsheet and almost no sense to the person holding the stock.

The research behind it is real. Since 1980, about 42% of the big U.S. companies in the Russell 3000 lost at least 70% of their value and never got it back. Many were profitable, fairly priced businesses right before they fell.

Meta is a recent example. The stock fell 76.7% in 14 months, from $382.18 to $88.91, before climbing back to a record in January 2024. Anyone holding through that stretch had no way to know the recovery was coming.

So the cap isn’t a bad answer.

It’s an answer to the wrong question.

If one company has become your biggest asset, a study about other companies failing doesn’t feel like it’s about you.

I feel the same way about my own stock. The private business I own and run is a much bigger share of my net worth than 5%, 10% or 15%. I have no plans to sell it down just to hit a target allocation.

Granted, a private company isn’t the same as a public one.

But the feeling is the same.

It’s an asset I believe in. It has rewarded me, and it could still reward me for years. Selling it only because a study said that’s the prudent thing to do doesn’t sit right.

One of our new clients sees it the same way. He holds a large, high-conviction position in one of the biggest public tech companies, and he has no plan to sell it.

We’re fine with that.

A percentage target can’t settle this and neither can a guess, so there has to be a better question.

The question that replaces the percentage

The better question isn’t how much of this stock you own, it’s whether your plan still works if it goes to zero.

Picture the position gone, along with your unvested grants. Then ask three things:

• Do the bills still get paid?

• Are you still on track for financial independence?

• Can you still live the way you want?

If the answers are yes, you have room to hold it. If the answers are no, the stock is carrying more than it should, whatever percentage it is.

A percentage tells you how much you own. It can’t tell you whether you can afford to lose it. A small position can break a thin plan, and a big one can sit inside a strong plan and do no harm.

A percentage only takes a calculator.

But this question takes your real plan.

The way I think about it, your money has three roles:

• Pay for the life you need: bills, the mortgage, the kids’ college, and your independence target.

• Grow with the market, spread across lots of investments.

• Take big swings that could change your life, like a big play on one stock.

The order matters. Fund the first two roles so your plan works without the stock, and only then decide how big the third one gets. The third role is the only one allowed to go to zero.

My stake and my client’s position are fine for the same reason: the plan reaches the targets without them.

A good plan assumes some of it will go wrong.

Have you left enough room for that?

Once you know what the stock is for, the only thing left is what to do with each vest.

Three moves for your next vest

Do these in order, because each one sets up the next.

1. Run the bonus test at each vest

Start with your next vest. Say the company paid it as a cash bonus instead of stock. Would you invest all of the cash bonus on the stock?

There are three honest answers:

• No: You don’t believe in the company, so you already know what to do.

• Yes: You have high conviction, so you’d buy as much as you could.

• In between: You’d buy some of it, but not all.

Most people land in between. If you do, keep the share you’d honestly buy and sell the rest. If the answer is yes, keep it all and let the next move check you. Decide it once, not with your gut on vest day.

The test is fair because of how RSUs are taxed. They count as income when they vest, so keeping the shares is close to taking the cash and buying the stock yourself.

2. Add a zero to your plan

Once you hold shares, whether it’s a moderate amount or a significant one, run your plan with all of it at $0. Include the unvested grants.

No matter how big the position is, your targets should be reachable without any of it.

If they are, you’ve earned the right to hold on purpose. If they aren’t, your plan is leaning on the stock, and that’s the first thing to fix.

3. Give the gains a job

Over time, the shares you kept can grow into a large position with a big gain. That’s when this move applies.

Pick one big expense, like the mortgage, college for the kids, or a vacation home. Sell enough to cover it.

Debt takes away options, and paying off the obligations gives you options back. It also makes the zero test easier to pass, because your plan has fewer bills to carry.

Selling just to diversify doesn’t feel like a win.

But selling to pay off the house does.

And if the stock keeps climbing after you sell, nobody cares, because it already did its job.

— Ryan

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Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways we can help you:

1. Join The Opulus Method Newsletter — Every Tuesday, I share strategies that help high-income millennials build wealth without sacrificing their life. Join 4,000+ readers.

2. Work With Us 1-on-1 — We’ll build your personalized strategy to cut your taxes, maximize your income, and grow your wealth month after month. You focus on living your life. We handle the financial strategy and execution.

Opulus, LLC (“Opulus”) is a registered investment advisor in Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any specific level of skill or training.

The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, or accounting advice. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investments, nor does it endorse any specific company, security, or investment strategy. Readers should not rely on this content as the sole basis for any investment or financial decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment strategies discussed will result in profits or avoid losses.

All information is provided “as-is” without any warranties, express or implied. Opulus does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, Ryan Greiser and Francis Walsh, and are subject to change without notice.

Opulus is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages resulting from the use or reliance on this information. Use of the content is at your own risk. This content is not intended as an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal.

He wanted a clean answer. Fifteen or thirty. Pick one.

So I actually ran the numbers. Not once. Three separate ways, using three different but completely reasonable sets of assumptions. And the “right” answer flipped every single time.

That’s not me being indecisive. That’s the actual “math”.

Let’s dig in ↓

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The Setup: Same Loan, Two Strategies

To make this concrete, picture two people buying the identical $500,000 house on the same day.

Person A takes the 15-year mortgage. Higher monthly payment, house paid off in 15 years. Once it’s paid off, Person A takes that entire freed-up payment and invests it every month for the remaining 15 years.

Person B takes the 30-year mortgage. Lower monthly payment, and invests the difference between the two payments every single month for all 30 years.

Same house. Same purchase price. Same 30-year time horizon. The only variable is how the monthly cash flow gets split between the mortgage and the market.

Scenario 1: Same Rate, Optimistic Returns

First pass: assume both loans carry the identical 6.75% rate, and the market returns 10% annually, which is roughly the long-term historical average for stocks.

The 30-year comes out to $3,243/month, with $667,477 in total interest paid over the life of the loan.

The 15-year comes out to $4,425/month, with $296,419 in total interest.

The gap between the two payments is $1,182/month. That’s what Person B has available to invest every month for 30 years.

Run it forward: Person A ends up with $1,762,934. Person B ends up with $1,966,582.

The 30-year wins by $204,000.

This makes intuitive sense. Person B is investing a smaller amount, but for the full 30 years instead of only the back half, and 10% annual growth compounding for three decades is a powerful force. Time in the market beat the extra interest paid.

Scenario 2: What Rates Actually Look Like

Here’s the problem with Scenario 1. It assumes both mortgages carry the same rate, and they don’t. In the real world, 15-year mortgages consistently carry lower rates than 30-year ones, often by half a point or more.

Lenders take on less risk with a shorter loan. Less time for something to go wrong means a better rate for you.

So the more realistic version: 30-year at 6.75%, same as before, $3,243/month and $667,477 in interest. But the 15-year comes in at 6.05%, dropping the payment to $4,233/month and the total interest to $261,904.

Notice what happened to the monthly gap. It shrank from $1,182 to $990/month, because the lower 15-year rate closed part of the distance between the two payments.

Same 10% return assumption. Run it forward: Person A ends up with $1,686,535. Person B ends up with $1,647,443.

The 15-year wins by $39,000.

One change, real-world rates instead of matched rates, and the winner flipped. Not by a landslide, but it flipped.

Scenario 3: A More Conservative Return

Now keep the real-world rates from Scenario 2, but swap the 10% return assumption for a more conservative 7%, which is closer to what many planners use for long-term projections after accounting for inflation and sequence of market cycles.

Person A ends up with $1,316,845. Person B ends up with $849,603.

The 15-year wins by $467,000.

This is the scenario that should get your attention. Person B’s entire strategy depends on decades of compounding a relatively small monthly amount. Drop the assumed return by three points, and that compounding engine loses most of its horsepower. Person A’s advantage isn’t tied to market performance at all. It’s forced equity in a house that’s paid off regardless of what stocks do.

Why the Winner Keeps Moving

Three scenarios. Three outcomes, ranging from a $204,000 win for the 30-year to a $467,000 win for the 15-year. Same house, same buyer, same discipline both times.

The only things that changed were the rate spread between the two loan types and the assumed market return. Nudge either one, and the entire conclusion reverses.

This is the part that matters more than any single number in these scenarios: you can build a spreadsheet that makes almost any decision “win” on paper. Change the rate assumption, change the return assumption, change the time horizon, and the winner moves with it. Nobody knows what the market actually does over the next 30 years. Nobody knows where rates go from here, or what refinancing opportunities show up along the way.

Anyone telling you the 15-year or the 30-year is obviously, always the better choice is selling you a projection dressed up as a fact.

The Trade-off the Spreadsheet Never Shows You

Here’s what none of these three scenarios capture: whether Person B actually invests that monthly difference.

In the math, Person B is disciplined every single month for 30 years, without fail. In real life, that $990 or $1,182/month “extra” tends to get absorbed. A nicer car. A larger vacation. Lifestyle creep that happens so gradually nobody notices it happening.

We see this constantly. The 30-year mortgage only wins in practice if the freed-up cash actually makes it into a brokerage account instead of a bigger everyday life. The 15-year removes that variable entirely. The extra $1,000 or so a month never touches your checking account. It goes straight into home equity, whether you were feeling disciplined that month or not.

That’s the real trade-off. The 15-year forces equity and caps your risk, including the risk you pose to yourself. The 30-year keeps you liquid and gives compounding more room to work, but only if you treat that monthly gap as untouchable.

There’s also a flexibility dimension. The higher 15-year payment leaves less room to breathe if income drops, a job changes, or an emergency shows up. The 30-year payment is easier to carry through a rough stretch, and you can always pay it down faster voluntarily when things are good. You can’t easily go the other direction and lower a 15-year payment when you need the cash flow back.

How to Actually Decide

Skip the generic advice and run this against your own numbers:

1. Get real, current quotes for both terms from your actual lender. Don’t assume a rate spread. It varies by lender, by credit profile, and by market conditions at the time you lock.

2. Be honest about whether you will actually invest the difference every month, automatically, without fail. If the answer is “probably not,” the theoretical 30-year advantage doesn’t exist for you in practice.

3. Consider how much monthly flexibility you need over the next 10-15 years. A young family with one income, a business owner with variable cash flow, or anyone without a deep emergency fund should weight that higher payment risk seriously.

4. Model your own numbers using a conservative return assumption, not the market’s best historical stretch. Scenario 3 exists for a reason.

5. Decide which risk you’d rather carry: market and rate risk with the 30-year, or reduced cash-flow flexibility with the 15-year. Both are real risks. Neither is free.

The Bigger Point

Nobody can tell you with certainty what mortgage rates or market returns will look like over the next three decades. Both choices are a bet on an unknowable future, just different bets.

The 15-year is a bet on certainty: guaranteed debt freedom, guaranteed equity, capped total interest, regardless of what markets do.

The 30-year is a bet on time: more capital working in the market for longer, with the flexibility to redirect cash if life changes, as long as the discipline actually holds.

Neither bet is reckless. Neither is obviously smarter. The math says whatever your assumptions tell it to say.

Bottom Line

• Same $500,000 loan, three reasonable assumption sets, three different winners ranging from a $204K edge for the 30-year to a $467K edge for the 15-year

• Real-world 15-year rates run lower than 30-year rates, and that gap alone can flip the outcome

• Conservative return assumptions favor the 15-year, since Person B’s strategy depends entirely on compounding actually happening

• The 30-year mortgage only outperforms if the freed-up cash genuinely gets invested every month, not absorbed into lifestyle

• Run your own numbers with your own quotes and your own return assumptions, then make the call you can actually live with, not the one that wins on a spreadsheet

See you next week.

Subscribe now

— Fran

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways we can help you:

1. Join The Opulus Method Newsletter — Every Tuesday, I share strategies that help high-income millennials build wealth without sacrificing their life. Join 3,200+ readers.

2. Work With Us 1-on-1 — We’ll build your personalized strategy to cut your taxes, maximize your income, and grow your wealth month after month. You focus on living your life. We handle the financial strategy and execution.

Opulus, LLC (“Opulus”) is a registered investment advisor in Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any specific level of skill or training.

The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, or accounting advice. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investments, nor does it endorse any specific company, security, or investment strategy. Readers should not rely on this content as the sole basis for any investment or financial decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment strategies discussed will result in profits or avoid losses.

All information is provided “as-is” without any warranties, express or implied. Opulus does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, Ryan Greiser and Francis Walsh, and are subject to change without notice.

Opulus is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages resulting from the use or reliance on this information. Use of the content is at your own risk. This content is not intended as an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal.

A client asked me that a few months ago. They didn’t grow up with money. And they’ve spent years making sure their own kids aren’t going to carry the debt they did. They want to pay for whatever opportunity comes for their kids: an affordable state school like West Chester if that’s the fit, University of Pennsylvania if that’s the fit, a trade if that’s the fit.

They wanted a precise number they could save for. I told them the honest answer: there isn’t one. Not one that survives fourteen more years of their kid becoming someone none of us have met yet.

But there’s an approach. I use it for my own three kids, ages 3, 6, and 8. I gave it to that client the same afternoon.

Here’s the math, and what I told them to do about it.

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Funding for the wrong number

Most parents in that seat do the same math I did. If there’s any chance your kid ends up somewhere expensive, and you can afford to plan for it, why wouldn’t you aim the fund your 529 account as high as possible?

Here’s the range for this family:

• West Chester (in-state): $31,752 a year, all in

• Penn: $94,582 a year, all in

Call the space between those two the West Chester-Penn Gap. It’s the range a family is actually planning inside for a kid who is in kindergarten.

Nobody sitting across from me with a 6-year-old can tell me which end of that gap they’re going to land on. Not because they haven’t thought about it. Because it hasn’t happened yet.

Fund a 529 aimed at the Penn number, and the account only makes sense in one specific future. Underfund it, and you’re short if that future is the one you get. Either way, you’re guessing at a number you can’t know yet. And a 529 punishes a wrong guess specifically: ordinary income tax, plus a 10% penalty on the earnings, the moment the money comes out for anything else.

The financial industry calls it the “lockup effect” and the “overfunding trap.” A problem common enough to earn its own vocabulary.

The question I’d actually ask

The question that client asked me wasn’t really “which school.”

It was how much certainty they were requiring from a plan that has to survive fourteen more years of their kid becoming someone none of us have met yet.

Morgan Housel put words to this better than I can:

A 529 sized to the Penn number needs one specific element to be true: an expensive four-year degree and no scholarship. That's a lot of weight for one number to carry.

That's why I don't think every dollar belongs in a 529 account. Some of it needs somewhere else to go, somewhere that doesn't need that specific future to happen.

This approach doesn't remove the uncertainty.

There's a real chance the 529 isn't enough if a kid ends up at the Penn number anyway. There's also a real chance I overshoot, and some of it never gets touched for school at all. Both are genuine problems with how I'm doing this.

But the plan was never supposed to remove the uncertainty. It just supposed to be flexible the moment something doesn’t go as planned.

Maybe one of my kids gets a scholarship and most of the flexible money never touches a tuition bill. Maybe none of them go to a four-year school at all. I don’t think that changes the approach.

It changes what the flexible money ends up paying for instead.

What I actually do

1. Capture the state deduction first. Pennsylvania lets you deduct contributions to any state’s 529. Take it every year. Most other states allow this too.

2. Put roughly a third into the 529. Sized between West Chester and Penn, not anchored to the number that scares you most.

3. Send the other two-thirds somewhere flexible. I use a brokerage account. If a kid needs it for school, it closes the gap between the 529 and the real bill. If a kid doesn’t need it for school, it doesn’t sit around waiting on one. It becomes a head start on whatever they need instead.

4. Treat the Roth rollover as a backstop, not the plan.

• $35,000 lifetime cap

• Five years to move it, because of annual Roth limits

• Account has to be open fifteen years

• Requires real earned income on the kid’s end

A decent out if I guess a little wrong.

What I told that client

I still don’t have a clean answer to that client’s question.

I don’t think one exists.

What I have is a split that doesn’t ask me to know which of my kids ends up at West Chester, at Penn, at a trade school, or somewhere none of us have thought of yet. A third goes toward the version of their future I can actually picture. Two-thirds stays flexible enough to cover whichever version I can’t.

It’s not a perfect plan. My oldest is 8. I’ve got ten more years to find out how wrong I am.

I still don’t have a better answer than that. But I hope this helps.

— Ryan

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways we can help you:

1. Join The Opulus Method Newsletter — Every Tuesday, I share strategies that help high-income millennials build wealth without sacrificing their life. Join 4,000+ readers.

2. Work With Us 1-on-1 — We’ll build your personalized strategy to cut your taxes, maximize your income, and grow your wealth month after month. You focus on living your life. We handle the financial strategy and execution.

Opulus, LLC (“Opulus”) is a registered investment advisor in Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any specific level of skill or training.

The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, or accounting advice. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investments, nor does it endorse any specific company, security, or investment strategy. Readers should not rely on this content as the sole basis for any investment or financial decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment strategies discussed will result in profits or avoid losses.

All information is provided “as-is” without any warranties, express or implied. Opulus does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, Ryan Greiser and Francis Walsh, and are subject to change without notice.

Opulus is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages resulting from the use or reliance on this information. Use of the content is at your own risk. This content is not intended as an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal.

Her question: “Am I about to get crushed with penalties?”

Here’s the thing almost nobody knows until they’re in this exact situation: there’s a rule built into the tax code that protects you from a penalty even if you end up owing $50,000 more than expected at filing. It’s called safe harbor, and it exists specifically for people whose income doesn’t come in a neat, predictable paycheck.

Q3 estimated taxes are due today. So if you’ve been avoiding this conversation, today’s the day to have it.

Let’s dig in ↓

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Why This Penalty Exists

The IRS wants its money throughout the year, not just in one lump sum every April. If you underpay along the way, whether through withholding or estimated payments, you’re charged an underpayment penalty at filing.

Safe harbor is the built-in exception. Hit one of two thresholds, and the penalty simply doesn’t apply, no matter how much you end up owing when you file.

Most people should build around Path 2. Path 1 requires you to accurately project income you haven’t finished earning yet, which is nearly impossible if your income is variable. Path 2 is a known number. It’s whatever you actually paid last year. No projection required.

The Threshold That Catches People Off Guard

Here’s where it gets expensive to misunderstand. If your prior year’s AGI was over $150,000, the bar isn’t 100% of last year’s tax anymore. It’s 110%, and it’s easy to miss if you’re just eyeballing last year’s number instead of checking the actual threshold.

A real example: say your prior year’s tax was $80,000, and your prior year’s AGI was $200,000, which is over the $150,000 threshold. Safe harbor now requires 110% of that $80,000, which is $88,000 total, paid across withholding plus estimated payments combined. Not $80,000. The extra $8,000 matters.

One Important Exception

If your total underpayment at filing is under $1,000 after withholding and credits, no penalty applies at all, regardless of any percentage threshold. This is the de minimis exception, and it’s a nice backstop for people who land close but not perfectly on target.

What Safe Harbor Doesn’t Do

Meeting safe harbor does not mean you owe nothing at filing. It means no penalty. If your actual tax bill is higher than what safe harbor required you to pay, you still owe that difference in April. It’s simply penalty free.

This is the part people get wrong most often. My friend’s business had a genuinely strong year, so she’s still going to owe real money when she files. Safe harbor doesn’t erase that. It just means the IRS can’t charge her interest for underpaying along the way.

What the Penalty Actually Costs

The penalty itself isn’t a flat fee. It’s calculated as interest, quarterly, at the federal short-term rate plus 3 percentage points. For Q3 2026 (July through September), that rate is 7% annualized.

A $10,000 shortfall carried for one quarter at that rate costs roughly $173 in penalty interest. That sounds small in isolation, but it compounds and accumulates across every quarter you’re short, which is exactly why catching this now matters more than trying to fix it in April.

The Fix Most People Don’t Know About

Here’s the mechanic that actually could get someone out of a jam: withholding is treated as paid evenly throughout the year, no matter when it’s actually withheld. Estimated payments don’t get that treatment. They’re only credited on the date you actually pay them.

That means a withholding increase in November or December, whether it comes from a paycheck adjustment, a bonus, or even an IRA distribution, can retroactively cover a Q1, Q2, or Q3 shortfall. Estimated payments can’t reach back in time like that. Withholding can.

If you or someone you know missed or underpaid an earlier quarter, increasing withholding late in the year is often a cleaner fix than sending an even larger Q4 estimated payment. It can clean up the entire year’s safe harbor calculation retroactively.

How to Actually Check Yourself Today

1. Pull your prior year’s total tax and AGI from your return.

2. Determine whether the 110% threshold applies to you.

3. Add up this year’s withholding plus estimated payments made so far.

4. If you’re short, this is the moment to fix it, whether through a Q3 payment or an adjustment to withholding before year end.

This isn’t a once a year decision. It’s worth revisiting each quarter, especially in a year where income moved around more than expected.

The Bottom Line

Safe harbor is one of the most protective, most underused rules in the tax code, and it only works if you actually check the numbers before the deadline, not after the penalty notice arrives.

• Avoid the penalty by paying 90% of this year’s tax, or 100% of last year’s (110% if your prior year AGI was over $150,000)

• Meeting safe harbor doesn’t erase the balance due. It just erases the penalty.

• The Q3 2026 penalty rate is 7% annualized, and it compounds every quarter you’re short

• Withholding counts as paid evenly all year, which makes it a powerful late-year fix that estimated payments can’t replicate

• No penalty applies at all if your total underpayment is under $1,000

This is exactly the kind of thing worth running by a CPA or financial planner, especially if your income moved meaningfully this year or you’re not sure which threshold applies to you. It’s a five-minute conversation that can save you months of accumulated interest.

See you next week.

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— Fran

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways we can help you:

1. Join The Opulus Method Newsletter — Every Tuesday, I share strategies that help high-income millennials build wealth without sacrificing their life. Join 3,200+ readers.

2. Work With Us 1-on-1 — We’ll build your personalized strategy to cut your taxes, maximize your income, and grow your wealth month after month. You focus on living your life. We handle the financial strategy and execution.

Opulus, LLC (“Opulus”) is a registered investment advisor in Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any specific level of skill or training.

The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, or accounting advice. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investments, nor does it endorse any specific company, security, or investment strategy. Readers should not rely on this content as the sole basis for any investment or financial decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment strategies discussed will result in profits or avoid losses.

All information is provided “as-is” without any warranties, express or implied. Opulus does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, Ryan Greiser and Francis Walsh, and are subject to change without notice.

Opulus is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages resulting from the use or reliance on this information. Use of the content is at your own risk. This content is not intended as an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal.

They’ve done the work. Saved consistently, invested well, hit the number that puts them ahead of their own plan. On paper, they’re exactly where they wanted to be.

And they still can’t spend their own money.

Not on anything reckless. A trip they’ve talked about for years. A watch they’ve wanted since before they could afford it. Something small and unnecessary that would genuinely make them happy. The money is there. The plan supports it. They hesitate anyway.

I used to think this was a numbers problem. It’s not. It’s a permission problem.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe: guilt isn’t proof you’re being disciplined. It’s proof you never built a system that tells you when spending is actually safe.

Most people treat frugality like a personality trait instead of a phase you grow out of. They save well, then keep saving past the point it serves them, because no one ever taught them how to define “enough,” let alone how to give themselves permission to use it once they’ve hit it.

If you’ve built real wealth and still flinch every time you spend some of it, the problem was never your discipline. It’s that nobody ever showed you the other half of the system: the part that tells you it’s okay to enjoy the money.

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The discipline that never got an off switch

Most financial advice stops at the finish line.

• Save more

• Invest smarter

• Pay off debt

• Hit your number

Almost nobody spends real time on what to do once you’re actually on the right path.

So people default to the only mode they know: keep going. The financial industry doesn’t push back on this either, because “keep saving” is a far easier message to sell than “you’ve done enough, go enjoy it.”

The data backs this up, and not just at retirement. According to the 2025 EBRI Retirement Confidence Survey, more than three in four retirees agree they can afford to spend freely—and nearly half say they still hold back, out of fear they’ll run out of money.

These are people who already finished the race, decades after they last had to worry about a paycheck. If the fear survives that long, it was never really about the math. It was a habit that outlived its job.

That’s what’s actually happening. Once “saver” becomes part of how you see yourself, spending stops feeling like a decision and starts feeling like a betrayal of who you are.

That’s the trap. Not the discipline itself. The discipline that never gets an off switch.

The system that fixed it for me

I ran into this exact wall myself.

I’d built a plan I trusted. Automated the savings. Hit the number I needed to stay on pace toward every goal that mattered. And I still hesitated over something as simple as booking a nice trip my wife and I had wanted to take, or finally buying a watch I’d had my eye on since before I could really afford it.

The math said yes every time, but the guilt didn’t care.

So I stopped trying to think my way out of it. I built a system instead. Two numbers, tracked in two separate places:

• The goals number. What I need to save each year to stay on track. It’s automated. I never touch it, and I never think about it again until the next year.

• The splurge number. What my wife and I give ourselves permission to spend that year on things that are unnecessary but genuinely enjoyable. Funded into its own account, completely separate from everything else.

A spreadsheet line wouldn’t have worked for us. The moment splurge money sits in the same account as everything else, every purchase becomes a negotiation with the rest of your goals. Give it its own account, and the negotiation is already over before you get there.

Then there’s one rule. If the money’s in that account, we spend it. No second-guessing. No re-litigating whether we’ve earned it. If it’s not there, we don’t spend it. No dipping into savings to make it work anyway.

It’s our permission and guardrail system.

One number protects the goals. The other gives us permission to actually enjoy the money along the way.

One honest caveat: the account tells you when it’s safe to spend. It doesn’t tell you what’s worth spending on. That part’s still yours to work out. But most people never get past the first problem long enough to think about the second.

How to build your own splurge account

You don’t need my exact numbers. You need the process.

Step 1: Set your real savings number. Not a guess. The actual amount you need to save each year to stay on pace toward your goals and to make work optional. If you don’t know this number, this is the one to solve first. Everything else depends on it.

Step 2: Automate it and forget it. Once it’s set, take yourself out of the decision. Automate the transfer so it happens without your input. You shouldn’t have to think about this number again until it’s time to revisit it next year.

Step 3: Set a separate splurge number. Decide, in advance, what you and your household want to spend on things that are unnecessary but genuinely enjoyable. A trip. A watch. Whatever it is for you. Pick the number before you’re standing in front of the purchase, not while you’re standing in front of it.

Step 4: Automate that number too. Take your annual splurge number and break it into weekly or monthly transfers into its own account, the same way you automated the savings goal. It builds on its own, refills on its own, and by the time you want to use it, it’s already there. No lump sum, no last-minute scramble to fund it.

Step 5: Check the account, not your feelings. Before every splurge, look at the balance. Not how you feel about the purchase. Not how badly you want it right now. If the money’s there, you spend it. No debate, no guilt, no re-justifying it every time. If it’s not there, you wait until it is. No dipping into savings to make it work anyway, no matter how good the excuse feels in the moment.

That's the system.

The guilt was never about discipline. It was about never having a plan that told you when spending was safe. Now you do.

— Ryan

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways we can help you:

1. Join The Opulus Method Newsletter — Every Tuesday, I share strategies that help high-income millennials build wealth without sacrificing their life. Join 4,750+ readers.

2. Work With Us 1-on-1 — We’ll build your personalized strategy to cut your taxes, maximize your income, and grow your wealth month after month. You focus on living your life. We handle the financial strategy and execution.

Opulus, LLC (“Opulus”) is a registered investment advisor in Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any specific level of skill or training.

The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, or accounting advice. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investments, nor does it endorse any specific company, security, or investment strategy. Readers should not rely on this content as the sole basis for any investment or financial decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment strategies discussed will result in profits or avoid losses.

All information is provided “as-is” without any warranties, express or implied. Opulus does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, Ryan Greiser and Francis Walsh, and are subject to change without notice.

Opulus is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages resulting from the use or reliance on this information. Use of the content is at your own risk. This content is not intended as an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal.

Last week I met with a gentleman who had 8 bank accounts and investment accounts spread across 7 different institutions.

Nobody plans for this. It happens one decision at a time. A job change here. A “better rate” there. An account your buddy told you about. An old 401k you keep meaning to deal with. Twenty years go by and you’ve accumulated a significant net worth, but it runs with less coordination than your checking account.

This is way more common than you’d think. And it’s expensive - not just in returns, but in risk, in time, and in what happens to your family if something goes wrong.

Let’s dig in ↓

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More Accounts Doesn’t Mean More Wealth

There’s an assumption a lot of people carry around without ever saying it out loud: more accounts equals more sophistication. A brokerage account here. A robo-advisor there. An old 401k you’ve been meaning to roll over. A high-yield savings account you opened two years ago for a sign-up bonus.

Feels productive. Feels like you’re on top of your money & “diversifying” but just having things in different places.

Usually it’s the opposite. Nobody actually knows what the whole picture looks like - not you, not an advisor, not the spreadsheet you last opened six months ago. You’ve got pieces. You don’t have a plan.

What Financial Chaos Actually Looks Like

Here’s what that client’s 8 accounts and 7 institutions looked like once we laid it all out on the table.

Two checking accounts he couldn’t explain the purpose of and has been meaning to close out. A savings account earning 0.4% at the same bank as his checking, while a separate high-yield account somewhere else was earning 4.5% - because nobody had ever consolidated the cash. Three old 401ks from three old jobs, all sitting in the default target-date fund. A few different brokerage accounts with tax-inefficient investments. A robo-advisor account from a promo he signed up for and forgot to close.

Nothing on that list was a disaster by itself. Stacked together, it’s just an inefficient mess.

The Three Real Costs of Fragmentation

Overlap. Three of his “different” investment accounts were holding nearly identical large-cap index exposure. He thought he had four distinct strategies. In reality, about 60% of his invested assets were doing the exact same thing wearing four different logos.

Concentration risk. One account was still sitting almost entirely in his former employer’s stock. A single stock made up nearly 15% of his total investable net worth. It’s not like he had this incredible belief in the company, just never got around to rebalancing.

No coordinated plan. Nobody was managing asset location across these accounts - tax-inefficient holdings sat in taxable accounts, tax-efficient holdings sat in tax-deferred accounts, backwards from how it should work. Nobody was rebalancing. Nobody was tax-loss harvesting. Nobody was checking whether the whole portfolio actually matched his risk tolerance.

Each piece looked fine on its own. Together, the system was working against him.

The Estate Planning Problem

Here’s the part that never shows up on a balance sheet.

In most households I work with, one person runs the money. They know the logins. They know which accounts matter and which ones are dead weight. They know where the life insurance policy lives and which old 401k still needs to move.

Now ask yourself: if something happened to you tomorrow, could your spouse rebuild that picture in a week? A month? Would they even know all 7 institutions exist?

I’ve watched families spend months untangling a scattered financial life after a death or a serious diagnosis. Grief is hard enough without a scavenger hunt through old statements and forgotten passwords.

Getting your accounts coordinated isn’t just easier for you. It’s the difference between your family being taken care of and your family spending six months on hold with customer service.

What Consolidation Actually Means

Consolidation doesn’t mean shoving everything into one account at one bank. That’s not realistic. For cash specifically, it’s a bad idea - FDIC and SIPC coverage limits exist for a reason, and spreading cash across a couple of insured accounts is smart, not messy.

What consolidation actually means: get down to the fewest accounts that still make sense, and make sure everything left over is running off one plan.

In practice, that looks like:

• Rolling old 401ks into your current employer’s plan or an IRA instead of leaving them scattered at companies you haven’t worked for in years

• Cutting overlapping brokerage and advisory accounts down to one or two, so your allocation gets managed as a whole instead of account by account

• Parking cash in one or two high-yield accounts instead of letting it rot at 0.4% because you forgot the account existed

• Making sure whoever manages your investments can actually see everything - not just the slice sitting in front of them

This isn’t about fewer statements to feel tidy. It’s about one plan that knows what it’s actually optimizing for.

The Consolidation Audit

Here’s how I walk clients through this. You can run the same version yourself this week.

Step 1: List every account. Every bank, every brokerage, every old 401k, every robo-advisor you forgot you signed up for. Institution, rough balance, purpose.

Step 2: Check for overlap. Open the actual holdings in each investment account. Look for the same fund, or the same exposure, sitting in three different places under three different names.

Step 3: Flag concentration risk. Any single stock, sector, or old-employer holding above 10-15% of your total investable assets needs a second look.

Step 4: Roll over what’s dormant. An old 401k from a job you left five years ago has no good reason to still be sitting there.

Step 5: Write the “if something happens to me” page. One page. Every account, where the login access is stored (a password manager, not a sticky note), your advisor’s contact info, your beneficiaries, and where the estate documents live. Hand it to your spouse.

This Is About Clarity, Not Control

A lot of people fight consolidation because it feels like giving something up. The extra savings account felt like a cushion. The old 401k felt like “set it and forget it.” A handful of different accounts felt, on some gut level, like diversification.

It isn’t. Scattered is not diversified. Busy isn’t coordinated.

The people who actually build wealth aren’t running the most accounts. They’re the ones who can pull up one page and tell you exactly what they own, why they own it, and what it’s for - without opening a laptop.

That’s not just tidier. It’s calmer. And it’s the difference between money that works for you and money you’re managing around the edges, hoping nothing slips through.

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Bottom Line

• More accounts almost never means more wealth. It usually means less visibility.

• Fragmentation has three real costs: overlap, concentration risk, and no coordinated plan.

• A scattered financial life is an estate planning risk for whoever has to pick up the pieces.

• Consolidation means the fewest accounts that still make sense, all running one plan - not everything crammed into one place.

• Run the audit this week. List it. Check overlap. Flag concentration. Roll over what’s dormant. Write down what your family needs to know.

See you next week.

— Fran

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways we can help you:

1. Join The Opulus Method Newsletter — Every Tuesday, I share strategies that help high-income millennials build wealth without sacrificing their life. Join 3,200+ readers.

2. Work With Us 1-on-1 — We’ll build your personalized strategy to cut your taxes, maximize your income, and grow your wealth month after month. You focus on living your life. We handle the financial strategy and execution.

Opulus, LLC (“Opulus”) is a registered investment advisor in Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any specific level of skill or training.

The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, or accounting advice. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investments, nor does it endorse any specific company, security, or investment strategy. Readers should not rely on this content as the sole basis for any investment or financial decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment strategies discussed will result in profits or avoid losses.

All information is provided “as-is” without any warranties, express or implied. Opulus does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, Ryan Greiser and Francis Walsh, and are subject to change without notice.

Opulus is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages resulting from the use or reliance on this information. Use of the content is at your own risk. This content is not intended as an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal.

They’ve done everything right. Maxed the 401(k). Opened a taxable brokerage account for what’s left over. Bought a total-market index fund, because that’s what every credible voice tells them to do. Low cost. Diversified. Set it and forget it.

And by every measure, it’s the first right move.

But here’s the pattern I keep running into: the same investor who read enough to land on “just buy the index” stops there. They never ask what happens to that fund once tax season rolls around. They treat the fund as the finish line, not the starting point.

It’s not that the advice is wrong. It’s that it’s incomplete.

Because that index fund sitting in your taxable account can’t do something an individual stock position can. And that one gap is worth more than most people realize.

In a five-year backtest I’ll walk you through, that gap was worth $170,000 on a $1,000,000 account.

Same index. Same market exposure. Just structured differently.

Here’s why that gap exists, and why I think a slice of your taxable account should probably look different than it does right now.

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Why “just buy the index” isn’t the whole answer

Here’s what most financial advice gets right: for the vast majority of people, a low-cost index fund is the smartest way to invest. I’m not arguing with that.

But that advice was built for pre-tax returns. It says nothing about what happens after the IRS takes its cut.

Think about what’s actually inside an index fund or ETF. It’s a single security wrapped around hundreds of individual stocks. When you own the fund, you own all of it, or none of it.

If Microsoft is down 8% this quarter but the fund overall is up, you have no way to capture that loss. It’s buried inside the wrapper, invisible, unusable.

That’s fine in a 401(k) or an IRA. Nothing in those accounts is taxable until you withdraw, so there’s no loss to harvest and no reason to care.

But a taxable brokerage account is different. Every dollar you put there already survived your top tax bracket once. Every gain the fund produces gets taxed again. And if you’re a high earner with money in a taxable account, you’re paying the highest rate on the largest number.

The investors I talk to did the hard part. They saved consistently, avoided the expensive mistakes, and got the account funded. But the fund they chose to hold it in was never built to solve for taxes. It was built to track a market.

Those are two different jobs. And only one of them is being done.

What direct indexing actually is

Direct indexing flips the structure.

Instead of owning one fund that tracks the index, you own the individual stocks that make up that index directly, usually 250 to 350 of the largest, most liquid names. You still get the same broad market exposure. But now each stock is its own position, with its own tax lot.

That difference matters more than it sounds like it should.

When the market dips, some individual stocks always fall harder than the index as a whole. In a fund, that loss is trapped.

In a direct index, you can sell that one position, lock in the loss on your tax return, and immediately buy something similar to keep your exposure intact. The index barely notices. But your tax bill does.

This isn’t new. Advisors have run this strategy for ultra-wealthy clients for decades. The problem was always cost.

Buying hundreds of individual stocks used to require $250,000 to $500,000 just to get started, plus someone manually tracking every position. Direct indexing is now available with as little as $2,000, thanks to fractional shares and automated tax-loss harvesting.

There’s a second benefit that has nothing to do with taxes: control. And it shows up in two different ways.

The first is practical. If your company stock or RSUs have run up, you’re probably already overexposed to one name without realizing how much. A direct index lets you exclude that stock entirely, so you get the market exposure you want without doubling down on a position you’re already carrying somewhere else.

The second is personal. A direct index lets you exclude entire industries you don’t want to profit from, for reasons that have nothing to do with performance. I do this with tobacco. It’s cost people close to me their health, and I don’t want my money anywhere near it.

A fund can’t make these exception. A direct index can.

The actual numbers

Here’s what this looks like when you run it through real math.

Altruist ran a five-year backtest comparing two identical $1M portfolios, both tracking the S&P 500 through direct indexing. One was left alone, buy-and-hold, no tax management. The other used daily tax-loss harvesting and tax-aware rebalancing. Same index. Same market. Same five years, January 2020 through May 2025.

Before taxes, the two portfolios tracked almost identically. That’s the point. Direct indexing isn’t a bet against the market. It’s not trying to beat the index.

After taxes, the story changes.

• Tax-managed portfolio: $3.59 million

• Untouched portfolio: $3.42 million

That’s $170,000 of additional after-tax wealth, generated from owning the exact same index, structured to work harder on the tax side.

Annualized, that’s roughly 1.4% of tax alpha a year. Not from picking better stocks. Not from timing the market. Just from being able to sell what’s down while holding what’s up, something a single fund can never do.

Now, this kind of active tax management does introduce some tracking error against the index, since you’re occasionally out of a position while it’s replaced. In this backtest, that tracking error averaged about 0.5% over the five years. Small, and clearly outweighed by what it bought.

This is a hypothetical backtest, not actual client results, and Altruist is upfront about that. Markets won’t repeat exactly, and your results will depend on your own account, your own tax situation, and how the market behaves going forward.

But the mechanism is real, and the direction of the outcome is not a coincidence.

Where this actually fits in your plan

The tax-loss harvesting piece specifically lives in a taxable brokerage account.

That’s where every gain and loss actually touches your tax return, and where there’s something worth harvesting in the first place. Retirement accounts bring their own reasons to consider direct indexing, control and visibility into exactly what you hold, but that’s a different conversation for a different day.

It’s also not meant to replace your entire portfolio. I typically see this work best as a slice, a portion of your taxable account built this way, not the whole thing. You’re not abandoning simplicity. You’re adding a layer to the part of your money that can actually benefit from it.

The people I see get the most out of this tend to fall into two groups.

• High earners with concentrated stock, RSUs that have run up, options vesting, or a name that’s become too large a piece of their net worth without them fully realizing it.

• Investors who’ve already done the basics well, maxed the accounts, built the index position, and are looking for the next real lever, not another account to open.

What I see with clients who use this well is simple. They’re not trying to outsmart the market. They’re just making sure the account doing the least amount of tax-favorable lifting gets a little more attention.

That’s the whole shift. Not a different strategy. The same strategy, built to actually benefit from what’s happening underneath it.

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That’s it.

I still think about that investors who calls me for the first time, index fund already in place, doing everything the internet told them to do.

I’m not trying to talk them out of it. I just don’t stop where they stopped.

The tobacco exclusion for me isn’t really about tobacco. It’s the same principle as the tax-loss harvesting: once you’re inside the index instead of standing outside it looking at one fund, you get to make decisions the fund was never built to let you make.

Most people think of their taxable account as the leftover bucket, whatever’s left after the retirement accounts are maxed. It doesn’t have to work that way. It can be the account that’s most tuned to exactly what you hold, what you’ve already got too much of, and what you never wanted to own in the first place.

Same market and same index. Just paying closer attention to what’s actually inside it.

— Ryan

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways we can help you:

1. Join The Opulus Method Newsletter — Every Tuesday, I share strategies that help high-income millennials build wealth without sacrificing their life. Join 4,000+ readers.

2. Work With Us 1-on-1 — We’ll build your personalized strategy to cut your taxes, maximize your income, and grow your wealth month after month. You focus on living your life. We handle the financial strategy and execution.

Opulus, LLC (“Opulus”) is a registered investment advisor in Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any specific level of skill or training.

The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, or accounting advice. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investments, nor does it endorse any specific company, security, or investment strategy. Readers should not rely on this content as the sole basis for any investment or financial decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment strategies discussed will result in profits or avoid losses.

All information is provided “as-is” without any warranties, express or implied. Opulus does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, Ryan Greiser and Francis Walsh, and are subject to change without notice.

Opulus is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages resulting from the use or reliance on this information. Use of the content is at your own risk. This content is not intended as an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal.

“What’s the best financial decision you’ve ever made?”

I can tell you exactly what they’re hoping I’ll say. A tax strategy nobody else knows about. Some stock I bought before it took off. Some ridiculous crypto gamble that made me look like a genius at exactly the right moment. And look - I’ve got a few fun stories from when I was younger and reckless. Some of them even worked out great (Most went very poorly though for the record)

None of them are close to the real answer.

The best financial decision I’ve ever made was walking away from a “safer” company and starting Opulus with Ryan. Betting on myself instead of following the safer, more structured “traditional” route.

I remember our old boss telling us it was one of the worst idea he’s ever heard and we would never make it, a message I still think about from time to time as a motivator.

But that’s the answer. It’s almost never the one people want to hear.

Let’s get into it ↓

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Why Nobody Wants This Answer

People want a tactic. Something they can copy this weekend. A specific fund, a specific move, a specific number.

Starting a business isn’t a tactic. It’s a decision to bet on yourself, with real risk attached, and no guarantee it works. That’s a much harder thing to sell someone at a dinner party than “buy this index fund.”

But here’s what I’ve noticed after years of doing this professionally: the people obsessing over the tactics are almost always the ones who’ve never touched the one lever that actually moves the number.

The Lever Everyone Skips

Walk into almost any conversation about personal finance and it goes the same way. Roth or Traditional? Which index fund has the lowest expense ratio? Should I be in three funds or one? Is my allocation right for my age?

These aren’t bad questions. I answer them every week. But they’re optimizing around the edges of a number that, for most people in their 20s, 30s, and even 40s, is still small. You can optimize a small number as hard as you want and it stays a small number.

Here’s the comparison I wish more people ran before they spent another hour agonizing over expense ratios.

Say you’ve got $100,000 invested, and you spend real time finding a fund that shaves 0.3% off your fees - a legitimately good move, by the way, I’m not knocking it. Over 20 years, that saves you around $20,000.

Now say instead you spend that same energy increasing your income by $10,000 a year - a raise, a better job, a skill that makes you worth more - and you invest that difference every year instead. Over the same 20 years, that’s worth roughly $410,000.

Same time horizon. Same market returns. Twenty times the outcome. And most people spend 10x more mental energy on the first one than the second.

Your Biggest Asset Isn’t in Your Portfolio

There’s a concept called “human capital” - basically the present value of everything you’re going to earn for the rest of your career. If you’re in your 20s, 30s, or even your 40s, this number, not your 401(k), not your brokerage account, is almost certainly your biggest financial asset.

For a lot of younger professionals, the math works out to a present value in the millions - money that doesn’t exist yet, but will, based on your career trajectory. Nobody manages that asset with a spreadsheet. Nobody rebalances it quarterly. Most people never think about it as an asset at all.

I have a vivid memory being 20 years old sitting on a beach with my Uncle Ken, an extremely successful entrepreneur. The words he told me that day have always stuck with me. “You should never let someone else decide how much you can make or how much you can grow. If you’re ambitious, driven, and have control over those two things you’ll always be successful.”

I think that’s the biggest blind spot in personal finance. We spend so much energy managing the money we already have that we ignore the asset that’s actually capable of changing everything - our own earning power.

Starting Opulus was me deciding to actually manage that asset instead of ignoring it.

Why I Bet on It Anyway

It wasn’t a sure thing, and I’m not going to pretend it was. Ryan and I both walked away from something more stable to build something that had a real chance of going nowhere. There were months early on where I wondered if we’d made a huge mistake. I remember staring at CNBC on the tv in Ryan’s basement as the market was down 9.99% in a single day (Covid times) wondering how this could be happening right after we got started in August 2019.

But here’s the way I actually thought about it at the time. If it didn’t work, I’d have taken a financial hit, sure - but I’d still have the skills, the relationships, and the experience to go rebuild an income somewhere else. That downside was survivable. If it did work, though, the ceiling on what I could build for my own family was a completely different number than anything I’d ever earn punching a clock.

The data backs this up more than people realize. Self-employed individuals consistently show up with far higher net worth than employees at similar income levels, and business equity is one of the largest components of wealth for high-net-worth families - second only to home equity. That’s not an accident. It’s what happens when your income is tied to something you can actually grow, instead of a salary someone else caps for you.

This Isn’t “Everyone Should Start a Business”

To be clear, I’m not telling you to quit your job tomorrow. Starting a company is not the right move for most people, and it wasn’t a risk-free decision for me either - I don’t want to romanticize it. It worked out. It doesn’t always. I was 24 years old, no wife, and no kids. Those are real factors many people need to consider that I fortunately wasn’t worried about.

What I am saying is this: the biggest lever in almost anyone’s financial life is their income, and specifically, their ability to grow it, not the 0.2% they’re saving on fund fees or whether they picked Roth over Traditional. That lever looks different for everyone. For me, it was starting a business.

For someone else, it might be a certification that unlocks a promotion, a jump to a company that actually pays for your skill set, or building a side income that eventually outgrows the job.

The version of “betting on yourself” doesn’t have to look like mine. It just has to actually move the number that matters.

How I’d Think About This For Yourself

Before your next hour spent comparing expense ratios or deciding between account types, ask yourself these instead:

1. What’s the realistic ceiling on my current path, if I do everything right for the next 10 years?

2. What’s actually capping my income right now - and is it a real constraint, or just the safe, familiar one?

3. If I put the same energy I spend optimizing my portfolio into growing my income instead, what would that actually be worth over 10 or 20 years?

4. What’s the version of “betting on myself” that fits my actual risk tolerance - not reckless, but not nothing either?

For most people, the honest answers to those questions matter more than anything a financial advisor can do with their existing portfolio.

Bottom Line

Everyone wants the best financial decision to be a secret. A ticker symbol. A tax loophole. Something you can screenshot and act on by Friday.

Mine wasn’t a secret. It was a decision to stop optimizing around my income and start trying to grow it, even with real risk attached, even with a few sleepless nights along the way. Starting Opulus with Ryan is still, by a wide margin, the best financial decision I’ve ever made - not because it was safe, but because it changed the size of every other number in my financial life.

Optimize your portfolio. Please, do it - it matters, and I’ll keep answering those questions every single week. But don’t mistake fine-tuning what you already have for the thing that actually builds wealth. That’s almost always on the income side, not the allocation side.

See you next week.

Subscribe now

— Fran

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways we can help you:

1. Join The Opulus Method Newsletter — Every Tuesday, I share strategies that help high-income millennials build wealth without sacrificing their life. Join 3,200+ readers.

2. Work With Us 1-on-1 — We’ll build your personalized strategy to cut your taxes, maximize your income, and grow your wealth month after month. You focus on living your life. We handle the financial strategy and execution.

Opulus, LLC (“Opulus”) is a registered investment advisor in Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any specific level of skill or training.

The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, or accounting advice. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investments, nor does it endorse any specific company, security, or investment strategy. Readers should not rely on this content as the sole basis for any investment or financial decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment strategies discussed will result in profits or avoid losses.

All information is provided “as-is” without any warranties, express or implied. Opulus does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, Ryan Greiser and Francis Walsh, and are subject to change without notice.

Opulus is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages resulting from the use or reliance on this information. Use of the content is at your own risk. This content is not intended as an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal.

And it’s not wrong.

For someone retiring at 65, it’s probably the smartest order there is. But most people who come to us don’t want to retire at 65. They want work to be optional in their 50s. Pulling back whenever they want, on their terms.

And what I see, again and again, is the same pattern. People who maxed every account and hit a seven figure portfolio, but still can’t touch their money before 59½.

Not because they saved wrong. Because they ignored the one account that can help them.

So what does that gap actually cost you?

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The gap nobody warns you about

Pull money from a 401(k) or traditional IRA before 59½, and the IRS takes 10% off the top before you see a dollar of it.

Then add ordinary income tax on whatever you withdraw. That combination can eat well over a quarter of your account before the money ever reaches your bank.

There are workarounds, technically.

A 72(t) schedule gets you access without the penalty. But it locks you into a withdrawal schedule based on a IRS calculation for a minimum or five years or until you turn 59½, whichever time period is longer. No adjusting for a bad market. No changing your mind.

A Roth conversion ladder works too, except it takes five years to mature, which means planning your exit a half decade before you actually want to leave.

And here’s what surprises people most: even maxing out your 401(k) every single year, tops out at $24,500 in 2026. That’s the ceiling. No catch-up bump until you turn 50.

For someone trying to walk away in their late 50s you can do everything right and still be years away from touching your own money penalty free.

The taxable brokerage account closes that gap, and it does it in three distinct ways.

The account with no age requirement

First: no age requirement.

A taxable brokerage account skips every rule we just walked through. No 59½ threshold. No five-year runway to plan around. No locked schedule to commit to before you’re ready to leave.

The money is available the Monday after you walk out.

It also comes with no contribution ceiling. Once you’ve maxed the accounts that come with penalties attached, this is the one that keeps building without a yearly cap slowing you down.

It won’t give you the tax deferral or the employer match your other accounts do.

That’s not its job.

Its job is simple: give you access to money you can actually use before 59½.

The account that bends when life doesn’t

Second: it doesn’t ask what the money is for.

A 401(k) knows how to do one thing: fund retirement, on the government’s schedule, under the government’s rules.

But making work optional rarely happens on a schedule.

I’ve watched it show up as a sabbatical nobody planned for. A business idea somebody finally chased. Sometimes just a parent who needed help sooner than anyone expected.

Every time, the pattern’s the same.

The people with money sitting in a taxable account could say yes immediately. The people with everything locked into retirement accounts had to wait, ask permission, or eat a penalty just to have the options they wanted.

That’s the real cost of traditional retirement accounts.

The tax bracket most people don’t know exists

Third, and the one most high earners have never heard of.

In 2026, a married couple can realize up to $98,900 in long-term investment gains and pay 0% federal tax on it, on top of the $32,200 standard deduction. That’s a window $131,100 of long-term gains you can realize without paying a dollar in taxes.

But here’s the part that gets left out.

Any other taxable income comes off that number first. Wages, interest, dividends, side income, all of it stacks on top and eats into the room. Earn $60,000 in the year you’re structuring this, and you’re not working with $131,100 anymore. You’re working with roughly $71,100.

Still real money. Still zero federal tax. Just not the “sell some stock, realize the gains, pay nothing” simplicity it sounds like online.

I didn’t learn this strategy early in my career. Most big firms never use it, because their clients are already retired well into their 60-70s, past the point where this even matters.

But once I found it, it became essential for anyone who actually wants the option to leave early.

It still takes real coordination, year by year, against everything else hitting your tax return.

I broke down the full mechanics in The Tax Strategy 99% Of Early Retirees Miss. Worth reading before you build this into your own plan.

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That’s it.

The fix itself isn’t complicated. Most people have just never been told how important their taxable brokerage account is.

No age requirement. No rules about what the money’s for. A tax bracket most people never learn to use. That’s not three separate perks. That’s one account doing the job the accounts everyone maxes first were never built to do.

Most of the people I start working with with already have a taxable account. They just weren’t funding it like it mattered.

Still max your retirement accounts. Just stop assuming the account with the tax break going in is the one that gives you the flexibility to get you out.

Thanks for reading. See you next week.

— Ryan

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways we can help you:

1. Join The Opulus Method Newsletter — Every Tuesday, I share strategies that help high-income millennials build wealth without sacrificing their life. Join 4,000+ readers.

2. Work With Us 1-on-1 — We’ll build your personalized strategy to cut your taxes, maximize your income, and grow your wealth month after month. You focus on living your life. We handle the financial strategy and execution.

Opulus, LLC (“Opulus”) is a registered investment advisor in Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any specific level of skill or training.

The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, or accounting advice. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investments, nor does it endorse any specific company, security, or investment strategy. Readers should not rely on this content as the sole basis for any investment or financial decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment strategies discussed will result in profits or avoid losses.

All information is provided “as-is” without any warranties, express or implied. Opulus does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, Ryan Greiser and Francis Walsh, and are subject to change without notice.

Opulus is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages resulting from the use or reliance on this information. Use of the content is at your own risk. This content is not intended as an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal.

A client of mine is about to retire. Genuinely one of the best people I know (pretty much a father to me) - saved well, invested smart, did basically everything right for over 30 years. By every number we’ve ever run, he’s in great shape financially.

So we’re talking through his retirement, and he brings up this trip he and his wife have been dreaming about for years - Italy, the whole thing, the hill towns, the long walks through Rome. And instead of being excited, he pauses and says he’s not sure they should book it. Has nothing to do with money. But because he’s not sure his knees and his stamina can handle it.

That stopped me. Here’s a guy who has done literally everything the “right” way financially, and the thing standing between him and the retirement he actually wants isn’t his portfolio. It’s his body.

I’ve always believed physical fitness is a huge part of who I am; it’s honestly shaped a lot of my identity over the years. But this conversation made me think about it differently. It’s not just about how you feel day to day. It’s about whether you’ll actually be able to do the things you’re spending your whole life saving up for.

Let’s get into it ↓

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We Plan for Everything Except This

I build plans for a living. We model market returns, inflation, tax brackets, healthcare premiums, what happens if the market drops 30% the year you retire. We plan for almost everything.

What we don’t plan for is whether you’ll physically be able to enjoy any of it.

You can nail your withdrawal rate down to the dollar and still end up unable to take the trip, do the hike, or get down on the floor to play with your grandkids - not because you didn’t save enough, but because you spent 30 years sitting at a desk and never got around to moving.

And here’s the part that gets me: money problems in retirement are usually fixable. Adjust the budget, work a little longer, pull back on spending for a year. But a knee that can’t handle stairs, or a back that can’t handle a full day of walking? That’s a lot harder to fix on the back end.

The Healthcare Number You’ve Probably Heard

You’ve probably seen some version of this stat: Fidelity’s latest estimate puts the average cost of healthcare in retirement at around $345,000 for a couple, and that doesn’t even include long-term care.

Most people hear that and think “okay, I need to save more.” Which, sure. But nobody stops to ask the other question: how much of that number is actually preventable?

A lot of what drives lifetime healthcare spending - heart disease, diabetes, joint problems, high blood pressure - is tied directly to how much we move. So the highest-leverage thing you can do against that $345,000 isn’t necessarily a bigger portfolio. Sometimes it’s just the walk you skipped today.

You can’t invest your way out of a bad knee. But you can walk, lift, and stretch your way out of a good chunk of that bill.

There’s a Gap Nobody Talks About

There’s a term researchers use called the “healthspan-lifespan gap” - basically the difference between how long you live and how long you’re actually healthy enough to enjoy it.

In the U.S., that gap is now about 12.4 years, the widest of any country in the world. Meaning: the average American spends over a decade of their life alive but not really well. Not able to do the trip. Not chasing grandkids around the yard. Managing something instead of living.

Sit with that for a second against a 25 or 30-year retirement. If you retire at 65 and that gap eats the last 12 years, you didn’t actually plan a 30-year retirement. You planned an 18-year one, plus 12 years of managing decline.

That number should be sitting right next to your withdrawal rate in every financial plan. It almost never is.

Why This Matters More Than It Should

Here’s a stat that stuck with me: retirees who describe their health as good or excellent report satisfaction levels 58% higher than retirees who describe it as poor. Not a bigger nest egg. Not a better return. Just better health.

And when you ask retirees what actually matters most to them, “being healthy and fit” comes in right behind “enjoying life” - ahead of almost everything else we spend our whole careers optimizing for.

I think about that a lot, honestly. You can do everything right with your money and still end up with a worse retirement than someone with half your net worth, just because they can still get up and down a flight of stairs without thinking twice about it.

Money is a tool. Health is what lets you actually use it.

I’m Not Saying Become Someone You’re Not

To be clear, I’m not telling anyone to go become a marathoner or join a CrossFit, or completely reinvent themselves. Most people don’t need that, and honestly, most people won’t stick with it if they try.

What actually matters is way more boring than that: get your steps in. Get outside. Walk. Ride a bike. Pick up something heavy a couple times a week. Nothing dramatic - just don’t let years slip by where the only movement you get is from the couch to the car.

You don’t need to be an athlete. You just need to still be able to climb the hill in Positano when you finally get there.

A Simple Test

Before you skip another workout or push it off to “starting Monday,” I’d run it through the same kind of test I’d use for any big financial decision:

1. Name what you’re actually saving for. Be specific - the trip, the grandkids, the years of freedom.

2. Ask honestly whether your body could do it today. Not in theory - actually climb the stairs, walk the distance, carry the bag.

3. If the answer is no, treat that the way you’d treat any underfunded goal. Something to start closing now, not “eventually.”

4. Do the smallest thing you can actually stick with. A 20-minute walk. Not a resolution, just action today.

And remember, compounding works both ways. The same consistency that builds a portfolio over 30 years is what builds a body that can still enjoy it.

I tell a story all the time that the first time I got on a treadmill after my football career I couldn’t run a mile. 10 years later I’ve done 10+ marathons, 100 mile endurance races, Ironmans, you name it. Compounding is real in all aspects of our lives.

Bottom Line

There are two ways retirement can go wrong. One is running out of money before you run out of life - we talk about that constantly.

The other is running out of health before you run out of money. Sitting on a fully funded retirement you can’t physically enjoy. Almost nobody talks about that one, and I’d guess it’s just as common.

Honestly, the hardest thing I see as an advisor isn’t the client who isn’t financially ready to retire yet. It’s the one who is - who did everything right for 40 years - and finds out the portfolio was never the hard part.

Save aggressively. Plan carefully. But somewhere in that plan, make room for the walk, the bike ride, the weights. Not for how it looks - for the simple reason that it’s what actually lets you enjoy what you’ve spent 40 years building.

Go take the trip to Italy. Just start training for the hills now, not the week before you leave.

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See you next week.

— Fran

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways we can help you:

1. Join The Opulus Method Newsletter — Every Tuesday, I share strategies that help high-income millennials build wealth without sacrificing their life. Join 3,200+ readers.

2. Work With Us 1-on-1 — We’ll build your personalized strategy to cut your taxes, maximize your income, and grow your wealth month after month. You focus on living your life. We handle the financial strategy and execution.

Opulus, LLC (“Opulus”) is a registered investment advisor in Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any specific level of skill or training.

The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, or accounting advice. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investments, nor does it endorse any specific company, security, or investment strategy. Readers should not rely on this content as the sole basis for any investment or financial decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment strategies discussed will result in profits or avoid losses.

All information is provided “as-is” without any warranties, express or implied. Opulus does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, Ryan Greiser and Francis Walsh, and are subject to change without notice.

Opulus is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages resulting from the use or reliance on this information. Use of the content is at your own risk. This content is not intended as an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal.

The same meeting structure with different families, week after week. And by the third or fourth week I started noticing something obvious.

The clients who felt good about their money all knew the same three things. What their bills actually cost them. What they were actually putting away. What they let themselves enjoy guilt-free.

Everyone else was guessing.

I don’t mean guessing in a reckless way. Most of these people are smart, careful, doing fine on paper. They just couldn’t answer those three questions confidently. And that hesitation told me everything.

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The cost of not knowing

That hesitation isn’t nothing. It’s usually a sign of not knowing where your own money is going, and it shows up as a low-grade worry when nothing’s actually wrong.

Every purchase becomes a small negotiation with yourself. Is this smart? Should this money be invested instead? I’ve watched people have that conversation in their heads for years, sometimes over things they can easily afford.

It doesn’t matter what their account balance is on their statements. A healthy balance doesn’t erase that feeling.

Knowing your numbers does.

That’s the difference.

Give yourself permission

Last year I looked at booking a family vacation. Somewhere north of $10,000, travel for five, nice destination, the whole thing.

And for a second I felt sick about it.

Which is a strange thing to admit, because the math wasn’t the problem. I’m 39 now, married, three kids, and my income has grown a lot since my 20s. On paper, we could afford this trip without an issue. But some old instinct still kicked in, the feeling that treats a big number as automatically reckless, regardless of what’s actually true.

So I checked my own three numbers.

Essentials were covered. Retirement and investments were on track, 20% going into my accounts every week. And lifestyle, the part that everyone wants to be guilt-free, had room for this exact family vacation.

I booked the trip without any guilt staring at the payment screen.

That’s not a spending trick. That’s what happens once you’ve actually taken responsibility for what your bills actually cost you and what you’re putting away for your future.

If you’re in your 30s or 40s, a good starting point looks like this: 50% of your after-tax income to essentials, 20% to your financial goals, 30% to your lifestyle and whatever you actually enjoy.

It’s not a hard rule, but a starting point.

Run your own numbers against it. See where it puts you. See how it feels to spend the 30% without second guessing yourself.

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Nobody at those spring meetings needed a more complicated system. They needed three numbers, and the confidence that came from actually knowing them.

Same goes for my $10,000 trip. Same goes for whatever your version of that trip is.

Get those three numbers right, and the rest sorts itself out.

Thanks for reading. See you next week.

— Ryan

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways we can help you:

1. Join The Opulus Method Newsletter — Every Tuesday, I share strategies that help high-income millennials build wealth without sacrificing their life. Join 4,000+ readers.

2. Work With Us 1-on-1 — We’ll build your personalized strategy to cut your taxes, maximize your income, and grow your wealth month after month. You focus on living your life. We handle the financial strategy and execution.

Opulus, LLC (“Opulus”) is a registered investment advisor with the SEC. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any specific level of skill or training.

The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, or accounting advice. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investments, nor does it endorse any specific company, security, or investment strategy. Readers should not rely on this content as the sole basis for any investment or financial decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment strategies discussed will result in profits or avoid losses.

All information is provided “as-is” without any warranties, express or implied. Opulus does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, Ryan Greiser and Francis Walsh, and are subject to change without notice.

Opulus is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages resulting from the use or reliance on this information. Use of the content is at your own risk. This content is not intended as an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal.

They’d already done homework. They’d read that 70 was “optimal.” They’d read that 62 was for suckers who don’t understand compounding. They’d read a dozen confident, contradictory takes - and all of it left them more stuck than when they started.

Here’s what I told them: there isn’t a right age. There’s only the right age for your health, your other assets, and your household’s overall plan. The internet wants to give you a number. Your life is the thing that actually determines the number.

Let’s dig in ↓

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Social Security gives you a range, not a rule. You can claim as early as 62. Your Full Retirement Age (FRA) - 67 for anyone born 1960 or later - is where you get 100% of your Primary Insurance Amount. And 70 is the last stop; waiting past it buys you nothing more.

Claim before FRA and your check shrinks permanently. Claim after, and it grows permanently. That’s the entire mechanism. Everything else in this decision is just deciding where between 62 and 70 makes sense for you.

Here’s what that actually looks like in dollars, using 2026 rules and a $2,000/month FRA benefit as the example:

Claim at 62, and you’re locked into roughly $1,400/month for life - a permanent 30% cut.

Claim at 70, and that same benefit grows to roughly $2,480/month - a permanent 24% increase.

Same person. Same earnings record. A 77% gap between the smallest and largest version of that check, paid out every month for the rest of your life. That gap is why this decision deserves more than a gut call.

Why People Reach for a Rule Instead of a Plan

Most people don’t actually disagree about the math. They disagree about which version of themselves they’re planning for.

The case for claiming early usually comes down to reality, not impatience: your other assets are thin, you need the cash flow now, you’re no longer working, or your health and family history suggest a shorter runway. In that situation, a smaller guaranteed check today can beat a bigger uncertain one later.

The case for waiting comes down to a different reality: you have other income - savings, a pension, part-time work - that can bridge the gap. You come from a family that tends to live long. And you’d rather lock in the highest possible income floor than optimize for getting “your money back” as fast as possible.

Neither instinct is wrong. They’re just answers to different balance sheets.

The Breakeven Age Everyone Quotes (and Half-Understands)

If you claim at 62 instead of 70, you collect a smaller check for eight extra years before the larger check would have even started. Add it up, and the two paths cross - the point where the delayed, bigger checks catch up to and pass the early, smaller ones - somewhere around age 80 to 82 for most people.

Live past that age, and delaying paid off. Come in short of it, and claiming early paid off.

The problem is that people treat this single number as the whole analysis. It isn’t. Your family’s longevity and your current health are reasonable inputs into that estimate - not guarantees, and not the only variables that matter. I’ve seen clients anchor so hard on breakeven age that they forget to ask the two questions that usually matter more: what else is funding my life, and who am I leaving behind?

What Else Is Funding Your Life

This is the piece that actually determines whether “waiting” is even realistic for you.

If you’ve got a pension, a brokerage account, or part-time income covering your expenses, delaying becomes far more feasible - you’re not relying on that check to eat, so you can afford to let it grow. But if Social Security is your primary income source, delaying may simply not be realistic. That’s not a planning failure. That’s an honest read of your situation, and claiming earlier can be the correct call.

The Factor Married Couples Almost Always Miss

Here’s the one that changes the entire conversation for couples, and the one my clients hadn’t considered at all.

Delaying doesn’t increase a spousal benefit - it’s capped near 50% of the working spouse’s FRA amount no matter how long that spouse waits. But delaying does increase the survivor benefit. When one spouse passes away, the surviving spouse keeps the higher of the two checks, for the rest of their life.

That reframes the whole decision. This stops being about “your” optimal claiming age and becomes about your household’s optimal age. For couples with a meaningful earnings gap, delaying the higher earner’s claim is often the single most consequential decision available for protecting whichever spouse ends up living longer alone.

That’s exactly what shifted things for the couple I mentioned. Once they saw it as a decision that would outlive one of them, “when should I claim” stopped being the right question entirely.

If You’re Still Working

One more wrinkle, and it trips people up more than it should: if you claim before FRA while still working, the earnings test applies. In 2026, the limit is $24,480/year - above that, you lose $1 in benefits for every $2 you earn.

That money isn’t gone. It gets credited back to you later in the form of a higher benefit. But if you’re not expecting the withholding, the short-term cash flow hit can catch you off guard.

How to Actually Run This

Get your FRA benefit estimate. List your other income sources and how long they could bridge a delay. Be honest about your health and your family’s longevity - not optimistic, honest. If you’re married, model the survivor benefit under each claiming scenario, not just your own payout. Revisit the decision every year, because your situation will keep changing until the day you actually file.

No calculator on the internet knows your health, your family’s history, or how you feel about guaranteed income versus market risk. The right age only exists once you plug in your numbers - not the ones in someone else’s thread.

Bottom Line

People want Social Security timing to be a math problem with one clean answer, because clean answers are comforting. It isn’t one. Claiming at 62 locks in a permanent 30% cut versus FRA. Waiting until 70 locks in a permanent 24% increase. The breakeven for most people lands around 80 to 82 - but your health, your other assets, and your marital status can all move that answer around.

If you’re married with an earnings gap, remember that delaying the higher earner’s claim may be the single biggest thing you can do to protect whoever outlives the other.

The goal isn’t to find the age everyone else is using. It’s to find the age that fits the life and the household you actually have.

See you next week.

- Fran

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways we can help you:

1. Join The Opulus Method Newsletter — Every Tuesday, I share strategies that help high-income millennials build wealth without sacrificing their life. Join 3,200+ readers.

2. Work With Us 1-on-1 — We’ll build your personalized strategy to cut your taxes, maximize your income, and grow your wealth month after month. You focus on living your life. We handle the financial strategy and execution.

Opulus, LLC (“Opulus”) is a registered investment advisor in Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any specific level of skill or training.

The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, or accounting advice. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investments, nor does it endorse any specific company, security, or investment strategy. Readers should not rely on this content as the sole basis for any investment or financial decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment strategies discussed will result in profits or avoid losses.

All information is provided “as-is” without any warranties, express or implied. Opulus does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, Ryan Greiser and Francis Walsh, and are subject to change without notice.

Opulus is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages resulting from the use or reliance on this information. Use of the content is at your own risk. This content is not intended as an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal.

So here’s an uncomfortable question: if you died tomorrow, could your spouse actually get into anything?

The bank. The bills. Your email. Your phone.

For most households the honest answer is no. Because an estate plan tells your family what they inherit—it doesn’t get them into a single account. The binder can transfer everything you own without being able to log into any of it.

I fixed this in my own household with a simple system that took one afternoon and didn’t require an attorney.

Here’s how it works.

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What locked out actually looks like

Here’s what happens when a spouse can’t get in.

Every institution runs its own process for a death, and every process wants a certified death certificate, its own forms, and sometimes a notary. That could be weeks of waiting per account, and that’s only the accounts they know about.

Meanwhile, life doesn’t pause. The mortgage still drafts, the electric bill still comes due, and the insurance policy that protects the family sits behind a login nobody has.

And here’s the part that surprises people: even knowing a password isn’t enough anymore, because most accounts text a verification code to prove it’s really you. That code goes to your phone. Which is locked.

Grief is heavy enough. Paperwork on top of it is a weight your family never needed to carry.

Here’s the solution.

Layer one: your phone and everything on it

Apple built a tool for exactly this, and almost nobody turns it on.

It’s called Legacy Contact. Open Settings → tap your name → Sign-In & Security → Legacy Contact. Add your spouse and send them the access key by iMessage, and it saves to their Apple Account automatically.

That key plus a death certificate unlocks:

• Photos and videos

• Files, notes, and contacts

• Messages and mail

• Device backups

Five minutes of setup, and you’ve handed over the family photo albums and the filing cabinet in one move.

Most people stop there and assume they’re covered.

But there’s a detail buried in Apple’s fine print: passwords are excluded from Legacy Contact—by design.

Your family gets the photos. Not the bank login.

Layer two: the logins they’d actually need

That’s why the second layer exists. Unlike the first, it works while you’re still alive.

Start by saving every password in one spot. I use Apple’s Passwords app, which puts every login and every password in a single vault, because no plan on earth can hand over credentials scattered across three browsers and a notebook. Consolidate first. (If you’re a Chrome user like me, install Apple’s Passwords extension and turn off Chrome’s password saving.)

Then create a Shared Password Group. In the Passwords app, tap Folder + → choose New Shared Group → name it Household Essentials → add your spouse.

Now the filter, because this is where most people overthink it. Your family doesn’t need access to every account you’ve ever opened. They need the essentials: whatever one of you pays and both of you rely on. In my house, that means the bank, the mortgage, the utilities, and the insurance. They don’t need the rest.

Shared groups sync live and stay end-to-end encrypted, so when you update a password tonight, their copy updates too. No death certificate. No waiting on anyone’s process. And for the accounts that text a verification code, add your spouse’s number as a backup while you’re both here to do it.

Access in minutes, not months.

The one-page map

The passwords open the doors, but your family still needs the map.

Write one page: every account, every insurance policy, every recurring bill, and where each one lives. Institutions and account types only, with no passwords on this page.

Print two copies. One goes with your estate documents, and one goes where your spouse can actually find it.

Then do the step almost everyone skips: tell them it exists.

A list nobody knows about protects no one.

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That’s it.

The binder on the shelf still matters. Keep it current, because it does the job it was built for.

But the estate plan was never the whole plan. One afternoon of setup does what the documents can’t: it gets the person you love through the login screen on the worst week of their life.

That’s the whole system: a phone they can unlock, the essentials they can open, and a map that tells them where everything lives.

You already suspected your household runs on one person’s logins. You were right. Now you’re the one who fixed it.

Thanks for reading. See you next week.

— Ryan

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways we can help you:

1. Join The Opulus Method Newsletter — Every Tuesday, I share strategies that help high-income millennials build wealth without sacrificing their life. Join 4,000+ readers.

2. Work With Us 1-on-1 — We’ll build your personalized strategy to cut your taxes, maximize your income, and grow your wealth month after month. You focus on living your life. We handle the financial strategy and execution.

Opulus, LLC (“Opulus”) is a registered investment advisor in Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any specific level of skill or training.

The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, or accounting advice. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investments, nor does it endorse any specific company, security, or investment strategy. Readers should not rely on this content as the sole basis for any investment or financial decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment strategies discussed will result in profits or avoid losses.

All information is provided “as-is” without any warranties, express or implied. Opulus does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, Ryan Greiser and Francis Walsh, and are subject to change without notice.

Opulus is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages resulting from the use or reliance on this information. Use of the content is at your own risk. This content is not intended as an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal.

Someone makes good money - $200,000, $280,000, sometimes more - and when the subject of Roth IRAs comes up, they wave it off. “I make too much. I can’t do a Roth.” They’ve done enough research to know the income limits exist and stopped there.

That’s half the picture. The other half has been sitting in the tax code since 2010, and the IRS has never closed it.

It’s called the backdoor Roth. Most high earners haven’t heard of it. Some have heard of it but never executed it. And a surprising number are executing it - but doing it wrong in ways that create real, unnecessary tax bills they never saw coming.

Today we’re going through all of it. Let’s dig in.

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Why You Can’t Contribute Directly

The IRS restricts direct Roth IRA contributions by income. For 2026: single filers phase out at $153,000-$168,000, married filing jointly at $242,000-$252,000. Above those thresholds, direct contribution is zero.

But here’s what the IRS didn’t close off: there is no income limit on making a non-deductible contribution to a traditional IRA. And no income limit on converting that IRA to a Roth. The backdoor Roth is simply those two steps used together.

How It Works

Contribute $7,500 to a traditional IRA - $8,600 if you’re 50 or older in 2026. Critical detail: do not deduct it. You’re putting in after-tax dollars intentionally. That after-tax basis is what makes the conversion tax-free.

Then convert to Roth immediately - same day if possible. Any earnings between contribution and conversion are taxable. A $7,500 contribution that earns $50 before you convert creates $50 of taxable income. Small, but avoidable. Most custodians allow same-day conversion. Set it up before you fund.

Two steps, clean result, $7,500 per year into Roth regardless of income.

The Pro-Rata Rule: Where Most People Get Hurt

The IRS doesn’t let you choose which dollars you’re converting. It looks at the total of all your traditional IRA balances across every account and every custodian, treats them as a single pool, and applies a ratio. The pre-tax percentage of that pool is the taxable percentage of your conversion.

The graphic below shows exactly what it looks like in a real example:

Opening a new account at a different custodian doesn’t help. The IRS sees through it.

What gets aggregated: traditional, SEP, SIMPLE, and rollover IRAs - everything, regardless of custodian. What doesn’t: 401(k)s, 403(b)s, Roth IRAs. And your spouse’s IRA balances have zero effect on your calculation - pro-rata is calculated independently per spouse, which means both spouses can contribute $7,500 each for $15,000 per year into Roth regardless of household income.

The Fix

The goal most financial planners work toward: $0 in pre-tax IRA balances at December 31 of the conversion year. The most common approach is rolling pre-tax IRA balances into your current employer’s 401(k) before year-end. Since 401(k)s are excluded from pro-rata, this clears the pool entirely.

Important caveat: not all 401(k) plans accept incoming IRA rollovers. Confirm with your plan administrator before assuming this is available to you.

One more thing before you execute: since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, Roth conversions are irrevocable. Recharacterization - converting back to a traditional IRA - is no longer permitted. Understand the tax consequence before you pull the trigger. A partially taxable conversion you didn’t plan for is real income at your marginal rate, with no unwinding it.

The Paperwork That Protects You

Every year you make a non-deductible IRA contribution, file Form 8606. This form tracks your after-tax basis - the record that proves your money was already taxed.

Skip it and the IRS defaults to treating your entire IRA as pre-tax. When you convert or withdraw, you pay tax a second time on money you already paid tax on. The IRS won’t remind you.

File Form 8606 every year. Keep it permanently. Basis accumulates across decades and you’ll need that paper trail in retirement.

The Three Failure Modes

The backdoor Roth isn’t complicated. But it has three specific ways it goes wrong - and none of them are obvious without someone walking you through it.

Pre-existing IRA balances triggering pro-rata on a conversion you assumed would be clean. Waiting to convert so earnings accumulate between contribution and conversion. Skipping Form 8606 so your after-tax basis disappears from the IRS’s records.

All three are avoidable. The steps above reflect how many financial planners approach the execution, but the right setup depends on your specific accounts, your 401(k) plan’s rules, and your tax picture for the year. Worth a conversation with your CPA before you move

.Bottom Line: The Backdoor Roth Playbook

• Who it’s for: single filers above $168,000, married filers above $252,000

• Pro-rata trap: existing rollover or SEP IRA balances make your conversion partially taxable

• The fix: roll pre-tax IRA balances into your 401(k) before year-end - verify your plan accepts rollovers first

• Conversions are irrevocable since 2017 - know the tax consequence before you execute

See you next week.

— Fran

Subscribe now

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways we can help you:

1. Join The Opulus Method Newsletter — Every Tuesday, I share strategies that help high-income millennials build wealth without sacrificing their life. Join 3,200+ readers.

2. Work With Us 1-on-1 — We’ll build your personalized strategy to cut your taxes, maximize your income, and grow your wealth month after month. You focus on living your life. We handle the financial strategy and execution.

Opulus, LLC (“Opulus”) is a registered investment advisor in Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any specific level of skill or training.

The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, or accounting advice. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investments, nor does it endorse any specific company, security, or investment strategy. Readers should not rely on this content as the sole basis for any investment or financial decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment strategies discussed will result in profits or avoid losses.

All information is provided “as-is” without any warranties, express or implied. Opulus does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, Ryan Greiser and Francis Walsh, and are subject to change without notice.

Opulus is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages resulting from the use or reliance on this information. Use of the content is at your own risk. This content is not intended as an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal.

One daughter is a senior. Her 529 is funded perfectly: four years, accounted for, done. Her brother is a different story. He’s 17, already running a landscaping business, and has zero interest in a traditional college path. His 529 has been growing from the day he was born.

For most families, that’s a problem. Money locked in an account for a future that isn’t coming.

Except it isn’t a problem. Not anymore.

In 2024, a provision buried in the SECURE 2.0 Act went live. It lets you roll unused 529 funds directly into a Roth IRA, completely tax and penalty-free. The kid who skips college doesn’t lose. He might actually win.

But there are seven rules you need to know before this works. Miss one and the whole strategy falls apart.

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The setup most families miss

Congress tucked this provision into the SECURE 2.0 Act. It took effect January 1, 2024. The mechanics are straightforward: unused 529 funds can move directly into the beneficiary’s Roth IRA, with no taxes and no penalty.

Think about what that actually means. Money that spent years growing tax-free for education keeps growing tax-free for retirement. The account changes. The tax treatment doesn’t.

But the rules are specific.

The 7 Rules You Need to Know

Rule 1: The 529 must be at least 15 years old

The account needs to be open for 15 years before any rollover is allowed. The clock starts when you open the account, not when you fund it.

Timing matters more than people realize. A 529 opened at birth gives you maximum flexibility. One opened when your kid is 10 gives you almost none.

Here’s the update worth knowing. Administrators don’t agree on whether a beneficiary change resets the 15-year clock. Some say it tracks the account. Others say it tracks the person.

The IRS hasn’t ruled either way. Until it does, assume the clock resets and confirm with your plan administrator before moving funds between siblings.

Rule 2: Contributions must age at least 5 years

Any money you put into the 529 has to sit there for five years before it’s eligible to roll over. You can’t backfill an account right before a rollover and expect it to work. Contributions and their earnings need time to season.

Rule 3: The lifetime cap is $35,000

Rule 3 changes the math entirely. There’s a $35,000 ceiling per beneficiary, total, across all 529 accounts combined. That’s not per year. That’s the lifetime limit.

It sounds modest. It isn’t.

Picture this purely as an illustration. $35,000 rolled into a Roth IRA beginning at age 22, left untouched and invested at a hypothetical 7% average annual return until age 65, could grow to roughly $640,000. No further contributions required. All of it potentially tax-free.

Markets don’t move in straight lines, and your child’s actual results will differ. But it shows what’s possible when tax-free growth gets four decades to work.

Rule 4: Annual rollovers are capped at the Roth contribution limit

You can’t move $35,000 in one transfer. Annual rollovers are limited to the Roth IRA contribution limit for that year.

That’s the bottleneck. For 2026, that’s $7,500 for beneficiaries under 50. At that pace, a full rollover takes at least five years.

Plan accordingly.

Rule 5: The beneficiary needs earned income

This is the rule most families overlook. The beneficiary must have earned income in the year of the rollover, and the rollover amount can’t exceed what they earned.

No job means no rollover. A summer earning $5,000 means a $5,000 rollover ceiling for that year. Wages, self-employment income, tips. Not investment income. Not gifts.

For a kid running a trade business, this rule actually works in their favor. Income they’re already generating creates rollover eligibility automatically.

Rule 6: No income limits apply

Here’s the part that surprises most people. The income limits that normally restrict Roth IRA contributions don’t apply to these rollovers. High earners who are typically locked out of direct Roth contributions can use this provision without restriction.

That’s a real opening. For successful adult children who’ve aged out of Roth eligibility, this becomes even more valuable.

Rule 7: State tax treatment varies

Federal law allows the rollover tax-free. Your state may not follow. Some states could still assess taxes or recapture penalties on the earnings portion of the rollover. Before executing this strategy, check your state’s specific rules or talk to your advisor.

The moves that compound this

Knowing the rules is the first step. Using them well is the second. Three things worth doing now, regardless of where your kids are today.

1. Open a 529 early. Even a small initial contribution starts the 15-year clock. You can fund it aggressively later. But you can’t go back and open it earlier.

2. Encourage earned income during college years. Summer jobs, freelance work, a side business. Every dollar earned creates rollover capacity. For kids already generating income from a trade or business, that capacity exists right now.

3. Watch the beneficiary change rules. If you have excess funds in one child’s 529 and want to shift them to another, the timing matters here too. Administrators disagree on whether that resets the 15-year clock, and the IRS hasn’t settled it.

   Get this wrong and you’ve potentially reset a decade of progress. Work with someone who understands the mechanics before making that move.

Get this wrong and you’ve reset a decade of progress. Work with someone who understands the mechanics before making that move.

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That’s it.

That kid running the landscaping business doesn’t know it yet, but his parents just turned what looked like a wasted account into a head start nobody else his age will have.

He didn’t follow the plan. He built a different one. And it turns out, the money set aside for one plan is about to fund the second one too. That’s the part most families miss when they’re staring at a 529 with no college plans attached to it.

The money isn’t stuck. It’s just waiting for a new direction.

Thanks for reading. See you next week.

— Ryan

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways we can help you:

1. Join The Opulus Method Newsletter — Every Tuesday, I share strategies that help high-income millennials build wealth without sacrificing their life. Join 4,000+ readers.

2. Work With Us 1-on-1 — We’ll build your personalized strategy to cut your taxes, maximize your income, and grow your wealth month after month. You focus on living your life. We handle the financial strategy and execution.

Opulus, LLC (“Opulus”) is a registered investment advisor in Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any specific level of skill or training.

The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, or accounting advice. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investments, nor does it endorse any specific company, security, or investment strategy. Readers should not rely on this content as the sole basis for any investment or financial decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment strategies discussed will result in profits or avoid losses.

All information is provided “as-is” without any warranties, express or implied. Opulus does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, Ryan Greiser and Francis Walsh, and are subject to change without notice.

Opulus is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages resulting from the use or reliance on this information. Use of the content is at your own risk. This content is not intended as an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal.

He wasn’t panicking because the market was down. He was panicking because he’d finally done the math. Not the percentage. The dollars. His $340,000 account had become $225,000 in about three weeks. That’s $115,000 - gone from his screen, every time he opened the app.

He hadn’t changed. His questionnaire answers hadn’t changed. But his behavior was about to.

This is the gap that destroys wealth - not bad investment picks, not wrong asset allocation, not timing the market. It’s the distance between the risk tolerance you think you have and the one you actually have. And most people don’t find out where they really stand until it’s too late to adjust without damage.

Today we’re going to close that gap. Let’s dig in.

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Why Risk Questionnaires Fail You

Every brokerage, 401(k) platform, and financial planning tool asks some version of the same question: “If your portfolio dropped 20%, what would you do?”

A) Sell B) Hold C) Buy more

In a bull market - when your account is up and losses feel abstract - almost everyone answers C. Of course you’d buy more. Stocks are on sale. You’ve read the books. You know the math.

Then an actual crash happens.

There’s a concept in behavioral economics called stated vs. revealed preference. Stated preference is what you say you’d do. Revealed preference is what you actually do when the situation is real and the stakes are yours. In investing, these two things are frequently very different - and the gap between them is exactly what costs people money.

The questionnaire captures your stated preference. Your behavior in February 2020 or late 2022 captures your revealed preference. One of those is your actual risk tolerance. The other is just an answer to a hypothetical.

Tolerance vs. Capacity: Two Different Things

Most people use “risk tolerance” to mean one thing. It’s actually two.

Risk tolerance is the volatility you can stomach emotionally - the psychological experience of watching your portfolio fall and not doing something destructive. Risk capacity is the volatility your financial situation can actually absorb without derailing your life.

You can have high tolerance and low capacity. You might be completely unbothered watching your account drop 40% - but if you’re 61, that drop could mean pushing back retirement by a decade. Your emotions are fine. Your plan isn’t.

You can have low capacity and high tolerance. A 35-year-old with a stable income and 30 years until retirement has enormous capacity to absorb losses - time does the healing. But if that same person panics and sells every time there’s a correction, the capacity doesn’t matter. The behavior negates the advantage.

A plan that only accounts for one and ignores the other isn’t a plan. It’s a guess.

The Dollar Math Nobody Runs

Percentages are comfortable. Dollars are real. And until you convert one to the other, you haven’t actually confronted your risk.

Here’s what three major crashes look like on a $500,000 portfolio:

• 2022 bear market (-25%): $500,000 becomes $375,000. You lost $125,000.

• COVID crash (-34%): $500,000 becomes $330,000. You lost $170,000.

• 2008 Financial Crisis (-57%): $500,000 becomes $215,000. You lost $285,000.

These aren’t abstract percentages. That’s real money, gone from your account, possibly for months or years.

And here’s the part that almost nobody realizes: the recovery math isn’t symmetric. If you lose 25%, you don’t need to gain 25% back to break even. You need to gain 33%. Lose 34%, you need 52%. Lose 57%, you need to more than double your money - a 133% gain - just to get back to where you started.

A 57% loss is not recovered by a 57% gain. This is the math that rewrites retirement timelines.

The Same Crash, Two Completely Different Consequences

Here’s where tolerance and capacity collide in the real world.

Person A is 35 years old with a $500,000 portfolio. After a 57% crash, she has $215,000. She has 30 years until retirement. Her income is intact. Her expenses are covered. She keeps buying. In 30 years at historical returns, that $215,000 has time to become something significant - and the contributions she makes at depressed prices accelerate the recovery.

Person B is 60 years old with $1,500,000. He was planning to retire in two years. After the same 57% crash, he has $645,000. His retirement math just broke. He was counting on the standard 4% withdrawal rule to generate $60,000 per year. On $645,000, that’s $25,800. That’s a $34,200 annual shortfall - every year, for the rest of his retirement.

Same crash. Same percentage loss. Completely different consequences. The 35-year-old had high capacity. The 60-year-old had what felt like high capacity - until it mattered.

This is why allocation should shift as you approach retirement. Not because stocks become bad investments, but because your capacity to absorb a loss without consequence shrinks every year. The sequence of returns you experience in your final few working years can be more impactful than everything that came before.

The Generation That Hasn’t Been Tested

If you started investing after 2009, here’s an honest accounting of what you’ve actually experienced:

You’ve lived through one of the longest bull markets in history. You lived through COVID, which was a 34% crash - brutal and terrifying - but also the fastest recovery on record. And you lived through 2022, which was a painful ~25% drawdown that lasted about nine months.

What you haven’t experienced is a prolonged, multi-year downturn with no fast recovery in sight. The kind where 12 months in, things are still down 40% and there’s no clear catalyst for improvement. The kind that tests whether your behavior holds over years, not weeks.

This isn’t a criticism - I’m in this camp too. It’s a planning input. If your entire investing experience has occurred during an era of relatively fast recoveries, your revealed preference hasn’t been fully tested yet. Build your plan knowing that.

What Your Real Tolerance Actually Looks Like

Here’s a more honest way to find out where you stand than any questionnaire.

Look back at 2022. What did you actually do? Did you keep buying systematically, essentially unbothered? Did you check your account less often and let the autopilot run? If so - high tolerance. Your plan can reflect that.

Did you open your account more than usual, stress about it, consider selling, or actually sell some positions? That’s your real number. Not what you told the questionnaire. What you did.

The real stress test isn’t “could you hold through a 30% drop?” It’s: could you keep buying? Could you add money to positions that are down 35% when the news cycle is telling you the world is ending? Because that’s what the math rewards - and it’s what almost nobody actually does.

The cost of panic selling isn’t hypothetical. In 2022, a $500,000 portfolio hit a low of around $375,000. Someone who held and benefited from the 2023 recovery of roughly 24% recovered to about $465,000. Someone who sold at the bottom and stayed in cash sat at $375,000. The cost of that panic: roughly $90,000. Not a future projection. A documented outcome that happened to real people in real accounts.

How to Calibrate Your Plan to Your Actual Risk Profile

The goal isn’t to eliminate risk - it’s to hold risk you can actually sustain through a real downturn. Here’s how to get there:

Start by running the actual dollar math on your current portfolio. Not percentages - dollars. If your portfolio fell 25%, what would that number be? 40%? 57%? Write it down and sit with it for a minute. If that number makes you feel sick, your current allocation may not match your actual tolerance.

Then assess your capacity honestly. How many years until you need this money? Do you have 6-12 months of cash set aside so that a market drop would never force you to sell? Is your income stable enough to keep contributing through a downturn?

If recent volatility made you uncomfortable or you found yourself checking your accounts more than usual, three adjustments are worth discussing with a financial planner: a larger cash buffer so you’re never in a position where you have to sell at a loss, reducing speculative or high-volatility positions, and shifting toward a less aggressive allocation overall. Not because markets are bad - because a plan you abandon during a crash is worse than a conservative plan you hold forever.

The most expensive allocation isn’t the one that takes the least risk. It’s the one that takes more risk than you can actually sustain behaviorally.

Bottom Line: Build for the Portfolio You’ll Actually Keep

• Stated vs. revealed: what you say you’d do and what you actually do in a real crash are frequently different - and only one of them matters.

• Tolerance and capacity are not the same thing. Your plan needs to account for both.

• The recovery math is asymmetric: a 57% loss requires a 133% gain to break even.

• Your capacity changes over time - high at 35, potentially much lower at 60.

• The best portfolio isn’t the one optimized for maximum returns. It’s the one you’ll hold through a prolonged downturn without doing something that locks in permanent losses.

Risk tolerance isn’t a questionnaire score. It’s what you do when your account is down and staying down. Design your plan around that person.

See you next week.

— Fran

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Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways we can help you:

1. Join The Opulus Method Newsletter — Every Tuesday, I share strategies that help high-income millennials build wealth without sacrificing their life. Join 3,200+ readers.

2. Work With Us 1-on-1 — We’ll build your personalized strategy to cut your taxes, maximize your income, and grow your wealth month after month. You focus on living your life. We handle the financial strategy and execution.

Opulus, LLC (“Opulus”) is a registered investment advisor in Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any specific level of skill or training.

The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, or accounting advice. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investments, nor does it endorse any specific company, security, or investment strategy. Readers should not rely on this content as the sole basis for any investment or financial decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment strategies discussed will result in profits or avoid losses.

All information is provided “as-is” without any warranties, express or implied. Opulus does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, Ryan Greiser and Francis Walsh, and are subject to change without notice.

Opulus is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages resulting from the use or reliance on this information. Use of the content is at your own risk. This content is not intended as an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal.

And then it starts. “I was thinking...”

What follows is always different. A new strategy. Crypto. A rental property in a city they visited once. An options play a friend mentioned at dinner.

The specifics shift, but the energy is identical. A smart person with a perfectly good strategy, looking for the next move.

None of these ideas are stupid. That’s what makes them dangerous.

I’ve watched this pattern for years, and the cost is always the same. Not the bad trades. The cost of moving itself—pulling time away from the one thing that was already working.

Because compounding doesn’t fail.

People interrupt it.

And the sometimes the most valuable move I can advise for the 35-year-old with a $500,000 portfolio isn’t finding a better investment. It’s giving them permission to do nothing.

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The cost isn’t the bad trade

The mistake people make is thinking the danger lives in the bad decisions. The crypto trade that didn’t work. The rental that turned into a nightmare. The complicated strategy that underperformed.

Those losses are visible. They show up on statements. You can name them.

But the real cost is invisible years of lost compounding.

When you pull money out of a working strategy to try something new, you don’t just lose the new thing if it fails. You lose what the old thing would have done in the meantime.

Compounding compounds time. Every interruption shortens the runway. Every “move” reclaims years from the one thing that was already doing the work.

At 35 with $500,000, the most powerful asset on your balance sheet isn’t your strategy. It’s the next 25 years of uninterrupted compounding.

The real cost isn’t the bad trade. It’s the years of compounding you walked away from to make it.

The strategy you’ll actually leave alone

Morgan Housel has a phrase for this: reasonable over rational.

The mathematically optimal strategy is worthless if you can’t stick with it. The merely-reasonable one you’ll actually leave alone is the one that wins.

This flips the entire question.

Most financial advice asks: what’s the best portfolio you can build? The right question is different. What’s the strategy you’ll actually leave alone for thirty years?

Those are two different problems. And they have two different answers.

Once you start asking the second one, most of the noise stops mattering.

• The new strategy a friend mentioned? Not relevant. You wouldn’t have stuck with it.

• The crypto allocation? Not an opportunity. It’s something you’d panic-sell in twelve months.

• The rental in a city you visited once? Not an investment. It’s a part-time job you’d resent in eighteen months.

The right strategy is whichever one you’ll still hold when it’s boring. When it’s underperforming. When something shinier is in the news.

Life when you let compounding run

Picture the version of yourself that has stopped trying to do something new.

Contributions go in automatically. You check the portfolio once a month, not twice a day. You stop reacting to every market headline.

A friend mentions a hot new strategy at dinner and you nod, sincerely interested, and do absolutely nothing about it.

The mental load drops. The constant low-grade noise of “should I be doing something different?” goes away. You stop carrying it. You stop arguing with yourself in the shower about whether to change something.

Most of the energy you used to spend on the portfolio is now available for the rest of your life: the career you actually care about, the kids growing up fast, the hobbies that don’t generate ROI.

The financial industry and media sells you the destination. Financial freedom. Retirement. The number.

It never sells you the path. The path is boring. The path is repetitive. The path is doing the same thing for decades while the math compounds in the background. You spend your time on what actually matters.

That’s the trade.

How to actually do nothing

Doing nothing sounds passive.

It isn’t.

It’s a discipline. And it requires structure, because every system around you is designed to make you intervene.

Markets move. Headlines panic you. Friends mention deals. The financial media’s entire business model depends on convincing you that doing something is always better than doing nothing.

Building a life that lets compounding run means building defenses against all of that.

It starts with knowing where you’re going.

When the destination is clear—the number, the timeline, the freedom you’re actually after—and you trust the strategy you have will get you there, the question “should I be doing something different?” answers itself. You’re already doing the thing that gets you there. There’s nothing to chase.

Three things protect that alignment:

1. Pre-commit to the strategy. Write down what you own and why. Make the rules in advance so you can’t talk yourself out of them later.

2. Automate everything you can: contributions, rebalancing, tax-aware moves. The fewer decisions you make in real time, the easier it is to stay the course.

3. Give the impulse somewhere to go. A side project. A learning budget. A small speculation bucket separated from the core. The urge to act is real. The discipline is choosing where it lands.

The point isn’t that you’ll never have the urge to move. You will. Often.

The point is that you’ve built a system that catches the urge before it touches the thing that’s actually working.

Permission to do nothing isn’t permission to be lazy. It’s permission to be patient. To trust that the math you set up years ago is still doing its job, even when it feels like nothing is happening.

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That’s it.

I still get the urge.

A new idea catches my attention. A friend mentions something interesting over beers. A headline makes me wonder if I should be doing something different.

Then I check the strategy against where I’m going. And usually, the answer is no. The strategy I have is doing what it needs to do.

The urge passes.

The math keeps working.

That’s what compounding rewards. Not the next great idea. Not the smartest move. Not the better investment.

Just the discipline of getting out of its way.

Thanks for reading. See you next week.

— Ryan

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways we can help you:

1. Join The Opulus Method Newsletter — Every Tuesday, I share strategies that help high-income millennials build wealth without sacrificing their life. Join 4,000+ readers.

2. Work With Us 1-on-1 — We’ll build your personalized strategy to cut your taxes, maximize your income, and grow your wealth month after month. You focus on living your life. We handle the financial strategy and execution.

Opulus, LLC (“Opulus”) is a registered investment advisor in Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any specific level of skill or training.

The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, or accounting advice. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investments, nor does it endorse any specific company, security, or investment strategy. Readers should not rely on this content as the sole basis for any investment or financial decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment strategies discussed will result in profits or avoid losses.

All information is provided “as-is” without any warranties, express or implied. Opulus does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, Ryan Greiser and Francis Walsh, and are subject to change without notice.

Opulus is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages resulting from the use or reliance on this information. Use of the content is at your own risk. This content is not intended as an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal.

What they may not realize is that along with the stock, they’re also transferring their original cost basis. And everything that comes with it.

This week we’re breaking down one of the most overlooked provisions in the tax code - the stepped-up basis - and why the timing of how you transfer appreciated assets may matter as much as the decision to transfer them at all.

One important note before we dig in: this is a tax optimization framework for families who are in a position to be patient. If your kids need the money today and you can help them, you help them - and whoever takes the tax hit takes the tax hit. That’s the right call. What follows is for situations where everyone is financially okay and the goal is to pass wealth as efficiently as possible.

Let’s dig in:

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Cost Basis: The Number That Determines Your Tax Bill

When you buy a security, the price you pay becomes your cost basis. When you sell, you may owe capital gains tax on the difference between what you paid and what you received.

Stock purchased for $50,000, now worth $400,000, has $350,000 in embedded gains. If sold today at the long-term capital gains rate plus the net investment income tax - a combined rate that can reach 23.8% for high earners - the potential federal tax bill on that gain could reach approximately $83,300.

That number doesn’t disappear when you give the stock away. It goes with whoever ends up holding it.

What Happens When You Gift Appreciated Stock While Alive

When you gift appreciated stock to a family member during your lifetime, the recipient generally receives your original cost basis - known as carryover basis.

The stock you bought for $50,000 and gifted at $400,000? Your child’s basis is generally still $50,000. When they sell, they may owe tax on the full $350,000 gain - the same tax bill that would have existed in your hands, now sitting in theirs.

This is the pattern we see regularly. A parent gifts appreciated stock with genuine generosity, believing they’re transferring wealth. What they may actually be transferring is the tax liability embedded in that position.

The wealth transferred is real. But so is the bill that comes with it.

What Happens When Appreciated Stock Is Inherited Instead

Here’s where the tax code does something that surprises most people the first time they see it.

When a beneficiary inherits appreciated stock, the cost basis generally resets to the fair market value on the date of death. This is the stepped-up basis. That $50,000 position, now worth $400,000, generally steps up to $400,000 at the time of inheritance.

Sell it the next day? The potential federal capital gains tax on that $350,000 in gains may be zero.

Same stock. Same $400,000. Same $350,000 in embedded appreciation. Gifted while alive: heir carries a $50,000 basis and may face an $83,000+ federal tax bill when they sell. Inherited at death: basis generally resets to $400,000 and the gain may disappear entirely.

The stepped-up basis is one of the most powerful provisions in the tax code. It’s also completely legal. It exists because Congress determined that taxing unrealized gains at death would be administratively complex and disruptive to families and businesses. The result: decades of appreciation may pass to the next generation with no federal capital gains tax at all.

The Exception That Changes Everything: Retirement Accounts

This is the nuance that most conversations about the step-up miss - and it may be the most important part.

The stepped-up basis generally does not apply to traditional IRAs and retirement accounts.

When you inherit a traditional IRA, every dollar you withdraw is generally taxed as ordinary income - not at capital gains rates, but at your income tax rate. There is no basis reset. There is no step-up. The deferred tax liability that existed in the account while your parent was alive generally transfers directly to you as the beneficiary.

This means a $400,000 taxable brokerage account and a $400,000 traditional IRA are not the same inheritance - not even close. The brokerage account may pass with little or no federal capital gains tax if it holds appreciated securities. The IRA may cost the heir $80,000 to $120,000 or more in income tax over the distribution period, depending on their bracket and how distributions are timed.

Same dollar amount on the statement. Potentially very different after-tax value in your hands.

The Asset Location Decision Most Estate Plans Miss

This distinction changes how thoughtful families think about which assets live where.

The conventional wisdom on asset location focuses on current tax efficiency: hold tax-inefficient assets like bonds and REITs inside retirement accounts, and hold tax-efficient assets like index funds and growth stocks in taxable accounts. That logic holds during accumulation.

But there’s an estate planning layer that often gets missed entirely. Assets with large embedded gains in taxable accounts may be ideal candidates to pass as an inheritance - because the stepped-up basis may eliminate the gain entirely at death. Those same assets gifted while alive transfer the gain to the recipient.

IRA assets, by contrast, pass with the full ordinary income tax liability intact. A Roth IRA is a meaningful exception - qualified Roth distributions are generally tax-free to heirs - which is one of many reasons Roth conversion strategy matters in estate planning contexts.

The question worth asking: which accounts am I drawing from during my lifetime, and which am I leaving behind? The answer may have significant implications for what heirs actually receive.

One Important Caveat on Larger Estates

The step-up generally applies to assets in the taxable estate. For estates above the federal exemption - $13.99 million per individual and approximately $27.98 million per couple in 2026 - federal estate tax may apply at 40% on amounts above the threshold.

At that level, the interaction between estate tax and the stepped-up basis becomes more complex, and the right strategy may look very different. If your estate approaches those thresholds, this is a conversation that warrants dedicated attention from an estate planning attorney and a CPA - the stakes are significant enough that general frameworks may not be sufficient.

For the majority of families below those thresholds, the stepped-up basis remains one of the most accessible and meaningful tax planning tools available.

The Practical Takeaway

If you’re in a position to be generous and want to transfer wealth to your children efficiently, the sequencing matters.

Consider gifting cash rather than appreciated stock during your lifetime. The recipient gets the full value without inheriting your embedded tax liability. Leave appreciated positions in taxable accounts as part of the inheritance - where the basis may reset at death and the gain may disappear. Draw from retirement accounts during your lifetime rather than leaving them as the primary inheritance, since heirs will generally owe ordinary income tax on every dollar they withdraw.

None of this requires exotic strategies or complex structures. It requires knowing which assets carry embedded tax liabilities and being intentional about when and how they transfer.

Bottom Line

Most people think estate planning is about wills and trusts. It’s also about which account holds which asset - and what that decision may cost heirs in taxes.

• Gifting appreciated stock while alive generally transfers your original cost basis to the recipient - along with the potential tax liability embedded in the position

• Inheriting appreciated stock generally resets the basis to fair market value at death - potentially eliminating decades of embedded gains

• The stepped-up basis does not apply to traditional IRAs - every dollar inherited from a traditional IRA is generally taxable as ordinary income

• A $400K taxable brokerage account and a $400K traditional IRA are not the same inheritance - the after-tax difference may be $80,000 to $120,000 or more

• For estates below the federal exemption threshold, the stepped-up basis may be one of the most powerful tax provisions available - and it requires no complex planning to use

If your children need money today and you can help them - help them. The tax hit is manageable and being there when it matters is the point. But if the goal is long-term, tax-efficient wealth transfer, the order and method of how assets pass may matter as much as the assets themselves.

See you next week.

Subscribe now

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways we can help you:

1. Join The Opulus Method Newsletter — Every Tuesday, I share strategies that help high-income millennials build wealth without sacrificing their life. Join 2,500+ readers.

2. Work With Us 1-on-1 — We’ll build your personalized strategy to cut your taxes, maximize your income, and grow your wealth month after month. You focus on living your life. We handle the financial strategy and execution.

Opulus, LLC (“Opulus”) is a registered investment advisor in Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any specific level of skill or training.

The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, or accounting advice. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investments, nor does it endorse any specific company, security, or investment strategy. Readers should not rely on this content as the sole basis for any investment or financial decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment strategies discussed will result in profits or avoid losses.

All information is provided “as-is” without any warranties, express or implied. Opulus does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, Ryan Greiser and Francis Walsh, and are subject to change without notice.

Opulus is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages resulting from the use or reliance on this information. Use of the content is at your own risk. This content is not intended as an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal.

Then the tax bill came. Bigger than he expected, with underpayment penalties stacked on top. And the first estimated payment for 2026? Already missed.

His CPA’s advice: set aside some extra cash, just in case you owe again.

No projection. No plan. No moves to actually bring the number down before the year closed.

He wasn’t angry at his CPA. He was confused.

He thought he’d hired someone to be a tax planner. What he’d hired was someone to file them.

Those are two different jobs. And most high earners don’t find out which one they’re paying for until the bill lands.

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The part that actually costs you

The penalties sting. But they’re not the real cost.

A surprise tax bill means the year is already over. Everything that could have changed the number happened months ago, while no one was paying attention.

That’s the part that quietly adds up. The QBI deduction that was never structured for. The backdoor Roth that never got set up. The HSA that got overlooked. The RSU sale timed with no eye on your bracket. The estimated payments left to guesswork. Every one of those is a legal lever—and every one has a window that closes before April.

By the time you’re filing, there’s nothing left to do but report what happened. You’re not planning anymore. You’re just writing it down.

And next year, unless something changes, the same surprise is waiting.

Two jobs pointed in opposite directions

So why does the same surprise keep happening, year after year?

Because the two jobs don’t just differ. They point in opposite directions.

A preparer looks backward. Their work starts after the year ends, with the documents you send in. The job is to report what already happened, accurately and on time. A good one does exactly that.

A planner looks forward. Their work happens during the year, when the outcome can still move. Projections in the spring. Adjustments in the fall. Real moves made while the year is open.

One records the score. The other helps you change it.

Most high earners hired the first and assumed they were getting the second. That’s the whole problem in a sentence.

What planning actually looks like

Picture the other version.

You hear from your tax planner in the spring, not to file but to project. Here’s where your income is trending. Here’s what we should adjust before year-end. Here’s the lever worth pulling while the window’s still open.

You talk again mid-year. Again in the fall. By the time the return is due, there’s nothing to brace for, because you spent the whole year shaping the number instead of waiting to find out what it became.

That’s not a fantasy. It’s just a different relationship—one built to look ahead instead of catching up.

And the calendar is already moving. The first estimated payment for 2026 is behind us. The next one is due June 15. A planner is thinking about that right now and every strategy you should be using. A preparer isn’t. That was never the job.

So the only question that matters is which one you actually hired.

The 7 questions to ask your CPA

This is the part that decides whether next April feels different.

You don't have to guess which kind of CPA you have. You can just ask, and you'll know fast. Schedule a short call, twenty minutes is plenty, and put these seven questions in front of your CPA, or any CPA you're considering:

1. How many of your clients earn in my income range?

2. Do you do year-round planning, or mainly annual prep?

3. What’s your experience with strategies like the QBI deduction, backdoor Roth conversions, or RSU timing?

4. How do you stay current on tax law changes?

5. Do you coordinate with my financial advisor and attorney?

6. What’s our communication cadence outside of tax season?

7. Can you connect me with a client in a situation like mine?

The pattern is easy to hear once you know it.

A preparer gives vague, defensive answers and leans on credentials.

A planner does the opposite. Specific answers, real examples, easy talk of working alongside the rest of your team.

You’ll know within minutes which one you’re sitting across from.

One more thing, because it matters: a preparer isn’t the wrong answer for everyone.

If your situation is straightforward and you want a clean, accurate return, that relationship is a fine fit. The goal isn’t to fire anyone. It’s to know exactly what you’re paying for—so the gap between what you expect and what you get finally closes.

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That’s it.

My client walked out of that meeting clearer than when he walked in. Not because his old CPA was bad at the job, but because he finally understood which job he’d been paying for.

That’s the shift.

The frustration you felt this spring isn’t a sign you made a mistake. It’s information. It’s telling you the relationship you have and the one you assumed you had aren’t the same.

You can find out which is which in twenty minutes. And you can find out now, while the year is still open, instead of next April, when it’s already closed.

You can’t change the bill you just paid. But you can change the next one.

And it starts with a single conversation.

Thanks for reading. See you next week.

— Ryan

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways we can help you:

1. Join The Opulus Method Newsletter — Every Tuesday, I share strategies that help high-income millennials build wealth without sacrificing their life. Join 3,200+ readers.

2. Work With Us 1-on-1 — We’ll build your personalized strategy to cut your taxes, maximize your income, and grow your wealth month after month. You focus on living your life. We handle the financial strategy and execution.

Opulus, LLC (“Opulus”) is a registered investment advisor in Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any specific level of skill or training.

The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal, or accounting advice. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or investments, nor does it endorse any specific company, security, or investment strategy. Readers should not rely on this content as the sole basis for any investment or financial decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment strategies discussed will result in profits or avoid losses.

All information is provided “as-is” without any warranties, express or implied. Opulus does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Opinions expressed are those of the authors, Ryan Greiser and Francis Walsh, and are subject to change without notice.

Opulus is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages resulting from the use or reliance on this information. Use of the content is at your own risk. This content is not intended as an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal.