Why?
• Big raises → Your plan wins
• Costs stay low → You gain margin
• Don’t live to 100 → More wealth left behind

Planning conservatively gives you options, not constraints

→ Control over taxable income
→ Adaptability to future tax policy changes
→ Strategic retirement withdrawal planning
→ Estate and legacy planning

The more tax buckets you fill up

The more levers you can pull later

• Trigger additional tax
• Lower investment returns
• Limit tax-advantaged savings
• Impact Social Security benefits
• Push you into a higher tax bracket

Every part of your financial plan is interconnected

Even a small change can have ripple effects

Small changes → Big impact

Poor temperament can quietly erode performance by:

ⅰ.) Sitting in cash, waiting for “the right time”

ⅱ.) Panic selling on short term noise

ⅲ.) Trading frequently on speculation

Discipline really can make all the difference.

There is nothing wrong with just swimming per se

But families deserve to maximize their financial opportunities and swim competitively

Sometimes, that demands the help of an outside expert

We all get one chance at this life thing

Why not maximize it

Meaning they want to:
→ Have great income while lowering lifetime tax paid
→ Maximize every benefit their employer offers
→ Assign every dollar to your specific objectives
→ Identify risks that could derail future plans and proactively protect against them

to name a few items of priority

~ To use an analogy ~

Families may have the things written above

They are “swimming”

They won’t drown and can get far with their current course of action

However, they find experts in their situation because they want to “swim competitively”

So, if you can hold firm in your belief that:

1.) Technology and products will continue to improve rapidly

2.) Companies are a direct incentive to stay in business and provide value for shareholders

Then it is reasonable to have angst in the short term and have optimism when you zoom out a bit

Public companies are driven to succeed – short term to hit targets, long term to survive and grow

Leadership is incentivized to focus on quarterly results

But a business itself must keep delivering value to stay in the game

All of this means that companies will do everything in their power to be successful

When you invest in the S&P 500 for example, you are literally investing in the largest U.S.-based companies in the world

Why is this important?

Public traded companies have a large motive for being profitable:

→ Employees get paid
→ Product/service makes money
→ Shareholders are happy
→ Positive economic outlook

A substantial portion of their annual compensation is tied to performance and stock-related performance and incentives

These incentives are usually things like:

→ Stock price goals
→ Quarterly revenue goals
→ Revenue generated from sales

2.) Profit Incentives

Companies will continue to focus on profit for shareholders

Even if you are of the opinion that “CEOs of fortune 500 companies are corrupt and evil”

One thing is still true

Examples of this include:

Think about the phone in your pocket

It literally has more computing power than any platform anywhere would have 20 years ago

Companies will continue to iterate and improve their products and technologies

If you can believe this, you should have long term optimism

Why is this important?

→ Technology will continue to improve
→ Innovation leads to new products and economic growth

Now while the pace is slowing as we literally hit physical limits, innovation continues

Even as this law slows, companies will continue to find new ways to drive performance, efficiency and profits

Innovation does not stop, it simply evolves

That is what you are betting on long term

1.) Moore’s law – The number of transistors on a microchip doubles approximately every two years

Okay Daniel, what does that mean?

For consumers, this has meant better tech at lower prices (iPhones, laptops, etc)