Twin Cities Wealth Minute

Imagine someone offered you two choices. Option A: A large lump sum, or Option B: Monthly payments for the rest of your life. Which would you choose? And why?

For many people with workplace benefits, this time of year means open enrollment. An email arrives. A portal opens. And most people spend a few minutes clicking through, keeping last year's choices without even a second look.

You ask yourself if you can retire. But what number are you using to determine the answer? Most people concentrate on their account balance, but it simly can't tell you, by itself, whether you're ready to retire or not.

Turning 65 doesn't make the money in your HSA disappear. However, the rules do change.

Here's a tax question that trips up a lot of people. Suppose you earn enough additional income to move into a higher tax bracket. Does that higher rate suddenly apply to all of your income?

Here's a question that sounds ridiculously easy: Would you prefer an investment portfolio that can earn 8% or 6%?

If you ask someone how they're doing financially, many people mentally reach for a single number. Net worth. Everything they own, minus everything they owe. It's a natural instinct, and it's not a useless number. But it's also not the number that tells you whether you're actually ready to retire.

Second marriages can bring a lot of logistical planning to the surface.  They can also bring a complication that catches many families by surprise.

If you own a business that’s been your livelihood for years, selling it is a strange kind of milestone. One day, your net worth is tied up in something you built and understand intimately.  The next, it's a number in a bank account, liquid but suddenly unfamiliar.

 "I already work with a CPA. Do I really need a financial planner too?" Now that’s a fair question, and one I hear often. The honest answer is that the two roles usually do different jobs, even though they overlap.

There's something almost suspiciously calm about using a GPS.

Retirement has a funny way of changing how you experience money. Not necessarily because you're spending more. But because the spending feels different.

It's easy to think of a retirement account as one big pile of money. But in reality, different dollars often have different jobs.

At first, it sounds like a terrible idea. Someone voluntarily pays taxes... when they could have delayed them. Why would anyone do that?

There's a particular kind of garage that tells a whole story. A half-built shelf in the corner. Paint cans from a room that was going to get "freshened up." That box of parts from an unfinished project that you were absolutely going to finish at some point. And of course, the tools.

There's a line item that appears in almost no retirement plan: family. Not the family you're building a legacy for. The family that needs something now. If you're the financially stable one in your family - and you've worked hard to get there - there's a good chance you already know what this feels like...

There's a pattern I see regularly in people who are close to retirement. Everything's all set on paper. Their plans are in order.  Yet when it finally comes time to pull the trigger and actually retire, something holds them back.

There's a question that surprisingly few people ask before working with a financial advisor. How do you get paid? It sounds simple, but the answer is more layered than most people expect - and it matters more than you might think!

I've spent a long time as a Financial Planner. And every so often, I find myself thinking about what I'd go back and say - not to clients, but to my younger self, just starting to think seriously about retirement. It wouldn't be about picking the right investments. That gets too much attention relative to how much it actually matters. Here's what it would actually be...

It's easy to think about financial risk in terms of market losses or bad investments. But there's another kind of cost that's harder to measure and easier to overlook.

When you're working, financial goals can be pretty simple. And then retirement arrives - and suddenly the entire objective reverses.

People come to me with financial questions every day. But the question they ask out loud is rarely the question they're actually asking...

There's a retirement-focused account that offers a tax deduction when you contribute, tax-free growth while the money stays invested, and tax-free withdrawals when you spend it on what it's designed for...

Picture two people.  Same account balance.  Same age.  Same general idea of what "retirement" looks like. Completely different retirement outcomes. It happens more often than you'd think - and it's one of the reasons I'm cautious about financial rules of thumb.

No financial decision exists on its own. Each one has a ripple effect. An adjustment meant to reduce risk can also reduce opportunity. A move designed to simplify things can shift where complexity shows up later. A choice that creates more certainty now can limit flexibility down the line.