THE FINANCIAL COMMUTE

About 40 percent of couples do not share the same vision for retirement. And 53 percent disagree on how much they actually need to have saved to get there. Those are not small gaps. They are the kind of gaps that surface at the worst possible moment, when one person is ready to stop working, and the other is not, or when the money runs out before the plan does. In this episode of Financial Commute...

Municipal bond yields are at their highest levels in 20 to 25 years, and the phrase “tax-free income” is getting a lot of attention from investors looking for safety and yield in a challenging rate environment. The case is easy to understand: if you live in California and own a California Muni bond, the interest you earn could be both federal and state tax-free. But before you move into Munis base...

Grocery bills are roughly 25 percent higher than they were a few years ago, and they are not coming back down. That is not a prediction. It is how inflation works. The spike you felt in 2022 and 2023 set a new floor. From here, prices continue rising, just hopefully more slowly. In this episode of Financial Commute, Chief Investment Officer Meghan Pinchuk and Wealth Advisor Chris Galeski answer th...

For most of the past four decades, buying real estate in California was as close to a guaranteed win as investing gets. Prices rose. Interest rates fell. Demographics supported demand. People refinanced, pulled cash out, bought more, and built substantial wealth. That environment no longer exists. In this episode of Financial Commute , CEO Jeff Sarti and Wealth Advisor Kevin Rex break down what dr...

Lifestyle creep is not a dramatic financial event. It is a food delivery subscription you barely use, a rent upgrade that felt reasonable at the time, a closet full of things you barely remember buying. It happens when income rises, and spending rises automatically to meet it, and sometimes exceed it, without anyone consciously choosing that outcome. In this episode of Financial Commute, Priscilla...

Seven years ago, roughly $7 trillion was invested in alternative assets globally. Today that number is $18 trillion. By 2030, Fidelity projects it will exceed $30 trillion. The average institutional investor already allocates 25 percent of their capital to alternatives. The average retail investor allocates about 5 percent. That gap is not an accident.  In this episode of Financial Commute, Chris...

Every election cycle, clients ask the same question: should I be doing something different with my portfolio right now? The short answer, according to the data, is probably not.  But the longer answer is more interesting. In this episode of Financial Commute, Chief Investment Officer Meghan Pinchuk and Chris Galeski walk through what historical market data actually shows about midterm election yea...

You saved into your 401 (k) for decades, reduced your taxes every year you could, and watched the balance grow. But the IRS doesn’t retire when you do.  Every dollar you pull from that account in retirement is ordinary income, and if it is your only account, you could end up in the same tax bracket you were in when you were working, or higher.  In this episode of Financial Commute, Wealth Advisors...

Stocks are at all-time highs. Consumer sentiment just hit its lowest point since the Vietnam War. AI is going to transform everything. AI is going to eliminate your job. Gold is the only safe asset. Sell your gold immediately. If any of this sounds familiar, you have been inside the noise. In this episode of Financial Commute, Chris Galeski sits down with CEO Jeff Sarti to walk through the twelfth...

On October 29th, we are hosting our fifth annual Investor Symposium, and this year’s theme is “Designed for Life.” It is a phrase that captures what financial planning is actually for: not hitting a number for its own sake, but using your resources to build the experiences, relationships, and life you want. In this episode, Chris and Beau (who will be returning as our MC!) highlight three sessions...

What if I lose my job? What if inflation stays high? What if I run out of money? What if I get a raise and do not know what to do with it? These are the questions people type into Google and AI tools at two in the morning, and they rarely get a straight answer.  In this episode of Financial Commute, Chris Galeski and Mike Rudow pull the most common financial what-if questions and work through each...

If you have ever felt embarrassed about how much you have saved, avoided opening a credit card statement, or justified a purchase to your financial advisor before they even asked, you have experienced money guilt or financial shame. Most people have. What most people do not know is that these two feelings are actually different, that one of them is more useful than the other, and that both of them...

Questioning whether you really need a financial advisor is fair, especially right now. Index funds are easy to access, fees are low, and the last decade has rewarded the people who simply bought the market and held on. So what does an advisor actually do that you cannot? Wealth Advisors Beau Wirick and Eric Selter have both heard this question for years, and in this episode of Financial Commute, t...

U.S. stocks were down almost 5% in the first quarter. Then up 15% in the second. On paper, the first half of 2026 looks fine. But underneath those numbers, there is a concentration in semiconductor stocks that just had their best quarter in history, an AI spending wave that is running well ahead of the revenue it is producing, margin borrowing at all-time highs, and a consumer savings rate approac...

It is a simple question. And for most investors holding concentrated stock positions, the honest answer is no. On this week's Financial Commute, Chris Galeski and Chief Investment Officer Meghan Pinchuk walk through why the answer is almost always taxes, why letting the tax decision drive the investment decision is a risk in itself, and what the after-tax value of a highly appreciated positio...

Most of the conversations clients have had about long-term care insurance are based on products that no longer exist. On this week's Financial Commute, Chris Galeski sits down with Russell Boring, Founder of Elevated Strategies Insurance Services, to walk through what has actually changed. The carriers that mispriced their policies are mostly gone. What replaced them are hybrid and annuity-ba...

Everyone has been waiting for rates to come down. It has not happened. And on this week's Financial Commute, Chris Galeski and Chief Investment Officer Meghan Pinchuk explain why the Fed's new chair is holding firm, what energy prices and the war in Iran have to do with your portfolio, and why the national debt makes this moment more complicated than the headlines suggest. They also get...

If you have been watching housing prices and wondering whether the new executive order restricting institutional investors is the fix everyone is hoping for, you are not alone. The frustration is real, and the concern for affordability is legitimate.  In this episode of Financial Commute, Chris Galeski sits down with Mikey Taylor, Mayor of Thousand Oaks and CEO of Commune Capital, to examine what...

Most people come to a wealth manager for one reason: their finances. But what if focusing exclusively on financial wealth is actually making it harder to achieve? Nurturing the various types of wealth (social, physical, mental, time, and financial) is the central idea behind Sahil Bloom's book, The 5 Types of Wealth.     In this episode, host Chris Galeski sits down with Wealth Advisor Bruce...

SpaceX is going public and everyone is talking about it. Neighbors, friends, group chats... the excitement is real. But most of the conversation is missing the most important question: what are you actually paying for?  In this episode of Financial Commute , host Chris Galeski sits down with CEO and Partner Jeff Sarti to break down the SpaceX IPO from a valuation standpoint. Recorded on June 8th,...

Most clients trust their wealth manager to make sound investment decisions on their behalf. Far fewer ever get to see exactly how those decisions are made. This episode is for the ones who want to know.  In this special edition of Financial Commute , Executive Vice President Eric Selter sits down with Chief Investment Officer Meghan Pinchuk to pull back the curtain on Morton Wealth's full inv...

It's one of the most common questions people type into Google once they hit 50: should I be taking less investment risk? It feels like a reasonable question. But according to Chief Investment Officer Meghan Pinchuk, it may be the wrong one entirely.  In this episode of Financial Commute , Meghan and host Chris Galeski unpack what drives the right level of investment risk at any age, from long...

For most of your working life, the financial question is straightforward: earn more, save more, invest wisely. Then retirement arrives, and the question flips entirely. How do you turn decades of saving into a reliable paycheck that lasts as long as you do? In this episode of Financial Commute, Morton Wealth advisors Chris Galeski and Mike sit down to tackle the retirement income questions clients...

Most business owners spend years, sometimes decades, building something remarkable. But when it comes time to exit, the majority aren't prepared for what happens next. According to research from the Exit Planning Institute, 75% of business owners regret selling their business within the first year.  In this episode of Financial Commute , Wealth Advisor Joe Seetoo sits down with host Chris to...