Long Story Short

Episode 54 covers three planning and investing topics. Andy opens with a client scenario involving a 401k loaded with highly appreciated company stock, which leads Adam into a deep walkthrough of net unrealized appreciation (NUA), a niche but potentially powerful tax strategy for people leaving a company with significant employer stock in their plan. From there, a listener question about the kiddi...

Adam and Andy are back together this week after last episode's guest interview, and they cover a lot of ground. The conversation starts with a Barron's article featuring Adam's take on a trend he's seeing more often. Clients are showing up to planning meetings having already run their own numbers through AI. Adam explains why he sees it as an opening for better conversations, and w...

Estate planning is one of those topics most people know they should address but keep putting off. In this episode, Adam sits down with Trent Linville, founder and lead attorney at Linville Estate Law in Franklin, Tennessee, to clear up the confusion and lay out exactly what every family needs to have in place. Trent's path to estate law started with a personal experience that most people can r...

The SpaceX IPO landed more or less exactly where history would predict. Adam and Andy open with a quick look at the initial pop, why it's par for the course, and what the oversubscription might mean for the Anthropic and OpenAI filings still on the horizon. From there, the episode shifts to a conversation centered on Adam's latest Nashville Business Journal article on retirement readiness....

To mark episode 50, Andy recaps a recent lunch with Professor Jeremy Siegel, the Wharton finance professor and author of Stocks for the Long Run , and walks Adam through the highlights live on air. Siegel's argument that Meta now qualifies as a classic value stock opened the conversation. The metaverse write-off left the market skeptical of Meta's big spending calls, and heavy AI capital e...

The headlines around SpaceX's IPO filing are hard to ignore. Andy and Adam open this episode’s discussion with a look at surprisingly consistent data showing that every one of the ten largest IPOs in U.S. history posted a negative return in its first year, with an average decline of around 27%. That track record raises some questions about the timing of buying into that much hype at that valua...

Andy is recording from a hotel room in Seattle, attending the Basis Northwest Conference, a two-day deep dive into esoteric tax strategies run by Brent Sullivan of Tax Alpha Insider. The episode opens with a walkthrough of what tax-centric wealth management looks like in practice, including asset location, direct indexing, tax-loss harvesting, and the 351 ETF conversion on the investment side, and...

Despite months of pessimistic headlines, a thread from Ryan Detrick at the Carson Group shows American consumers in solid shape. Credit card delinquencies are back to pre-COVID levels, foreclosures and bankruptcies are flat, and home equity has climbed alongside equity markets. Andy adds the Costco recession indicator to the mix, which flags a shift from steaks to canned tuna as a warning sign. Ad...

Adam opens with a pop quiz on how many trillion-dollar market cap companies exist in the US right now. The answer is ten, led by NVIDIA at $4.8 trillion.  He traces prior melt-up periods from the Roaring Twenties through the Nifty Fifty, the Japanese market in the '80s, and the Nasdaq bubble of the '90s to put the Nasdaq 100's 643% climb over the past decade in context. Andy adds the l...

Health insurance has long been treated as non-negotiable, but Adam and Andy are getting more questions than ever from clients wondering whether it's worth the cost. A Bloomberg article on healthy workers dropping employer coverage to save over $1,000 a month captured something they've both been noticing in client conversations for years, and the two walk through why opting out, whether thr...

A Goldman Sachs research report from October 2025 found that 40% of households earning over $500,000 a year report living paycheck to paycheck. Adam and Andy dig into that number, what it tells us about how people relate to money as their income climbs, and why the gap between being rich and being wealthy matters more than most people realize. The conversation moves into earnings season, where 139...

Adam recently earned his CEPA designation through the Exit Planning Institute, and this episode starts with what that means in practice. Selling a business is not a single event. It is a planning process that most owners start far too late. Adam covers the three areas that trip people up most often and why getting a financial advisor involved well before the transaction is more important than most...

Recorded the day before Tax Day from Burney's new Nashville office, this episode starts with a habit most people skip once they hit submit on their taxes. Most people never go back and actually read the return, and Adam explains why a few minutes with those pages can be very useful. He walks through what to look for on the first two pages of a Form 1040, why understanding your marginal bracket...

Should you open a 529 before your child is born? A Wall Street Journal piece about a retirement researcher who won't fund 529s for his own kids got Adam and Andy talking about a debate that comes up often with clients. Two brothers, similar incomes, completely opposite approaches. They walk through the real trade-offs and why the most important question has nothing to do with which account you...

Spring break had Andy thinking about something that comes up often with clients who have accumulated wealth: the value of spending on experiences over things. Adam connects this to a broader shift toward the experience and convenience economies, and Andy shares a personal story about his grandmother sponsoring family trips that still shape how he thinks about money and memory. That leads into a pr...

The bond market is bigger than the stock market at $130 trillion globally, and a lot of investors treat it like a fortune teller. Adam and Andy dig into what bond market moves actually signal, why rising yields don't always mean bad news, and how the recent spike tied to oil prices fits into the bigger picture. Adam walks through a surprisingly consistent story in US tax history. Despite top m...

The average IRS tax refund is up 10.6% this year, and Adam explains why: the new tax bill reduced liability, but withholding tables on paychecks never got updated, so millions of people over-withheld through the back half of 2025. A good surprise this year, but a reason to revisit your withholding now. Adam and Andy open with listener feedback on fraud and financial conversations with adult childr...

Oil jumped above $100 a barrel after last week's Iran episode podcast aired. Markets stayed choppy through the back half of the week, and Adam and Andy open episode 37 by following up with data that might surprise you. When oil prices are rising, average annual S&P 500 returns have historically been higher than when oil prices are falling. Then Andy pulls back the curtain on how Burney act...

Markets opened down Sunday night after the US launched a full-scale military operation in Iran. By Monday afternoon, all major indexes were in the green. Since that initial reaction, the market has moved down for the week. Adam and Andy dig into what history actually shows about how markets respond to geopolitical events and why the phones have been quiet. Then they answer two listener questions....

The US men's hockey team won gold for the first time in 40 years. Private credit is making headlines as the next 2008 crisis. And the Rule of 55 might help early retirees access their 401(k)s penalty-free. Adam and Andy start with the miracle on ice moment, then get into the private credit panic sweeping financial media. Blue Owl's pricing shock revealed a 16% discount between stated value...

A viral essay claimed AI is taking over knowledge jobs right now, not in the future. Elon Musk said retirement planning is irrelevant for anyone retiring 10+ years from now. And Trump accounts launched with a free $1,000 for qualified children. Adam and Andy break down the AI panic sweeping through feeds this week, starting with Matt Shumer's " Something Big is Happening " essay that...

Markets hit all-time highs while major stocks crashed. Bitcoin dropped nearly 50%. And clients are asking a big question: where should I actually withdraw money from in retirement? Adam and Andy break down the bizarre market rotation where the S&P 500 sits less than 1% from all-time highs while Netflix, Coinbase, and Adobe are down 40-60%. They explain why this is healthy, whether the shift fr...

What happens when someone who actually worked at the Fed joins the podcast? We brought in Hannah Sheldon, our firm’s newest research analyst and former Fed policy analyst, to break down Kevin Warsh's nomination as the next Fed chair. Hannah explains what Warsh's inflation hawk history means for interest rates, why shrinking the Fed's balance sheet could shake things up, and how his vie...

Social Security going broke? AI stocks too hot to handle? Wondering when you should stop chasing growth and start protecting what you've built? Adam and Andy discuss three questions they're hearing frequently from clients right now. First, they break down what "going broke" actually means for Social Security (it's not as dire as the headlines make it sound). Then they throw c...

The quarterly webinar live Q&A session covered the topics clients care about most right now. Adam and Andy spent 30 minutes answering questions on international investing, market volatility, tariffs, Bitcoin, gold, and what to expect in 2026. International stocks dominated the questions. Clients wanted to know how Burney accesses these markets (through funds with on-the-ground analysts), wheth...