The Fiscal Physical Retirement Podcast

Investment properties can be great or terrible depending on the deal, and the tax picture is one of the most misunderstood parts. In this episode, Ryan explains which expenses are deductible, why depreciation is not free money, and how taking depreciation deductions today reduces your cost basis and increases the taxable gain when you eventually sell. Ryan and Aaron also clear up a common misconce...

A single major healthcare event can blow up a retirement plan that took decades to build, and health insurance is what stands between a six-figure medical bill and your financial goals. In this episode, Ryan frames health insurance not as a healthcare topic but as a retirement risk management tool, using his own emergency room experience as a concrete example. Ryan explains that lifetime healthcar...

Property and casualty insurance covers the two assets most people own: their car and their home. In this episode, Ryan explains what auto and home insurance actually cover, why auto insurance is required by most states while home insurance is typically required by your lender, and what happens to a financial plan when someone is seriously underinsured after a major loss. Aaron shares a real story...

Active investing means a portfolio manager is making deliberate buy, hold, and sell decisions on your behalf. Passive investing means buying a collection of securities and holding them with little human intervention. In this episode, Ryan explains how these two approaches differ, why active management carries additional costs that must be overcome to deliver better returns, and how most ETFs are p...

Modern portfolio theory, developed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Harry Markowitz, shows that combining the right assets can lower overall portfolio risk below the risk of any single investment on its own. In this episode, Ryan explains the counterintuitive math behind this: a six-risk asset and an eight-risk asset, when properly diversified, can produce a portfolio with only four units of total...

Social Security is funded by two sources, the current workforce and the OASI trust fund, and understanding that structure makes the headlines about it running out much easier to evaluate. In this episode, Ryan explains how the system actually works, why he believes it is unlikely to hit zero, and why planning for a modest reduction in scheduled benefits down the road is a reasonable assumption. Ry...

Knowing how much money you need to retire starts with a five-step process, and in this episode Ryan walks through each step clearly. The framework covers defining your retirement goals, estimating what that lifestyle will cost, using the 4 percent rule to size your nest egg, building a withdrawal strategy, and reviewing the plan every year. Ryan uses a simple example throughout, showing how $100,0...

About 79 percent of people who try a traditional budget end up failing, and Ryan argues that is because restriction budgeting works like a crash diet: it relies on willpower instead of changing your system. In this episode, Ryan introduces an alternative called pay yourself first, where you automate savings at the top of the month and spend what remains without guilt. Ryan and Aaron walk through w...

This episode is a repurposed guest interview from the Outliers Edge Podcast, where host Niyama Xiong interviews Ryan about his background and how he built Alchemy Wealth Management. Ryan shares his path from mechanical engineering, including work on a commercial solar thermal power plant, to earning an MBA and eventually leaving a career at Edward Jones to start his own firm. Ryan also talks throu...

If you have multiple debts and extra money each month, the snowball and avalanche methods are the two most proven strategies for paying them down faster. In this episode, Ryan explains exactly how each one works: snowball targets the smallest balance first for psychological momentum, while avalanche targets the highest interest rate first to minimize total interest paid. Ryan and Aaron walk throug...

Five books stand out from the noise in personal finance, and in this episode Ryan ranks them from five to one and unpacks the core lesson each one delivers. The list includes The Total Money Makeover, Rich Dad Poor Dad, The Millionaire Next Door, The Psychology of Money, and Die With Zero. Ryan shares which book is unmatched for getting out of debt, which one changed how he thinks about primary re...

The behavior gap is the difference between the smart financial decision and the one you actually make, and it quietly erodes long-term investment returns for most people. In this episode, Ryan explains the concept as defined by Carl Richards and shows how emotional reactions to market drops, like selling at the bottom, create a gap between what the market returned and what the investor actually ke...

Supply and demand is the fundamental force behind almost every price you see, from airline tickets to prescription drugs, and understanding it makes a lot of financial headlines easier to read. In this episode, Ryan explains how the supply and demand curves work, where they meet to set an equilibrium price, and what happens when either side shifts. Ryan uses rubber ducks, airline tickets, and drug...

An annuity is an insurance product that turns a lump sum into a guaranteed lifetime income stream, essentially a personal pension you create yourself. In this episode, Ryan explains how annuities work, why they protect against outliving your money, and the counterintuitive way they are the opposite of life insurance. Ryan also covers the real drawbacks: high and sometimes hidden fees, complexity,...

Your credit score is a number between 300 and 850 that tells lenders how likely you are to pay your debts, and FICO is the most widely used scoring model. In this episode, Ryan explains the five factors behind every FICO score, including payment history, amounts owed, and length of credit history, which together make up about 80 percent of your total score. Ryan and Aaron walk through what each fa...

Life insurance protects your family if you die before you planned to, and sizing a policy starts with knowing exactly what you are insuring. In this episode, Ryan breaks down the two main types, term and permanent, using a rent-versus-own analogy, and explains how income replacement and mortgage coverage are the most common reasons people buy a policy. Ryan and Aaron also tackle one of the most co...

A trust is a legal entity, separate from you, that can own assets and distribute them according to rules you set. In this episode, Ryan focuses on the most common type in retirement planning: the revocable living trust. He explains how it works, why you keep full control of the assets while you are alive, and what revocable means in practice. The most important detail Ryan covers is funding the tr...

A will is the legal document that specifies how you want your assets distributed after you die. Probate is the court process that actually carries out that distribution. In this episode, Ryan explains both, walks through Nevada's default intestate succession order (spouse first, then children, then parents, then siblings), and explains why most people find that default plan reasonable enough....

Long-term care refers to the services you may need if you can no longer perform basic daily activities like bathing, dressing, or moving around your home. In this episode, Ryan explains what activities of daily living are and why around 70% of people will need some form of long-term care in retirement, often triggered by a fall, a diagnosis, or a rapid health decline that arrives with little warni...

Paying off your mortgage early is one of the most common financial questions, and the answer depends on which problem you are actually trying to solve. In this episode, Ryan uses a $100,000 mortgage at 3% as a case study to compare two paths: paying it off for a guaranteed 3% return versus investing that same money with an expected 7% return. On paper, the math usually favors investing. But Ryan i...

Tax gains harvesting is intentionally realizing investment gains in a year when your tax rate is low, even zero. In this episode, Ryan explains who this applies to: couples below a certain taxable-income threshold can pay 0% on long-term capital gains. Selling appreciated positions now at 0% avoids paying 15% or more on those same gains in a higher-income future year. Ryan frames this as the less-...

Tax loss harvesting is a strategy where you sell investments that have dropped in value to offset gains you realized elsewhere in your taxable portfolio. In this episode, Ryan walks through the mechanics: a $50 loss on one stock can cancel a $50 gain on another, bringing your net taxable gain to zero. He also covers the extra perk of using up to $3,000 in net losses to offset ordinary income each...

An inverted yield curve happens when short-term interest rates are higher than long-term rates, and it gets a lot of attention on financial news as a potential warning sign for the economy. In this episode, Ryan explains what inversion actually means, defines a recession as two consecutive quarters of declining GDP, and puts the frequency in context: the US has experienced 12 recessions since Worl...

A yield curve is a graph that shows the interest rates of bonds with equal credit quality plotted against their maturity dates. In this episode, Ryan explains what the chart actually tells you: a normal yield curve slopes upward, meaning longer-term bonds pay more than short-term ones. A flat curve means there is little difference across maturities, and an inverted curve means short-term rates are...

The 4% rule has its origin in research by financial advisor Bill Bengen, who studied 50 years of market data and concluded that a retiree could withdraw 4% of their portfolio annually without running out of money over a 33-year window. In this episode, Ryan explains that history, but pushes back on using it as a live distribution strategy since it does not account for your actual tax situation, sp...