Oak Capital Private Wealth

08/31/2026

IT'S GAME WEEK!

Here are our staff predictions for the LSU Football game Saturday.

Post your prediction below.

08/31/2026

$8 billion.

That's the reported price tag on Shell Chemicals U.S. business, and one of the four sites in the deal is here in Louisiana.

Financial Times reports that ExxonMobil, LyondellBasell, Apollo Global Management, Inc., and the chemicals arm of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation have all put in non-binding offers.
Some bid on the whole business, some on pieces of it. The reported price is a steep discount to what Shell has invested in these facilities.

Things may change, or they may not. We don’t know.

It is a reason to know your numbers.

When a plant changes hands, the questions that come up are specific ones.

What happens to retiree medical, which often doesn't carry over the way people assume it will?

Does the 401(k) match survive the transition, and what does the new plan's lineup look like?

And if you're close to the door already, does separating before a close look different from separating after it?

Those answers are much easier to get when nobody is in a hurry.

We work with engineers, supervisors, and plant leaders whose retirement is tied to this industry.

If you're within five years of retiring and your site is on that list, now is the time to have your plan stress-tested. Not because a deal has happened, but because when one does, decisions get made on someone else's timeline.

Oil major Shell has drawn interest from potential bidders, including ExxonMobil and LyondellBasell, for its U.S. chemical assets that could fetch up to $8 billion, the Financial Times reported.

08/29/2026

A 63 year old plant worker looking to retire in 2 years told us - "I think we need about $8,000 a month when I retire."

Good! That's a real number, and we can build around it. But it's the easiest part of the conversation, and it's almost never the part that matters most.

Because a few meetings in, the other things start coming out.

There's a fishing trip he's been talking about with the same four guys for eleven years, and nobody's booked it.

There's a business he's had in his head since he was thirty-five. Nothing big. Something small, part-time - fixing lawnmowers and small engines.

There's a granddaughter who's nine now, and a quiet hope about being able to help when she's eighteen.

There's a friend going through a hard stretch, and the first time in a life of saving that helping wouldn't mean going without.

There's his church and the thought: I've always given time. Maybe now I can give more than that.

None of that showed up in the $8,000.

Those aren't extras we bolt on at the end. They change the plan. They change the order we do things in, which accounts we pull from, when.

A plan built on the monthly number alone is a plan built for someone who doesn't exist.

So yes, we'll run the numbers. That's the job.

But the better question, and the one that actually takes time to answer, is what kind of twenty or thirty years are we building this for?

Tell us that part. We will handle the math.

08/28/2026

One question we often get from Entergy and ExxonMobil employees is....

"Should I take advantage of NUA?"

The first question that needs to be answered is - what is this money actually supposed to do?

For one gentleman I met with recently, the honest answer was three things at once.

$10,000 a month of income, for life.
A camper and roughly $20K a year of travel while he's still healthy enough to enjoy it.
Gifts to his grandkids (7 of them!), given while he's around to watch them use it.

Those goals don't sit in separate boxes.

The travel spending front-loads his withdrawals in exactly the years an NUA distribution would spike his ordinary income.

The gifting raises questions about which account the money should come from.

And the concentration in employer stock is its own risk conversation, independent of the tax treatment.

Run those together and NUA either makes a lot of sense or almost none.

Same strategy. Same dollar amount. Different answer.

Most people find out which one they are the year after they've already decided. It's too late then.

08/27/2026

ExxonMobil retiree with $3.1M - "I've saved for 30 years... and now I'm honestly afraid to spend some of it. What if something happens?"

His fear was specific. He and his wife wanted to spend about $20,000 a year seeing Europe and the rest of the world while they still could. But he was terrified that if she ever needed long-term care (roughly $10,000 a month in today's dollars) those trips would be the reason the money wasn't there when she needed it most.

He was looking at his $3.1M as one big number. And when it's one big pot, every dollar you spend feels like it's coming straight out of her care.

So we ran the scenarios, and did something simple.

We gave the money a job.

We carved out a dedicated reserve for her care, about $700,000, enough to cover roughly five years at today's costs, invested to keep pace as those costs rise. Walled off. Not touched for anything else.

That left about $2.4M to actually live on.

And when we modeled $20,000 a year of travel against it even assuming a rough market in the first few years of retirement and the plan held into their 90s, with her care money never in play.

He and his wife will leave for Italy in the spring.

08/25/2026

If you are a Dow employee who has recently been impacted by the layoffs, you may be wondering:

“What do I do now?”

Losing your job and the security of a regular paycheck can bring fear, anxiety, and uncertainty.

It is understandable to feel like you need to act quickly. In most cases, you have more time than you think.

Before moving your 401(k), taking a withdrawal, changing investments, or making decisions about your severance, take time to understand your options.

Some decisions can be difficult or impossible to reverse.

If you need someone to talk through things with, please reach out.

We are happy to be a sounding board, at no charge and with no obligation.

You do not have to figure everything out today.

You do not have to navigate it alone.

08/21/2026

A client came to us frustrated.

He'd set his 401(k) deferral high all year specifically to max it out and came up thousands short last yr.

The culprit? One line buried in his plan document.

His plan (like a lot of them) defines "compensation" for 401(k) purposes to EXCLUDE bonuses. Also often excluded: stock options, performance awards, relocation, and other fringe benefits.

Here's why that matters:

You elect to defer a percentage of your PAY. But if your bonus isn't "pay" under the plan, nothing comes out of it and it doesn't count toward the IRS annual limit you were trying to hit.

Quick math: $150K salary + $50K bonus, deferring 12%.
You expect 12% of $200K = $24K.
You actually get 12% of $150K = $18K.
That's $6K of contribution room, gone plus you may leave employer match dollars on the table.

The fix is simple once you know the rule: base your deferral rate on eligible salary only, not total comp, and bump it if you're chasing the max.

Most people never read the compensation definition in their plan. It's exactly the kind of small print that quietly costs real money.

Check yours before year-end.

08/19/2026

Had a great few days in Greenwich, Connecticut for the NewEdge Advisors 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗹, where the conversation centered around one of my favorite topics: 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵.

I was fortunate to be invited to speak on a panel and share some of what we’ve learned while growing our practice.

One of the things I appreciate most about gatherings like this is the collaboration. Independence gives you the freedom to build the firm you want, but that doesn’t mean you have to build it alone.

Getting in a room with other independent advisors from across the NewEdge network, openly sharing what’s working, what isn’t, and how we can continue building better businesses for our clients is incredibly valuable.

Grateful to NewEdge for bringing everyone together, and thank you to Future Standard and Alliance Bernstein who helped make the event possible.

Always good to come home with a few new ideas and hopefully leave a few behind for someone else.

Clay

08/19/2026

What’s the goal for the money?

It’s a question we ask clients all the time.

Let’s say you have $500,000 sitting in cash outside of your retirement accounts.

Maybe you want $50,000 for emergencies and another $50,000 for a major purchase in the next two years. Keeping that $100,000 liquid may make perfect sense.

But what’s the goal for the other $400,000?

If there isn’t a specific short-term need for it, could some of that money be invested based on your goals, time horizon, and risk tolerance?

Sometimes people think of money as either cash they can access or retirement money that’s invested. But there’s a lot of room in between.

A taxable investment account can still provide access to your money while giving it the opportunity to grow over time.

So the questions become:

What’s the money for?
What does the next 2–3 years look like?
How much do you actually need in cash?

The goal isn’t to invest every available dollar.

It’s to make sure every dollar has a purpose.

08/18/2026

“Why hire a financial advisor when you can buy the S&P 500 for 0.03%?”

Fair question.

If an advisor’s only job were picking investments…..I’d agree.

But buying an investment is the easy part.

The harder questions are:

🌳 How much should actually be in the S&P 500?

🌳 What happens when it falls 30–40%? Will you stay invested?

🌳 When you retire, where should your income come from first?

🌳 How do taxes affect that decision?

🌳 When should you take Social Security? Pension or lump sum?

🌳 Should you make Roth conversions?

🌳 How much risk do you actually need to take?

🌳 If something happens to you, is your family financially prepared?

🌳 And how do all of these decisions work together?

Vanguard has studied this for years through its Adviser’s Alpha research.
Their research estimates that following certain wealth management best practices can add around 3% in net returns for some investors over time, not from consistently beating the market, but through things like behavioral coaching, proper asset allocation, rebalancing, tax efficient strategies, withdrawal planning and keeping costs low.

And Vanguard is certainly no opponent of low cost index investing!

We believe investment management matters. We spend a lot of time on it. But it’s one piece of the puzzle.

The real value of financial advice isn’t simply answering:

“What should I buy?”

It’s helping answer:

“Given everything going on in my financial life, what should I do next and why?”

The goal isn’t to make investing more complicated.

It’s to make your entire financial life LESS complicated.