Phillip Smith, TPCP CRPC AIF

07/17/2026

I will be mowing the lawn this weekend. Not because it's exciting (though it can be cathartic). And, also, not because I have extra time. I'll do it because it needs it, and because letting it go another week will make it worse.

That's maintenance. It's not glamorous, or the kind of thing you post about (or feel particularly proud of) when it's done. You just do it, because the alternative is a problem that will compound. And, for me, this is stewardship, walking out faith, and taking care of finances all rolled into one easy-to-associate-with analogy. Unless you don't have a yard, then this probably doesn't hit the same for you.

I think about that discipline - doing the things that need to be done - a lot. It's in my work, and in my own life.

The things that go unmaintained don't stay the same.

They drift. And if we're talking about the yard, weeds grow and fill in, bugs and pests have more places to nest, the dog's 'bombs' are harder to see...

And likewise, a financial plan that made sense three years ago may no longer represent where you are today. A relationship you stopped investing time in doesn't just pause, it also changes. Your body, when not attended to, finds its own direction (usually, 'outward').

Maintenance is the least celebrated form of discipline: nothing dramatic happens when you do it right. No big reveal, no transformation story, just a lawn that looks like a lawn, a plan that still fits your life, a version of yourself that you didn't allow to become someone you didn't intend to be.

The hard part isn't the big decisions. Most of the time it's just showing up on a Saturday with the mower because it needs it and you said you would.

07/17/2026

Twenty conversations, one pattern. The retirees who felt most at ease in retirement weren't always the wealthiest. They were the ones who'd thought through a handful of specific things ahead of time. Here's what came up again and again.

After years of conversations with retirees, the same handful of themes keep surfacing. Here's what they wish they'd understood before retiring, and what you can do do differently now.

07/16/2026

Summer can make nearly everything feel less urgent.

Everything is heating up, but the tempo of the calendar slows down. The kids are home (IYKYK). Trips are planned, trips are completed (maybe they're interrupted), there are weekends to fill, and a general sense that the hard stuff can wait...maybe until fall, when life gets serious again.

But (and it's a big one), death doesn't check the summer calendar. Neither does the IRS.

Estate planning is one of those things people intend to get to. It's right there on the list of "yes, that is an important thing to get done." And it sits on the list, right below staining the fence (mine turned out great, btw). And, every summer, it gets bumped because summer is for living, not for thinking about the end.

I totally get it, I'm not immune to it, either.

Here's what I see in my daily work: families who have the hardest time are often the ones who just never got around to the process. No will, maybe no beneficiary designations updated after the divorce. No one knowing where the accounts actually are. Good intentions that ran out of time.

Summer is actually one of the better times to handle this, because things ARE a little slower. You might have family around, so you're already thinking about what matters.

Death and don't take a summer vacation. But you still can, once this is handled. "Treat yo' self."

AFTER you put in the work.

07/16/2026

Something's wrong with my serrano peppers. I bought them and planted them in May, and 2 months later, nothing. But there was SUPPOSED to be something by now...

Not the same analogy, but it did get me thinking:

nobody plants a garden in June and expects a harvest by July.

But that is, essentially, what a lot of people hope for with their accounts. They want the tax-free income in retirement without making any moves while there's still time to actually grow something.

A Roth account is a simple concept with a long runway. You pay on the money going in, and then it grows without the IRS touching it again* (assuming your distributions are qualified).

No taxes on the gains.
No taxes when you pull it out in retirement.

For a lot of people in their 50s and early 60s, that's an extraordinarily valuable thing to have, especially when tax rates in the future are anyone's guess.

Is there a catch? Yes. The catch is that it works better the earlier you plant it. A Roth conversion done at 60 has years to grow before you need it. The same move done at, say, 67, might be a less elegant situation (thinking Social Security or a PERS pension might already be generating income here.)

The people I see use this strategy well aren't doing anything complicated. They're just doing it earlier than feels necessary, in the years when their income is (hopefully) lower and the tax hit is (hopefully) smaller, well in advance of that time when required minimum distributions start forcing their hand.

Sunshine and Roth conversions have something in common: both are easier to appreciate while they're still available!

07/04/2026

250 years ago, 56 men signed a document with no guarantee it would work.

It was a bet on an idea that people could govern themselves and that liberty was worth defending.

I signed up for the Marine Corps at 16, in the delayed entry program. I had no real idea what I was committing to. You don't at that age. I just wanted to be part of something. I was sold on three things: challenge, experience, discipline. I wanted all of those. Understanding comes later, if it ever comes at all.

Faith wasn't something I brought with me into the . It's something that eventually grew in me, slowly, years after I'd already signed the paperwork, worn the uniform, made some serious life mistakes.

The flag isn't a symbol to me. It's more like a memory of standing in formation with people who meant it, long before I understood what "meaning it" actually required.

That's what 250 years represents to me. Not just an anniversary, but two and a half centuries of people choosing to show up for an idea - an IDEA - before they fully understood what 'showing up' would cost them.

This weekend, beyond the fireworks and the cookouts, I hope we all sit with that for one brief moment. The number is the story: 250 years of people deciding, often well after the fact, that it was worth it.

Happy 250th, America. And one more thing - the Marine Corps already had its 250th last year!

Somebody had to clear the path.

Semper Fi.

07/02/2026

Open up any industry publication right now and the message is the same:

Grow.
Scale.
Get bigger.
Get more efficient.
Get bought - or go buy someone else.

The mega RIAs are consolidating at a record pace, private equity is writing the checks, and the playbook everyone's handed is some version of bigger is better, bigger is safer, bigger is more valuable.

I'm not arguing growth is bad. I suppose I'm reflecting on what gets sacrificed on the way to more.

The deal data on these mergers tells an honest story if you read past the press release. A lot of these combinations run into real friction once the ink dries, different systems that don't talk to each other, different cultures that don't blend, and the kind of brand confusion that makes clients wonder who they're actually working with now.

Here's what I keep coming back to: the relationship between me and a client is built slowly, through specific knowledge of their specific circumstances. That doesn't get more efficient by adding scale. It gets diluted.

So, when I see firms touting how fast they're growing, my first question isn't how. I find myself wondering what they had to give up in the process (there's always some form of a tradeoff), and whether their existing clients notice.

There's a place for scale, absolutely. I just don't think it's automatically the smarter bet that it's being sold as. But, then again, I'm often wrong. 🙃

07/02/2026

Most people don't skip estate planning because they don't care. They skip it because of 5 sneaky myths. Here's why "I'll get to it later" and "I don't have enough to bother" don't hold up, plus what to actually do instead.

06/29/2026

If the only time you talk taxes is in April, you're not planning. You're reporting.

By the time your CPA has your documents, the year is over. They're now serving as an actuarial historian. Every decision that could have actually helped your tax bill - distributions, Roth conversions, the timing of a sale, charitable giving, and more - already happened. There's nothing left to plan. There's only explanation.

Tax planning and tax prep get treated like the same thing, but they're not. Prep looks backward once a year. Planning looks forward, all year. For multiple years. Prep tells you if you were over or under. Planning gives you perspective and control over your tax future.

I think maybe the difference is missed because, year to year, it's not really seen. But if you pick your head up and look forward, and make a practice of trying to see the horizon (and beyond), the difference is there, and it's visible.

People who check in on their tax picture a few times a year, not just at filing season, tend to make smaller, smarter moves instead of one big reactive one under deadline pressure.

If you've never thought about taxes outside of April, it's okay. It may mean nobody ever showed you there was another way to do this. There is, and it starts well before the new year ends, not after.

06/26/2026

We had just trekked from Kailua Beach back to our car when my wife got the call. Talk about a whiplash snap back from vacation mode to reality.

A family medical emergency, the kind that doesn't wait for a convenient time. We booked a redeye home that night.

The rest of the planned vacation time wasn't rest. It was unpacking suitcases, watching our kids, running the house, and giving my wife the space to be where she needed to be.

I share this not for sympathy, but because it reframed something for me. We talk about vacations like they're guaranteed rest. We joke, "well, with kids, it's not really rest, is it?" Time off on the calendar, a reset before coming back to work. Space to clear some headspace. Sometimes that's true, but then again life doesn't care about your itinerary.

What I was reminded, in real time, is how fast priorities shift. One phone call, and everything I thought the next five days would look like vanished. What mattered was immediately, completely clear. There was no ranking exercise. No thought of "yeah, but do we need to leave NOW..." Reflecting on it, I am actually surprised at how little concern I had for the abandoned vacation. It feels a little unlike me.

It's certainly not a bad thing to be reminded of (or to gain awareness of). When the moment happens, do you turn inward or outward? Are you worried about your disruption, or are you more concerned with what's happening to those around you? What turns out to matter most when life applies pressure?

Most of the time we don't really get tested. We get to plan, prepare, build in a relative calm. But every so often, life hands you...well, reality, and you find out what you actually believe.

We're grateful to be on the other side of the hardest part. And I'm back at work this week with an even clearer sense of what is most important: family and faith.

I think that's what those moments actually do. They don't hand you new priorities, or place you in the midst of deciding what's more important. They just, I don't know, wipe the haze off the lens you've been looking through the whole time, and for a few seconds, everything is exactly as clear as it always should have been.

06/26/2026

Nobody tells you THAT part.

For years I thought I was building toward being a better advisor. Better at the technical work, better at relationship development and rapport-building. More knowledgeable in the ways I might serve the couple sitting across from me.

Then the concept of ownership, not just being 'independent' within a broker-dealer structure, but actually preparing to assume ownership of the firm, struck me with something that had been alluded to. Something I'd not put real thought into, though:

Running the business of financial advice and doing the work of a financial advisor are not the same job. They just happen in the same office space.

One is about the client. The other is about profit and loss, staffing decisions, hiring the right people, trying to build systems that don't depend on you personally, figuring out how to ensure sure the firm still works on the days you're not in it. One is helping to guide others, the other is, well, "decisions, decisions, decisions."

I'd like to think I didn't sign up to wear multiple hats on any given day. But, I did. Once I had a sense of how I wanted to serve clients, I immediately started envisioning what it would be like to run a firm my way. That's where growth puts you. You get good enough at the work (the technical part and the people part) that ownership is on the table...and then you find out ownership asks for a completely different set of muscles.

Already, this hiring piece alone has humbled me.

How do I find people who care about my clients the way I do? How can I know, really, that they care? How long is it going to take to build enough trust in that other person that I'd be willing to leave them in a room alone with my clients? Being intentionally thoughtful, it's slow work. So much slower than I want.

If you're in the stretch where you're building something and it feels harder than it should, you're probably not doing it wrong. You're likely deeply invested in two (or more) roles at once, refusing to let one slip just because you're feeling stretched.

I suppose it's not a problem that needs fixing. It's more than likely the cost of caring.