Phillip Smith, TPCP CRPC AIF

Phillip Smith, TPCP CRPC AIF Retirement is one of life’s biggest transitions, and it’s about more than money. Securities offered through Cetera Wealth Services, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC.

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09/02/2026

So many fee-only advisors lead with a similar line, "no commissions means conflict-free advice. Just our fee."

It sounds clean. Plausible. Favorable to the client, even. It's also not entirely true, no matter which version of fee-only you're talking about.

Take the AUM model first. An advisor charging a percentage of your assets has an obvious conflict: their income rises when your balance rises, and it rises when more of your money sits under their management. That's an incentive to keep assets invested with them, even when paying off a mortgage, buying an annuity, or pulling cash for something else entirely might be the better move for you. None of that grows their fee.

I say "they" and I mean me, too. When your account balance grows, then my income grows. I tell clients, "this ties my financial wellbeing to your financial wellbeing."

Now take the flat fee model, the one that gets marketed as "the truly conflict-free option." The conflict there is just...less visible. If you're charging the same flat fee whether a client's situation takes two hours a year or twenty, the incentive runs toward keeping things simple and moving fast. Take on more clients, since revenue per client doesn't grow with complexity. Spend less time on the client whose situation is actually complicated, since digging deeper doesn't pay any more than staying surface level did. That's not malicious. It's just what a flat fee, uncoupled from the actual work required, tends to reward.

Neither of those is evil. They're conflicts. They exist whether or not anyone acknowledges them.

Here's why I do it differently. I'm fee-based. So, yeah, the primary income is an asset-based fee. And, when the specific situation calls for it, we can connect the right life, disability, long-term care, or annuity product. I get compensated for that. I don't pretend I don't, and I don't hand you off to a "trusted partner" so I can call my hands clean while someone else earns the commission.

I'd rather have a visible conflict I disclose and discuss openly than an invisible one, or worse yet, one I don't acknowledge.

You deserve to know how your advisor gets paid, in every direction the money moves. Not just the part that makes a good tagline.

08/31/2026

I signed up for the Marine Corps the final weeks of my junior year of high school. Sixteen years old and I joined the Delayed entry program. I didn't leave for boot camp until thirteen months later, three weeks after I turned eighteen.

Before that, I'd gone to the Air Force recruiter. My grandparents were Air Force reservists at the time. My dad had done a short stint as an airman.

I had green, spiked hair. The recruiters scoffed at the site of me. Asked if I'd be able to run a mile and a half on a treadmill. Arrogant, the whole interaction.

I walked out, and there was a Marine standing outside. He was built, not like the pudgy Air Force guy. He had a key ring with different words stamped on little metal plates. Told me to pick three. I picked Challenge, Discipline, and Experience. He didn't promise me anything beyond that. Just told me I'd get all three, in spades.

I joined for practical reasons. I didn't know much about college, didn't know there was funding out there I could have accessed, didn't have anyone walking me through those options. The Marine Corps was the clearest path I could see. I'd get life experience, work experience, and a GI Bill I could eventually use for college.

My senior year I ran cross country, wrestled, and ran track. I thought it would better prepare me for what boot camp was going to demand physically. By the time I graduated, I already knew exactly what was next (well, THOUGHT I knew). It took the pressure off my senior year, when a lot of my classmates were feeling it.

Thirteen months between signing the paperwork and shipping out. I often think about that key ring more than almost anything else from that year.

08/30/2026

We took a summer trip to Hawaii back in June. A few days in, Candice's dad had a stroke, and we came home early. No hesitation, no debate. When a family emergency happens, you drop everything, you book the red eye flight and you go.

A couple months later, we're trying again. Roadtrip to Disneyland this time, which mostly meant 14 hours of southbound I-5. Mind-numbingly riveting. But it's a blessing to spend all that time with the ones I love most in this world.

Today's our first day at the park, and it happens to land right on our anniversary. Twelve years and I'm living the Happiest Place on Earth. But it's not happiness, it's joy.

Proverbs 18:22 says, "He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the LORD."

Twelve years in, and I'm actually seeing this verse, not just reading through it. It's a prophecy that's already come true.

I didn't just find a good wife. I found the favor that verse is talking about, and it didn't stop at the wedding. It's constantly surfacing in ways I couldn't have predicted, for twelve years straight, and I know it isn't coincidence. I think that's what happens when you marry the right person and God's favor starts stacking on top of itself.

So today, somewhere in line for a rollercoaster, I'm grateful. Not for the trip, but for twelve years of favor I didn't earn, don't deserve, and can't take credit for.

Happy anniversary, Smith!

08/28/2026

Ask a business owner what their is, and a lot of them point at their business. It usually wasn't an intentional, planned purpose when they started out. But after for twenty (or more) years, every spare dollar went back into the company.

Zoom out and here's what that adds up to. Their largest asset is a company that depends on them. It's illiquid and undiversified. No tested valuation, no buyer lined up, no plan for income the day they stop running the show.

That's not a retirement plan. There's value, but it's concentrated in the business, and the business is dependent on the owner.

Reinvesting in a business you believe in is usually the right call. But somebody needs to ask the hard questions: What happens if the business is worth half of what you think? What happens if you can't sell it at all? What if all the value is really locked up in the owner - not the business itself? What's actually diversified about financial life outside the four walls of the company?

Many owners have never run the valuation numbers.

You built the business to take care of your family. Have a plan to unlock the value that will ensure they continue to be taken care of when it's no longer yours.

08/26/2026

An aircraft doesn't usually tell you what's wrong. It gives you an indicator. A light comes on, or maybe you get a specific tone in your headset. A gauge reading is off. If you're not trained to troubleshoot, you guess. You swap out "the usual suspect" and hope.

What you're actually trained to do is diagnose. Read schematics, understand interconnectivity, rule things out one at a time until the viable explanation survives. Chase the fault tree, not the indicator. (admittedly, sometimes even that doesn't fix it, but...)

I worked on the AV8-B Harrier. Now a relic, but still the stuff of movie magi lore (True Lies). Sometimes I think about that experience when someone schedules time to discuss some things that are worrying them.

Many people treat their finances the same way an untrained crew treats an indicator light.

The market drops and they panic sell. A headline says Social Security's running out and they assume the worst, without knowing what it actually means for their claiming age. They hear annuities are bad, or great, and act on whichever they heard last.

Indicators, not diagnostics. Symptoms, not root causes.

A real diagnostic checks a system, helping to rule things out. Planning for sequence of returns risk. Projecting tax exposure in the first five years. Stress testing the plan for things like "what breaks if the market corrects -30% the year you ?"

You don't fix a jet by reacting to the light. You fix it by troubleshooting the system using your training and the schematics in hand.

08/25/2026

You know how the week before a big trip turns into anxiety week? You're not doing anything yet. You're just, well, carrying it.

Did I book the right dates?
Did I forget something?
Can we (this time) manage to stick to the itinerary?

You know, you plan months, or maybe just weeks in advance. And that final week, it kind of builds for days, and you've picked up morning prayer again because you just want God to step in and ensure nobody gets sick, nobody gets injured, the car doesn't break down...

And then the morning you actually leave, all the stress and pressure lands at once. Passports and bags, last minute confirmations, the dog(s), the mail, checking in with the neighbor...Everything that was "we'll figure that out before we leave" now has to get figured out in the next twenty minutes.

It's feels like a lot. Because you only do it once a year, or maybe once every couple/few years. It's not a daily rhythm. It's not a practice. It's this one, big thing.

Compare that to someone who's been taking smaller trips all year. There's no 'anxiety week.' There's no chaos morning launch. They've kind of practice in the the whole sequence, doing it frequently enough that none of it requires the feeling of crisis mode to execute.

I watch people the same way.

For some, the years leading up to their date get heavier, not lighter. The decisions pile up and stay, frankly, undecided: the Roth conversion that was recommended but they never get around to, the Social Security timing they haven't committed to, maybe the pension election, understanding the withdrawal order, finally getting around to rolling over those retirement accounts with previous employers, considering whether their estate documents are even current.

None of it's urgent until suddenly all of it is.

And then the final stretch before the last paycheck becomes its own kind of morning of chaos, except the stakes are a lot higher than a missed flight.

The people who retire calm didn't avoid the work. They just didn't save it all for the departure gate. A decision made three years early is less of a decision under pressure. Feels a little more like something that's already handled, like packing the suitcase a couple days in advance.

The year you're ready to retire isn't the moment you start preparing TO retire (or, at least, it shouldn't be). It is (should be) the period of time where you see whether the things you've done up until now have been the right kind of preparation. The "packing the bags" and "confirming the flights and hotels" kind of preparation.

08/23/2026

When I read Proverbs, I start with Proverbs 1 on the 1st of a month. So, here we are on the 23rd...and I'm just sharing what I wrestle with myself.

There's a version of ambition that looks like faithfulness, but isn't. It's actually more like control with the facade of trust.

Proverbs 23:4-5 (NLT) is blunt about it. "Don't wear yourself out trying to get rich. Be wise enough to know when to quit. In the blink of an eye wealth disappears, for it will sprout wings and fly away like an eagle."

Notice what it doesn't say:

It doesn't say "stop working."
It doesn't say "ambition is wrong"
It doesn't say "live in poverty to prove your faith."

It says stop wearing yourself out. There's a line between diligent and desperate, between faithful effort and white-knuckled striving. Most of us cross it without noticing.

The eagle image...man, oh man. The thing we grip so tightly that it's reshaping our hands. And it's was never fully ours to hold. It has wings. It's going to go where it's going to go.

Verse 23 is the redirect. "Get the truth and never sell it; also get wisdom, discipline, and good judgment." These things don't sprout wings. These are the pursuits that stay with you, they don't disappear the moment you stop watching them.

Know when to quit pushing and know what's worth holding. Two different, valuable disciplines.

I'm thankful for the mornings that remind me which one I've been neglecting.

08/16/2026

Sunday morning feels different when the week behind you had some weight to it.

The past few weeks definitely have felt heavy.

Ownership transition and hiring decisions that wake me up a little earlier than I'd like to admit and kids with more freedom this summer (which sounds like a gift until you realize it means less structure and less certainty) and trying to balance work/life/community/church/personal spaces as they all sort of bump and jostle against each other.

I come back to two verses.

Matthew 11:28. "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."

Proverbs 3:5-6. "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight."

I sit with these in a way that, just a few years ago, was not part of my life. Prayer. Biblical contemplation. Looking to Him for answers.

The invitation isn't to come and figure it out. It isn't to come and strategize. Or to put your trust in yourself and what you know.

We are invited to come and put it all down. Let go of it. Stop white knuckling it. Put our trust in the creator of the universe and know that He's got it.

I'm still working on all of this. Trusting isn't just believing things will be okay. It's actually releasing the grip on the things I've convinced myself I have to hold. Because, really, it's all in His hands.

Still a work in progress. Grateful for a Sunday to reset.

AI chatbots are giving retirees inconsistent, outdated Social Security advice. Here are 5 things AI keeps getting wrong,...
08/14/2026

AI chatbots are giving retirees inconsistent, outdated Social Security advice. Here are 5 things AI keeps getting wrong, and what to check before you trust it.

08/10/2026

The 401(k) may be one of the best wealth building tools ever created for the accumulation phase of life.

And, it's a significantly more complicated thing to live with once you're in your 70s.

Some people overlook this:

Required minimum distributions start at 73 whether you need the money or not (75 if you were born 1960+). The IRS has a schedule, a schedule that says, "you didn't pay taxes before, but we want you to start paying now." That schedule does not care that your other income is already covering your expenses, that you'd rather let the account keep growing, or that pulling the money out pushes you into a higher tax bracket than you'd planned for.

You don't get to opt out. You take the distribution, you pay the tax.

It compounds from there. Once RMDs kick in, the window for something like a strategic Roth conversion gets significantly tighter. Every dollar you're forced to take out as an RMD is a dollar you can't convert on your own terms. And when the money's still in the 401(k), you can't move it without taking the RMD first.

The sum of all those good financial decisions can become a concentration problem later, a large pool of money that will be fully taxable when it comes out, on a schedule you don't control, in an amount that grows whether you want it to or not.

The time to think about this isn't at 73. It's in the years before that, when you still have options. The accounts you draw from, and the order, and whether you convert some of it before the RMDs begin...those decisions made early are worth significantly more than the same decisions made under pressure.

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