Priority Financial Planning - Evan Knight, CRPC

Priority Financial Planning - Evan Knight, CRPC Evan Knight
Financial Planner
Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor conferred by the College for Financial Planning I'm not a stock picker.

Retirement isn't about the size of your nest egg. It's about replacing your paycheck and knowing exactly why you're making each decision along the way. I work with two kinds of clients: people within 10 years of retirement who are still building their savings but need to start reducing risk and positioning their assets for the income plan ahead, and people already retired who are living off what t

hey've built and need that plan managed and refined over time. My focus is asset allocation and tax planning that goes beyond the surface, since taxes are often the biggest expense retirees face. You'll understand the plan you're building, not just approve it. Before this career, I spent 11 years coaching college football, and that's where the teaching comes from. Based in Hutchinson, Kansas, active in the community through Rotary, AMBUCS, and the Hutchinson Community Foundation. I work with clients in person and virtually. Retirement Income Planning | Investment Planning | Tax Strategy | Inherited IRA Planning

They'd saved for twenty years. Did everything right, at least on paper.Here's the problem nobody had flagged for them: a...
08/28/2026

They'd saved for twenty years.

Did everything right, at least on paper.

Here's the problem nobody had flagged for them: almost all of it sat in one place.

Pre-tax retirement accounts.

Which meant every dollar they ever pulled out in retirement would be taxable, full stop, no matter what bracket they landed in that particular year. One bucket. One outcome, over and over.

We built two more.

A Roth, so some income comes out with no tax owed on it at all. And a non-retirement account, plain taxable brokerage money that isn't tied to retirement account rules.

No early withdrawal penalty if they need it before 59 and a half.

No required distributions forcing their hand later.

Capital gains treatment instead of ordinary income tax on withdrawals.

Three buckets means three levers instead of one.

Need cash before retirement age technically allows it? The non-retirement account doesn't care what age you are.

Need to manage your tax bracket once you're retired? Roth and pre-tax split the difference between them.

Saving enough gets you to retirement.

Having more than one kind of account is what gives you choices once you're actually there.

08/28/2026

One out of every four dollars the federal government spends this year is borrowed.

Net interest on that debt is now projected to cost more than the entire defense budget.

That has real implications for how we should think about locking in tax rates before they're decided for us.

Here's the breakdown.

My oldest daughter had to fill out a sheet at preschool about me.Hilarious exercise.One question asked what her dad does...
08/25/2026

My oldest daughter had to fill out a sheet at preschool about me.

Hilarious exercise.

One question asked what her dad does for a living.

She wrote: "My dad helps old people."

I prefer "mature" myself. But if that's the entire summary of my job she walks away with, I'll take it.

So fortunate to be able to help people by doing a job that I love.

08/21/2026

The top federal tax rate once hit 94%.

Right now it's 37%.

That gap changes how we should think about retirement income.

Here's how!

"Is Social Security going away in 2032?"I get some version of this question almost every week, usually with real worry b...
08/19/2026

"Is Social Security going away in 2032?"

I get some version of this question almost every week, usually with real worry behind it.

Here's the actual math, straight from the 2026 Trustees Report.

The trust fund can pay full scheduled benefits through the fourth quarter of 2032. After that point, the payroll taxes still coming in would cover about 78% of scheduled benefits. This is the most recent projection.

Not zero. Not close to zero. A cut, not a cliff.

That doesn't mean it's nothing to plan around.

A 22% reduction to income you were counting on is a real number with real consequences. But there's a difference between building a plan around a shortfall and building one around a program disappearing entirely.

Plan for the gap.

Leave the ghost story out of it.

A client called with a good problem. They'd found a second home, the kind of place they'd talked about for years, and th...
08/17/2026

A client called with a good problem.

They'd found a second home, the kind of place they'd talked about for years, and they needed a lump sum fast. Six figures, all at once.

We looked at where that money could come from. If it had all come out of a pre-tax account, close to half of it would have gone straight to taxes before the closing ever happened.

The rest of their plan would've taken the hit too, pushed into a higher bracket for the year, Medicare premiums along for the ride.

Instead, we were able to pull it from Roth.

No new tax bill. No bracket jump. The plan we'd built stayed exactly as it was.

That's what people miss about Roth accounts. It's not just about tax-free growth decades from now.

It's a lever you can pull the moment life hands you a number you weren't expecting.

Two spouses. One retirement.He'd stopped drawing a paycheck. She hadn't started Social Security yet. For two years, thei...
08/13/2026

Two spouses. One retirement.

He'd stopped drawing a paycheck. She hadn't started Social Security yet. For two years, their household income sat lower than it had been in over a decade.

Most people would call that a quiet stretch. Something to get through before the "real" retirement income kicked in.

We called it a window, and we used it, converting a slice of their traditional IRA to Roth while their bracket had room in it that wouldn't be there again.

Everyone plans around the high-income years. Push harder, save more, catch up while you can.

Way fewer plan around the low-income years the same way. A gap between jobs. A slow year in a business. A stretch like this couple had, one spouse retired and the other not yet drawing benefits.

Those years are often the ones couples would like to forget. I see crucial planning years instead. Don't let a low-income year go by without asking what it's good for.

I look at a lot of portfolios that were built by someone else before a person ever sits down with me. Almost every time,...
08/11/2026

I look at a lot of portfolios that were built by someone else before a person ever sits down with me.

Almost every time, I hear the same sentence: "I'm in a 50/50," or "we're roughly 60/40."

Then we open it up together. There are alternatives in there doing real work, playing a real role in how that portfolio behaves as retirement gets closer.

And the client has never once heard the term. Nobody sat them down and explained it. They were handed a pie chart and told to trust it.

I understand the instinct to simplify. Most of the time, it's the right call. Nobody wants a lecture instead of a plan.

But there's a line where simplifying stops being helpful and starts being inaccurate. Where the story someone's been told about their own money isn't actually true.

I'd rather spend an extra twenty minutes explaining what's actually in the portfolio than have you find out five years from now that you never really knew.

The myth I hear most is “just contribute to Roth.”For someone early in their career, that's often solid advice. For a hi...
08/06/2026

The myth I hear most is “just contribute to Roth.”

For someone early in their career, that's often solid advice. For a high earner closer to retirement, it's not automatic.

If your income drops once the paycheck stops, and your bracket drops with it, pre-tax contributions now followed by conversions later can beat Roth contributions today.

You're deferring the tax to a year when you'll likely owe less on it, not more.

Here's the piece people miss if they're still ten or more years out: tax law doesn't hold still.

Rates move.
Brackets get redrawn.

Deductions phase in and out depending on what Congress needs that decade.

Assuming the rules in place today will still be the rules the year you retire isn't a plan. It's a guess wearing a plan's clothing.

That’s why you need a plan that can handle more than one set of circumstances.

What if paying more taxes today is the smart move?In 1944, the top tax bracket in America was 94%. Ninety-four cents of ...
08/04/2026

What if paying more taxes today is the smart move?

In 1944, the top tax bracket in America was 94%. Ninety-four cents of every extra dollar, gone before it ever reached your pocket.

It didn't stop there either. The top rate stayed above 90% into the early 1960s. It sat at 70% through most of the 1970s. Today it's 37%.

There's an old line in this business: permanent tax law is written in pencil.

Every dollar you save pre-tax today comes with a bill attached. The bank doesn't know the amount. The IRS doesn't even know it yet. Nobody does, because it depends on a rate that hasn't been set.

That's the real decision behind a Roth conversion or contribution. Pay a known rate now, on your terms. Or hand that decision to whoever's in Congress when you retire.

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