Andrew Gilliland, Financial Advisor, CFS, LLC

09/09/2025

August ended strongly for U.S. markets, with the S&P 500 closing above 6,500 for the first time. A mix of slowing job growth and cooling inflation put the Fed’s next move in the spotlight as investors look ahead to the September meeting. And with football season kicking off, fans and advertisers are spending big to be part of the action.

Monthly Market Insights | September 2025 U.S. Markets Stocks posted a solid gain in August as investors eyed the Federal Reserve’s next move with interest rates. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index advanced 1.91 percent, while the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.58 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ...

08/26/2025

Our financial planning reflects the kinds of people we're becoming (part 2)...

Like what our vision for our life is.

Want to know what that vision might look like for you? Give these questions a go and see what comes up:

-Are you letting yourself imagine having a financially impactful life?

-When you think of money, do you think of bank account values or retirement account values or debt/mortgage values, or do you think of vivid images of life goals?

-Does your plan help you imagine how you could pivot, expand, reorient, pause?

-Does your plan support your peace and acknowledge what feels like enough?

You deserve a financial plan that walks right alongside an aligned and vibrant vision for your life.

08/21/2025

Our financial planning reflects the kind of people we're becoming...

Like where we focus:

- On what we can control or what we cannot?

- Our net worth or our financial impact?

- What we're creating or where we experience lack?

In what other areas (financially or otherwise) can our focus give us an indicator of who we're becoming?

08/20/2025

The best financial planning impacts our lives so, so far beyond our net worth.

The impact, the ripples may show up slowly at first, then all at once.

It's the best shape of your life you're in because you're in a position and job more aligned with your actual long-term career and financial desires - leaving you with space for fitness.

It's the book you finish and publish because you're able to reduce your weekly hours working over time while maintaining and growing your income stream(s).

It's the presence and grounding you share with your kids, your community, your chosen family, because you know they're taken care of financially no matter what.

It's making more choices that feel like your own and facing tasks you once thought impossible - because your planning has shown you just how capable you are.

You don't have to drown in the numbers, the accounts, the money stories.

You can bring a new energy and efficiency to your planning and let it create space for everything that actually matters to you.

08/19/2025

If you’re feeling the pull to redefine your professional timeline, you’re not alone.

Start with a simple question: what would a more meaningful career look like if timelines or finances weren’t constraints? Then try these moves:

Map your current milestones and ask: who do these milestones serve?

Block time for sabbaticals or skill-sprints that align with your values.

Reframe success: what impact, learning, and well-being are you prioritizing?

Create a trial period for changing roles, teams, or even career paths.

The aim isn’t to abandon ambition but to ensure ambition serves a life you love living. When we plan with purpose, the arrival dates fade into the background and the kind of people we’re becoming takes center stage.

What’s one timeline you’d rewrite starting today?

08/18/2025

As q***r folks, we know what it's like to question timelines imposed on us.

We're going to take time we need to before we let the world in on our identity.
We're going to take the time we need to decide how we're going to build loving relationships in our life.
We're going to take the time to decide what family looks like to us.

In the same way, we get to make decisions on our professional and financial timelines.

We get to decide to decenter a 65-year-old retirement age from our financial planning, if we want to.
We get to plan for 6-month, 9-month, year-long sabbaticals, if we want to.
We get to set aside time for passion projects, if we want to.
We get to decide to hold off on building a family of our own until later in life, if we want to.

We get to keep questioning if timelines are really serving the vision we have for our lives.

When we plan, we get to go beyond fixed dates of arrival, and focus much more deeply on the kinds of people we're becoming.

08/15/2025

I ask my clients all the time where they experience the feeling of being wealthy and abundant outside of seeing their net worth. Some responses I've gotten:

`- Feeling the dopamine hit after a hard workout
- Long hugs with the people they care about most in the world
- An unhurried group dinner at a gorgeous restaurant
- Coming back to daily life after some intentional vacation time

For me? It's being in a beautiful room or outdoor space feeling safe to take my time to read a book I'm really enjoying.

Some books I'm loving right now?

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pristiq
"5 Types of Wealth" by Sahil Bloom
"The Bee Sting" by Paul Murray
"The Emperor of Gladness" by the exquisite Ocean Vuong

How do you experience wealth and abundance beyond your account values?

The truth is that your heart knows the way to the wealthiest life for you. Listen up.

08/14/2025

To my fellow q***r folks -

My hope is that you keep spending your money.

My hope is that you spend your money without shame or fear or guilt.

My hope is that you release the stories that say you're bad or just filling a void for spending money.

My hope is that you spend your money with intentionality.

Let your spends be reflective of what you really want, not just what you've used to get by or survive.

Let your spends be a part of a system where you are saving and investing efficiently and ideally, with as little unnecesary effort as possible (and know why you're saving what you are!).

Let your spends be a part of a life of creation, value adding, giving back.

And if you find that you want to spend more, let's talk about leveraging your skills and environment to create additional income opportunities.

And if you find that's not in your wheel house at the moment, where can you spend in a way that feels soul nourishing and satisfying, instead of a quick, sugar-coated fix?

What would it look like to create a world where you're not afraid to spend? I want that for you.

08/13/2025

One question I wrestle with often: Is the 4% rule limiting our financial impact?

To recap: the 4% rule is a retirement rule of thumb for a balanced 60/40 portfolio, suggesting you can safely
withdraw about 4% of your starting portfolio each year (adjusted for inflation) for roughly 30 years. So with $1M, that’s about $40k a year at baseline.

But I wonder if we’re maximizing impact by allowing this to be our dominant option without earlier scrutiny.

What if we built an asset environment that sustains higher cash flow—5% or more—from our retirement accounts and investments by clarifying where we’re building and addressing distribution strategies earlier on?

If cash flow can be increased in the future using our current savings rate, couldn't we potentially fund causes, businesses, and ventures we care more generously both today and in retirement?

Put another way, what does confidence in our future plan allow us to do with less hesitation today?

The net-worth vs. cash-flow question matters, and there are more tools than a single withdrawal rate— guaranteed payments, annuities, amortization, or flat withdrawals. The earlier we surface these questions, the more aligned and confident we can be.

If we map our story—roughly—the path forward becomes clearer, and we’re less a passenger and more the driver.

What would you shift today to maximize impact tomorrow?

(It's important to engage in these questions with a financial professional, and recognize that the 4% rule or any other distribution option should not be taken as advice specific to your situation.)

08/13/2025

One question I wrestle with often: Is the 4% rule limiting our financial impact?

To recap: the 4% rule is a retirement rule of thumb for a balanced 60/40 portfolio, suggesting you can safely
withdraw about 4% of your starting portfolio each year (adjusted for inflation) for roughly 30 years. So with $1M, that’s about $40k a year at baseline.

But I wonder if we’re maximizing impact by allowing this to be our dominant option without earlier scrutiny.

What if we built an asset environment that sustains higher cash flow—5% or more—from our retirement accounts and investments by clarifying where we’re building and addressing distribution strategies earlier on?

If cash flow can be increased in the future using our current savings rate, couldn't we potentially fund causes, businesses, and ventures we care more generously both today and in retirement?

Put another way, what does confidence in our future plan allow us to do with less hesitation today?

The net-worth vs. cash-flow question matters, and there are more tools than a single withdrawal
rate— guaranteed payments, annuities, amortization, or flat withdrawals. The earlier we surface these questions,
the more aligned and confident we can be.

If we map our story—roughly—the path forward becomes clearer, and we’re less a passenger and more the
driver.

What would you shift today to maximize impact tomorrow?

(It's important to engage in these questions with a financial professional, and recognize that the 4% rule or any other distribution option should not be taken as advice specific to your situation.)

08/13/2025

How can we experience more safety on our financial journey?

The truth is, when committing to a journey of financial wellbeing, there are always risks to be managed - and more than just market risks.

There are cash flow risks: What if the income stops? What if I'm laid off? What if I am no longer able to work after getting sick? What if a primary breadwinner in my household passes away?

There are economic risks: What if food, housing, transportation prices rise to impact my lifestyle significantly? What if inflation impacts the purchasing power of my dollars?

There are political risks: What if fundamental human rights are taken away from myself or others in my community that impact my ability to work, receive proper health care, or put me, my family or loved ones in precarious legal positions?

Traditionally, we as planners will go through all the ways we can externally offset as many of these risks as possible - and this step in planning is vitally important.

But something just as important is finding ways to create more financial safety from the inside out.

What might this look like?

1. Develop an attitude of resilience. Name and celebrate times in which you took losses and hit pitfalls that you thought you wouldn't make it through and did. Doing so affirms your confidence in your ability to bounce back after financial challenges.
2. Consider how you create and find safety in your close relationships, friendships and network/community. These are also the people who can be there for you when risks arise, and who you can be there for as well.
3. Consider developing practices like meditation, strength training, therapy, etc. that help you affirm your ability to navigate and face risks outside of your finances. You're training the same nervous system you'll bring to your financial planning calls.

The thing is, people who do the above often address financial risks through portfolio reviews, legal services, and insurances. They just know that safety and risk management is a multi-faceted reality:

Some of that management comes from the inside out and some develops externally to support us internally.