Jake Murphy, FSCP - Financial Planner

Jake Murphy, FSCP - Financial Planner Jake Murphy is a registered representative of and offers securities and investment advisory services through MML Investors Services, LLC. Member SIPC.

Helping healthcare professionals, business owners, and families make smarter decisions around cash flow, taxes, retirement, protection, and building more flexibility for the future. Supervisory Office: 201 King of Prussia Rd, Suite 501, Radnor, PA 19087. Tel:610-766-3000.

09/03/2026

A nurse practitioner earned an extra $1,400 nearly every weekend.

She hadn’t made a single quarterly tax payment on it all year.

Since February, she had been working 16 weekend hours at an inpatient rehabilitation facility on top of her full-time job.

Most of the additional 1099 income went toward eliminating her student loans.

She had also saved 30% for taxes.

Whether that was enough depended on numbers she had never calculated.

Her W-2 withholding.

How much of her Social Security wage base had already been filled.

Her eligible business deductions.

And where the additional income placed the household within its tax bracket.

Her accountant hadn’t followed up, and she was already preparing to redirect the money from her student loans into retirement accounts.

Before investing it, we needed to determine how much of that money was actually available and whether future taxes should be covered through quarterly payments or additional W-2 withholding.

She paid off the student loans.

The next $1,400 weekend finally had a plan.

09/02/2026

A locum PA was receiving roughly $3,800 per month in tax-free housing stipends.

Her tax-home arrangement barely existed on paper.

She paid her mother $400 each month to maintain a room at the family home while working contracts in other states.

But there was no written lease, there was no clean record showing who received the money and she wasn’t tracking her assignments or trips home consistently

If the arrangement were ever questioned, explaining it would be easy.

Proving it would be much harder.

So before directing more money toward her student loans or investments, we focused on the documentation:

A written lease.

Electronic payments into an account owned by her mother.

Records of her contract dates and temporary assignments.

Receipts showing she was maintaining expenses in two places.

And a CPA reviewing whether the full arrangement supported the tax treatment.

Paying $400 a month toward a permanent home doesn’t automatically establish a tax home. The full facts still matter, including where you regularly work, whether the assignment is temporary and whether you are duplicating living expenses.

For this PA, more than $45,000 of annual stipends depended on getting those details right.

A valuable tax strategy becomes a lot less valuable when you can’t document why you qualified for it.

A $12,000 bonus can disappear in 30 days while the 401(k) keeps growing.That's the problem an investment statement will ...
09/01/2026

A $12,000 bonus can disappear in 30 days while the 401(k) keeps growing.

That's the problem an investment statement will never show you.

Investment management is usually the simplest part of financial planning.

Most portfolios I review have some version of the same building blocks:

- S&P 500 fund
- International fund
- Bond fund
- Maybe a target-date fund or model portfolio

The harder work is coordinating everything happening around those accounts.

A $12,000 bonus lands with no plan and gets absorbed by the last few months of spending.

Someone contributes heavily to a 401(k), but no one is looking at how it fits with their IRA, brokerage account, mortgage, college savings or future tax picture.

Extra income comes in, but every dollar is forced to make a decision after it hits the checking account.

Insurance was put in place years ago, yet the income, kids, mortgage and long-term goals have all changed.

The accounts may be growing.

But the questions keeping people up at night are much bigger:

Can we afford the bigger house without feeling stretched?

Are we saving enough for retirement while still enjoying life now?

Can I retire in my late 50s or early 60s?

Can we spend more today without putting our future at risk?

That’s where planning earns its keep.

08/27/2026

“I feel like I have more money in my checking account than I know what to do with.”

A nurse making about $125K told me that three months after we changed how her paycheck flowed.

The weird part is that less money was actually hitting her checking account than before.

When we first met, she was contributing 10% to retirement but had less than $1,000 in savings. Every month felt the same where good income came in, bills got paid and somehow there was barely anything left.

So instead of sending her entire paycheck straight to checking, we put a reservoir in between.

Her paycheck hits that account first.

We calculated what she actually needs each month for fixed bills, variable expenses, and discretionary spending.

$4900 goes to checking each month.

Everything above that stays behind automatically.

Instead of trying to save whatever happens to be left at the end of the month, she pays herself first without having to make the decision every paycheck.

Three months later, she didn't get a raise.

She just finally had control over where the money was going.

This is the kind of cash flow structure I build with clients who earn good money but still feel like every month starts over at zero.

A couple in their early 60s can have $1.5 million saved for retirement and still spend their time playing telephone betw...
08/26/2026

A couple in their early 60s can have $1.5 million saved for retirement and still spend their time playing telephone between their CPA, advisor and attorney.

One office knows one piece.

You’re still the one carrying information to the next.

Picture a couple in their early 60s, retirement a few years away, with most of their savings sitting in pre-tax retirement accounts.

Their investment professional suggests a $100,000 Roth conversion.

Their CPA can tell them what tax that creates this year.

But who is looking at what that extra income could do to future Medicare premiums?

Or whether the conversion still makes sense alongside Social Security, pension income and future withdrawals?

Then the estate attorney updates the trust.

Who checks whether the IRA beneficiaries and life insurance still line up with the new plan?

That’s where people accidentally become the project manager of their own financial life.

Retirement already comes with enough decisions.

It shouldn’t become a new part-time job coordinating the people you hired to help.

I won New Advisor of the Year and hit Executive Council three years in a row.But the moment that changed how I wanted to...
08/25/2026

I won New Advisor of the Year and hit Executive Council three years in a row.

But the moment that changed how I wanted to work happened at a nurse and mechanic’s kitchen table.

They didn’t have a big portfolio for me to manage or need a product from me. They needed help getting control of cash flow, saving more for retirement and seeing whether an earlier one was actually possible.

As I walked them through the plan, the husband looked at his wife and said he could literally see the stress leaving her face.

I remember thinking:
This is what I want to do.

This month marks 5 years in the industry, and I just took headshot #3.

Headshot #1: summer 2021. No clue what I was getting into.

By #2, I’d won the awards, doubled my income and gotten pretty good at selling — but I was still saying yes to almost anyone and needed a product or assets to make most relationships work.

Headshot #3 looks different.

Today I can work with a clinician or practice owner who needs planning around cash flow, taxes, retirement or major life decisions even if there isn’t a product to sell or a portfolio to manage.

I get paid for the advice itself.

That kitchen table meeting showed me the kind of advisor I wanted to become.

The guy in headshot #1 would probably be shocked I’m still here.

Even more shocked by what the career ended up becoming.

A 3% mortgage is a terrible debt to pay off early.Until being debt-free is what lets you sleep at night.Picture someone ...
08/20/2026

A 3% mortgage is a terrible debt to pay off early.

Until being debt-free is what lets you sleep at night.

Picture someone at 60 with:

$1.3M invested
A ~$2,100 monthly mortgage
A 3% rate
Retirement a couple years away

On paper, I can make a strong case for keeping the mortgage and leaving the extra money invested.

Then they tell me:

“I just really want the house paid off before I retire.”

Now we’re talking about roughly $25,000 a year of mortgage payments they no longer need to account for once it’s gone.

Maybe the portfolio ends up a little smaller than the spreadsheet says is optimal. But they enter retirement knowing one of their biggest monthly obligations is gone.

The spreadsheet may prefer the mortgage.

They may prefer the freedom.

You can make $240,000 a year and still feel guilty spending $6,000 on a vacation you’ve wanted for three years.The incom...
08/19/2026

You can make $240,000 a year and still feel guilty spending $6,000 on a vacation you’ve wanted for three years.

The income changed.

Your relationship with money might not have.

For years, every dollar had a job:

Tuition.
Mortgage.
Student loans.
Bills.

Then the money finally gets better.

You’ve got the emergency fund.
You’re contributing to retirement.
The trip is affordable.

And somehow clicking “book” still feels irresponsible.

You can do everything right with your money and still make yourself miserable with it.

At some point, the trip is part of the plan too.

This rental turnover could have cost us a few thousand dollars in labor.Instead, we're paying with our weekend.We ripped...
08/18/2026

This rental turnover could have cost us a few thousand dollars in labor.

Instead, we're paying with our weekend.

We ripped up carpet, tore out drywall. Val helped clean, and my buddy and his dad saved me on the plumbing repair and floor installation this weekend.

Right now, that trade makes sense.

It’s our first property, we're young, no kids, and every dollar of margin matters.

The same math applies to your finances.

Doing it yourself can mean spending Saturday morning comparing Social Security strategies, figuring out Medicare, researching how to invest for retirement and deciding which accounts you should actually pull income from.

That worked when your financial life was simpler.

As retirement gets closer, the decisions become more connected and the cost of getting one wrong gets bigger.

And the time has a cost too.

That Saturday morning could have been breakfast with your family.

A round of golf.

Or just sitting on the couch with your spouse without another retirement decision hanging over your head.

At some point, getting that time back is worth more than keeping the fee.

Address

30 S 17th Street, Suite 204
Philadelphia, PA
19103

Telephone

+14846634112

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