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Ryan Landmark - Financial Planner

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Sioux Falls, SD
Ryan Landmark - Financial Planner

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CFP®, RICP®, ChFC®

Protecting what's important. Investing into the future. Preserving what's been built.

10/30/2026

A man owes a debt he can never repay. A friend steps in and says, “Charge it to me.”

It’s tucked into a one-chapter letter in the Bible most people skip.

I studied that letter, Philemon, this week with two friends. At first, we didn’t see the point. It’s a short, personal note from Paul about a runaway servant named Onesimus. No big doctrine, no famous verses.

Eventually, it clicked. Paul is writing to Philemon, the offended party, on behalf of Onesimus, the offender. Paul stands in the gap between them. The whole letter is a picture of what Jesus does for us: he stands between a holy God and sinful people and settles what we owe.

“Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back forever—no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a fellow man and as a brother in the Lord. So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to me.” (Philemon 1:15-18, NIV)

“Charge it to me.” That’s grace. Paul takes on the debt so the relationship can be restored.

Now I’ll put on my cringy financial advisor hat. To be clear, no advisor is Christ, and nobody can do what he did. But there’s a small, limited parallel worth thinking about.

A lot of people avoid planning because they feel behind, or guilty about past money decisions. They feel like they owe their future something they can’t repay, so they avoid the conversation entirely.

A good advisor doesn’t shame you for the past. They stand in the gap between where you are and where you want to be, help you face it honestly, and walk with you toward making it right.

You can’t go back and fix every mistake. But you don’t have to face the future alone either.

Cheers!

-Ryan

10/29/2026

Picture this: you’re backing out of a parking lot and clip another car. Nobody’s seriously hurt, but the other driver ends up with a neck injury that leads to months of treatment and a lawsuit. Your auto policy covers liability up to $300,000. The judgment comes in at $650,000.

That gap, $350,000, comes out of your own assets. Your savings, your home equity, potentially future wages through a garnishment. Unless you had an umbrella policy sitting on top of your auto coverage, in which case that extra $350,000 gets picked up by the umbrella instead of you.

That’s the entire point of protection planning, and it’s the piece people skip because it doesn’t feel like it’s doing anything. Your savings and investments are built on an assumption: that life goes mostly as planned. Protection planning is what happens when it doesn’t.

A few pieces that actually hold that foundation together:
• Health insurance, so a hospital stay doesn’t wipe out a decade of savings.
• Life insurance, so the people who depend on your income aren’t suddenly without it.
• Disability insurance, heavily overlooked, when you’re statistically far more likely to become disabled during your working years than to die during them.
• Home and auto insurance, protecting the assets you’ve already built.
• Umbrella insurance, which sits on top of your home and auto, covers the gap when a claim exceeds your other policy limits, and often costs surprisingly little for the amount of protection it adds.

None of these are exciting to think about. That’s exactly why they get ignored until the year they’re the only thing standing between a bad day and a financial catastrophe.

A strong financial plan isn’t just about building wealth. It’s about making sure one bad afternoon can’t take it all back.

Cheers!

-Ryan

10/28/2026

So you bought a new house. Congratulations! But closing day isn’t the finish line, it’s the start of a few things worth actually doing.

• Update your beneficiaries and estate documents. A new mortgage often means a fresh look at your life and disability insurance plan, and your will or trust should reflect the new asset.

• Rebuild your emergency fund around homeowner costs. A water heater, a roof, a furnace, these weren’t your problem as a renter or they’re bigger with a bigger house.

• Review your insurance as a whole. Homeowners policy, and a real look at whether you need an umbrella policy now that you have more at stake. (One of the most common flaws people have is NOT having an umbrella policy).

• Re-assess your budget if you didn’t prior to the purchase. Property taxes, utilities, maintenance. The mortgage payment is not the whole number.

• Revisit your bigger plan. If you didn’t already do this prior to the purchase - check whether this shifted your timeline for retirement, education savings, paying off other debt, etc.

• Check your withholding. If you’re now itemizing deductions for mortgage interest and property taxes, your tax picture may have changed.

• Write it all down if you haven’t already. Where your homeowner’s insurance is, where you pay property taxes, who your utility providers are, and the usernames and passwords for each. Keep it somewhere your spouse or family could actually find it if they needed to.

Don’t sleep on this – it’s a weight on the shoulders that snowballs into a bigger weight by avoiding.

A new house changes more than your address. Treat it that way.

Cheers!

-Ryan

10/27/2026

Yesterday I wrote about asset allocation, the mix of stocks, bonds, and other investments in your portfolio. Today’s a related but different concept that gets confused with it constantly: asset location.

Asset allocation is what you own. Asset location is where you own it.

Here’s what that means. The same investment can sit in different types of accounts: a traditional IRA, a Roth IRA, or a regular taxable brokerage account. Each of those accounts is taxed differently, and that difference matters enormously depending on what you put where.

Investments that generate a lot of taxable income every year, like bonds or REITs, tend to make more sense in tax-deferred or tax-free accounts, since you’re not getting hit with a tax bill annually on income you weren’t planning to spend yet. Investments with higher long-term growth potential, like stocks, often make more sense in a Roth account, since all that future growth comes out tax-free. Investments that are already tax-efficient on their own can work fine in a regular taxable account.

Get this wrong, and you can end up with the exact right allocation, the exact right mix of stocks and bonds, while still losing meaningfully more to taxes than necessary, simply because everything is sitting in the wrong type of account.

That’s why allocation and location aren’t competing concepts. They work together. Allocation decides what you own. Location decides how efficiently you get to keep it.

Most people think about one and never the other. The ones who think about both tend to keep more of what they actually earn.

Cheers!

-Ryan

10/26/2026

What is asset allocation, and why does it matter more than most people think?

Asset allocation is simply how your money is divided across different types of investments, stocks, bonds, cash, and sometimes other assets like real estate or alternatives. It’s not about which specific stock or fund you pick. It’s about the mix.

Here’s why it matters so much: research going back decades has found that asset allocation, not individual stock picking or market timing, is the primary driver of a portfolio’s long-term returns and volatility. The mix you choose matters more than almost any individual decision inside it.

A portfolio that’s 90% stocks behaves quite different than one that’s 60% stocks and 40% bonds, regardless of which specific stocks or funds fill those buckets. The first will likely grow faster over decades. It will also swing harder in a downturn. The second will grow more slowly on average, but with a smoother ride.

Neither is right or wrong on its own. The right allocation depends on your timeline, your goals, and how much volatility you can actually stomach without making an emotional decision at the worst possible moment.

That last part matters as much as the math. The best allocation on paper is useless if it’s not one you can actually stick with when markets get rough. A slightly more conservative mix that you hold through a downturn beats an aggressive one you panic-sell out of.

This is also why allocation isn’t a one-time decision. It should shift as your timeline changes, as you get closer to needing the money, as your goals change, as life changes.

Most people spend far more time picking which stock or fund to buy than thinking about the mix those investments sit inside. That’s backwards. The mix is doing most of the work.

Cheers!

-Ryan

10/23/2026

It’s Faithful Friday!

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7, NIV)

There’s a real connection between financial clutter and mental clutter.

Scattered accounts, no real plan, no clarity on where you stand. All of that takes up headspace, whether you realize it or not. It sits in the back of your mind as a low-level weight, even on days you’re not actively thinking about money.

A real plan frees that up. Not because the money changes overnight, but because the uncertainty does. You stop carrying the mental tab of “did I handle that right” and “am I okay” everywhere you go.

That freed-up headspace is worth more than people give it credit for. It’s capacity you get back for your family, your work, your faith, the things that actually matter day to day.

Clarity isn’t just a financial outcome. It’s a mental one.

The goal of planning well isn’t only a bigger number. It’s getting your mind back.

Cheers!

-Ryan

10/22/2026

There’s real value in simplicity. Or at the very least, in understanding things at a high level.

I meet people who can’t tell me their account types, their allocation, or even roughly what they’re paying in fees, but they can explain complex options strategies they saw discussed online.

That’s backwards.

You don’t need to understand derivatives pricing models to build real wealth. You don’t need to know the Greeks, or follow intraday volatility, or have an opinion on every Fed meeting.

What you do need to understand, at least at a high level, is your own situation. What accounts you have and why. Roughly what you’re invested in and why. What you’re paying, and what you’re getting for it. What your plan actually is, in plain language, not jargon.

Complexity can feel like sophistication. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t.

Simplicity isn’t the same as being uninformed. It’s being informed about the things that actually move the needle, and not getting lost in the things that don’t.

You don’t need to be the smartest person in the room about every financial topic that exists.

You need to understand your own plan well enough to know if it’s actually working.

Cheers!

-Ryan

10/21/2026

I keep seeing “finance guys” online making the case that a “safe” 12% in the stock market is pointless when you could get 30%+ in crypto instead.

A few things wrong with that framing, starting with the word “safe.”

Nothing about a 12% long-term stock market return is actually guaranteed. The long-run historical average for the S&P 500 is closer to 10%, and that number is an average across decades of good years and brutal ones, not a promised annual outcome. Calling it “safe” already misrepresents what it is.

But the bigger issue is comparing a long-term historical average to a short-term, cherry-picked crypto return.

Crypto absolutely can post 30%, 50%, or 100%+ returns in a given year. It can also lose 70-80% of its value in the next one, which has happened multiple times in the last decade. Pulling out a big number from a strong year and holding it up next to a decades-long market average isn’t a real comparison. It’s comparing a single good roll of the dice to a long-run statistical baseline.

Volatility isn’t the same as opportunity. Higher potential returns almost always come with higher risk of permanent loss, not just bigger swings. That’s not a controversial idea in finance, it’s close to the most basic principle there is.

But “don’t bother with the market, just go all-in on the thing that had one great year” is not an investment strategy. It’s a highlight reel mistaken for a track record.

The goal isn’t to find the asset with the highest number attached to it on social media. It’s to build a plan you can actually stick with long enough for compounding to do its job.

Cheers!

-Ryan

10/20/2026

South Dakota just announced a new program called “Give Me Five.” Eligible first-time buyers get a 5% down payment boost, structured as a second mortgage with no monthly payments, forgiven after five years if you stay in the home.

For a lot of buyers, that sounds like free money. In some sense, it is. But let’s look at what’s ACTUALLY happening economically, because this part rarely gets talked about.

A down payment is a hurdle. When you have to save real money before you can buy, it naturally limits how much home buyers can afford, which keeps prices tethered to what people can actually save for.

Programs like this lower that barrier. That’s the intended goal, and for an individual buyer trying to get into a home, it’s a real benefit.

But when a large group of buyers all get access to more purchasing power at the same time, in a market where housing supply hasn’t meaningfully increased, prices often adjust upward to absorb it. Sellers and builders can price homes a little higher, because buyers can now technically afford more.

This isn’t unique to South Dakota. It’s a pattern that’s shown up with down payment assistance programs in other states too, and it’s one of the core critiques economists raise about demand-side housing assistance in general: it can help the individual while quietly contributing to the exact affordability problem it’s trying to solve, especially in markets where new home construction isn’t keeping pace.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it if you qualify. If you’re a first-time buyer in South Dakota, this is a real, legitimate benefit, and ignoring it to make a point about market dynamics would be foolish.

It is worth everyone understanding what’s happening on both sides of the transaction. You’re not only getting help. You’re also participating in a shift in demand that affects everyone else shopping in the same price range, including the next first-time buyer trying to save for a down payment the traditional way.

Good policy and good personal strategy can both be true at once, and still come with tradeoffs and deadweight loss worth understanding.

Cheers!

-Ryan

10/19/2026

Last week, a financial advisor friend of mine said something on his way to the office that stuck with me: “Off to help people not do stupid stuff with their money!”

It made me laugh, because it’s blunt. But it’s also more accurate than most of what gets said about this job.

A lot of people picture financial advice as picking stocks, chasing returns, finding some secret strategy nobody else knows about. In reality, a huge part of the job is preventing bad decisions.

Pulling everything out of the market during a scary headline. Buying a timeshare that sounded like a deal at the time (some can be). Co-signing a loan without thinking through what happens if it goes sideways. Putting too much into one hot stock because a coworker made money on it. Raiding retirement savings for something that feels urgent but isn’t actually an emergency.

None of that requires sophisticated investment knowledge to avoid. It requires someone in your corner who isn’t caught up in the moment with you, asking the question you’re not in a position to ask yourself.

A lot of real financial progress isn’t made by doing something brilliant. It’s made by not doing something dumb, at the exact moment you were about to.

Cheers!

-Ryan

Address

7505 S. Louise Avenue
Sioux Falls, SD
57108

Opening Hours

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Tuesday	8am - 5pm
Wednesday	8am - 5pm
Thursday	8am - 5pm
Friday	8am - 4pm

Website

https://www.meadowlandfinancialgroup.com/team/ryan-landmark

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