John W. Crane, Financial Advisor

10/13/2026

One of the greatest gifts we can give our children is to NOT end up as a line item on their household budget.

Think about that for a minute.

The time in your life when you might need financial help from your adult children could be right around the time your grandchildren are getting ready for college themselves.

That's why I believe college funding should always be considered in the context of your own retirement plan.

Assuming you're on track to fund your own retirement, let's talk about paying for college.

*College Funding: The Stair Step Approach*

I've worked with a number of families who spent their early child-rearing years working their way up to saving 20% of their gross income towards retirement.

The kids are now in middle school and Mom and Dad realize they haven't saved much for college.

The good news?

Their careers have progressed. Their incomes have grown. But they've been smart about keeping their lifestyle from growing at the same pace.

They've got some extra cash flow to work with.

Here's an approach I like.

Think about one of those pedestrian bridges that crosses over a busy highway. You climb the stairs on one side, cross the bridge, and then walk down the stairs on the other side.

College funding can work much the same way.

Let's use an example:

Your child is entering 8th grade. You've got five years before college.

You can comfortably set aside $750 per month.

You begin funding a 529 college savings plan. Depending on your state's rules, you may even qualify for a state income tax deduction.

Assuming a 6% annual return, five years of $750 monthly contributions could grow to approximately $52,000.

Now your child graduates from high school.

You've reached the top of the bridge.

Here's where it gets interesting.

That $750 per month is already built into your household budget. You're accustomed to living without it.

So why stop?

Instead of putting $750 per month towards future college expenses, you redirect it towards current college expenses.

At the same time, you begin drawing down the money you've already accumulated in the 529 plan.

Assuming the same 6% return during college, the combination could provide approximately $23,750 per year for four years, exhausting the account around graduation.

That's roughly $95,000 towards a college education from a monthly commitment of $750, started when your child was in 8th grade.

Will it pay for every college? No.

Will markets deliver a steady 6% return?

Certainly not.

But it demonstrates how a family that got a late start on college savings can still make a meaningful dent in the cost of an education.

And here's what I particularly like about this approach.

**You don't have to choose between helping your children pay for college and protecting your own retirement.**

Because someday those children may have college tuition bills of their own.

And the last thing I want for them is to have Mom and Dad's retirement bills showing up at the same time.

10/07/2026

Gratitude.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to spend some time with the AWESOME students of the George Mason University American Marketing Association.

My goal was simple:

Take marketing out of the textbook and show them what it looks like in the real world.

I shared how I’ve used marketing to build my financial advisory business over the past 20+ years.

We talked about:

• The difference between marketing and sales.

• How to get started, meet those first clients and earn the opportunity to serve them.

• Marketing to existing clients through education and service.

• Marketing through existing clients. The average person has roughly 250 relationships. Their 250 x your 250 = 62,500 potential relationships.

• Going “one to many” through seminars and technology like LinkedIn.

But the most important thing I shared had nothing to do with marketing.

There Are No Special Workouts.

Everyone wants the finish line.

Very few people get excited about the middle.

The middle is the workout.

It’s the long days. The uncomfortable conversations. The mistakes. The things that don’t work. Getting up the next morning and doing it again.

Human nature makes us want to find a shortcut around the middle.

But when you study people who have actually “won” at something, most of them didn’t find a way around it.

They went THROUGH it.

They did the work the middle required.

There Are No Special Workouts.

Thanks to the students of GMU AMA for letting me share a few things I’ve learned along the way. I walked out of the room grateful for the opportunity to pay forward what so many parents, teachers, colleagues and mentors have given to me.

09/28/2026

A single question from a financial advisor changed everything: what happens to all your future paychecks if you can't work? Here's the math behind protecting what you haven't earned yet.

A financial advisor's question about a car accident led to a simple calculation: what's the value of all the income you haven't earned yet?

09/22/2026

Checking habits on my way to Momentum.

Four times a year I fly to Chicago, IL to invest a day with the great people at The Strategic Coach.

I am grateful to be in that room. I am grateful for the ability to dedicate time to designing a bigger future.

This quarter we worked on Momentum.

- How to activate Momentum.
- How to create flywheels to make it easier to maintain Momentum.
- Conduct a habits audit. Some habits help you increase Momentum while others rob you of Momentum.

Our facilitator, Chad Johnson, shared this quote from Dan Sullivan,

“We are 100% disciplined and committed to our current set of habits.”

This quarter I’m going to work on Momentum Habits, to replace at least one energy depleting habit with a habit that supports momentum and energy.

I will do this not just to finish the year strong, but to enter 2027 with a full head of steam.

09/18/2026

Gambling versus Investing.

The media and the market prognosticators tell us investing is:

- Stock picking.
- Market timing
- Track record investing (chasing hot managers based on past performance).

That isn’t investing. That is gambling. It has never been easier for people to gamble under the pretense of investing.

My current read:

Stay Calm
Learn to Embrace Uncertainty in Investing and Life

By David Booth, Founder of Dimensional Fund Advisors

He writes in the opening to his book:

Investing is fundamentally about managing uncertainty.

As an alternative to gambling, Booth recommends:

Instead of trying to outguess the market by picking winners and attempting to correctly time markets, own the whole market for a long time and let it work for you.

Markets reward patience, diversification and cost consciousness.

Sexy? Exciting? Something you’ll brag about at parties? Maybe not.

The boring path may not make for a great cocktail-party story, but it has a pretty good track record of getting investors where they actually want to go.

09/10/2026

What is the value of ALL your future paychecks?

When I was 32 years old, I decided to make a career shift to the financial services industry.

Our firm requires that a candidate experience our financial planning process as a client before being hired.

The advisor helping me reviewed our car insurance. He asked me to imagine I was a victim of a car accident that resulted in my permanent disability.

“Besides the car, what have you lost?” he asked.

“My ability to work. My ability to earn money, gone forever,” I responded.

A permanent disability (or death) means that you forgo ALL your future paychecks. I earned $150,000 in the previous year.

Here is the math the advisor used to estimate the loss of all my future paychecks:

30 years until retirement x $150,000/year without raises or promotions = $4,500,000.

At that moment, everything changed for me.

The $4,500,000 got my attention. If I became permanently unable to work due to sickness or injury and/or if I died, then all future money that I would ever earn disappeared.

Even more meaningful was considering everything I hoped and dreamed I was going to use that money FOR also disappearing.

Here are a few of the aspirations that I’ve had for my family:

• Family vacations.
• Educational opportunities for my daughter.
• Improvements to our home. Maybe a second home one day.
• Ability for my wife and me to choose where and how we live.
• Ability for my wife and me to choose where and how long we work.

All those things are important to me. All those things are negatively impacted (or potentially gone forever) without the presence of the $4,500,000.

This is why life insurance and long-term disability insurance are important. Depending on your age and your health, for a mere 3% to 5% of your gross income, you can protect the vast majority of that $4,500,000.

Proper implementation of those two protection items can help make sure that your aspirations for the future will happen. NO MATTER WHAT.

What is the value of ALL your future paychecks?

How well is it protected?

September is Life Insurance Awareness Month. Please take a moment to consider your life insurance and your long-term disability insurance in the context of all your future paychecks.

08/19/2026

Buying a Home: Best to Start with Cash Flow

When planning a real estate purchase, I’ve found that the best place to start is by defining your maximum monthly payment, NOT the maximum amount that the bank is willing to lend you. Borrowing the maximum translates into the maximum payment the bank thinks you can make consistently without defaulting on the loan.

The rule of thumb that I use is 15% of your gross income. This can be difficult in markets like DC where housing is expensive. Ultimately, your family needs cash flow to live AND to save enough to one day retire and stay retired.

In that way, the 15% of gross income as a maximum monthly payment towards housing is a vitally important component of enabling your retirement savings plan.

Here is the math. Let’s say your household income is $500,000. 15% of the $500,000 is $75,000 per year, which represents the maximum you intend to put towards principal and interest on your mortgage. Divide the $75,000 by 12 and that translates to a monthly payment of $6,250. This is your maximum monthly payment.

Using Google, ask what the loan size is for a 30-year fixed loan with a $6,250/month payment and a 7% interest rate. I’m going to round up here, so the answer is $950,000 that you can borrow. The bank will likely want 20% down, so $950,000 divided by 80% will give you the target purchase price of the home, which using these assumptions is roughly $1,200,000. To arrive at the required down payment, subtract $950,000 from the $1,200,000 and you get a down payment of $250,000.

Note: the only time that I will say to go beyond the 15% is that you can see a clear path to a promotion and salary increase within a year or two that will get you to that 15% (ex. maybe you start off with 20% of gross income, but you know that your incomes will increase such that the 20% will soon become 15%)

Choosing the right mortgage size will not only put you in a position to save towards a funded retirement, but will also help keep your money stress in-check.

08/14/2026

Choose the Wrench.

This is one of my most favorite shirts. Only two exist.

In 2019, my friend Penn and I decided to run the inaugural Marine Corp Marathon 50k (31 miles) together. The training for that race went beyond anything I ever experienced. Throughout the training cycle, Penn and I would touch base and encourage each other.

On one of these phone calls, we were discussing a particularly hard training week and we were reminded of a scene from the movie 'Good Will Hunting'. Will (Matt Damon) was speaking with his friend and therapist Dr. Magurie (Robin Williams). Will was describing an awful moment from his life where he was forced to make a choice. In that moment, he chose the hard thing. He chose the wrench.

During those training cycles leading up to the 50k race, we continued to choose the hard workouts over the easy ones. We chose the wrench. Good thing too, it wound up being the most difficult race day that I've ever experienced. Absolute downpour rain for 2/3 of the race and then blazing hot sun for the other 1/3 of the race.

Our training carried us through. In spite of the difficult day, it was a great day as we made a string of amazing memories.

Choosing easy doesn't typically create good stories. When I look back on my life, the stories that start with struggle make for the best memories.

Whatever the wrench is for you, choose the wrench and see what you can create for yourself as we work towards the end of 2026.

08/06/2026

Attending Physicians, 10 years in — do one thing today.

Find the Resident or Fellow that finished training this year. Send them this post.

Because in a few months their pay jumps from $75,000 to $400,000. And almost nobody sits them down to talk about what to do with it.

Residents and Fellows in your final year — this one's for you. Give it 90 seconds.

I haven't lived through your training years. I don't know what it's like to work that many hours for that little pay while you spend a decade perfecting a craft.

But I've spoken to hundreds of physicians in the year they made the jump, so I know what happens next.

Here's the moment: you sign your first Attending contract. Income goes from $75,000 to $400,000.

Most people just start spending it.

Here's the move instead: before you get used to that number, direct 20% of it — $80,000 — straight into long-term retirement accounts. That leaves $320,000 to live on. You won't miss the $80,000. You never had it to spend in the first place.

After saving 20%, you are still looking at enjoying a 400% raise!

Do this in month one, and you never have to "find" the money again. Your lifestyle builds around the 20%, not the other way around. Every raise from here forward, you just hold the percentage steady.

This single move puts most of your lifetime money worry behind you before you turn 35.

One more thing worth saying quietly, without the sales pitch: the paycheck you just started earning is now your biggest financial asset. Bigger than your house. Bigger than your portfolio will be for another decade.

Protecting your ability to keep earning it belongs in this same conversation — not as something you circle back to in year five.

Get the 20% right. Start the protection conversation early. Do both before you get comfortable with your new gross income.

If you're finishing training, or you're a brand-new Attending — follow along here.

This is the exact transition I spend my time on, and I'd rather you get it right in month one than fix it in year five.

08/05/2026

You look successful. You don't feel organized.

From the outside, it looks like you've made it.

-Combined income north of $500K
-A strong marriage — you're each other's biggest fans
-Weekends spent cheering your children from the sidelines at every game and recital
-A life that, on paper, is going exactly right

From the inside, it can feel different.

-A 401(k) here. An old employer plan there.
-A financial plan you built once, years ago, in a hurry.
-A number in your head you're not fully sure is right.
-A "we'll deal with it later" pile that keeps getting bigger.

Success and organization are not the same thing.

You can be excellent at your career and still not know if you're actually on track.

That gap — between how your life looks and how your finances feel — is more common than almost anyone admits.

Here's what I've noticed. The families who close that gap aren't the ones chasing a better return. They don't speculate. They don't swing for the fences.

They're the ones who stop managing money alone in their head, and start running it through an actual plan — with someone in the loop who knows the whole picture.

Not a better return. A better system.

That's the real unlock.