Momentum Wealth Management

Momentum Wealth Management Fee-based. Fiduciaries. You'll make thousands of financial decisions in your life - we want to be there for all of them.

You'll make thousands of financial decisions over your lifetime; we want to be there for all of them.

05/28/2026

Most people treat Social Security like a finish line. Hit 62, start collecting, done.

Here's what that decision actually costs.

The full retirement age for most people right now is 67. Claim at 62 and your monthly benefit gets permanently reduced — roughly 30% less than if you'd waited. That reduction doesn't go away. It compounds across every year of retirement.

Wait until 70 and your benefit grows by about 8% for every year past full retirement age. That's a guaranteed return on patience that's hard to find anywhere else.

The break-even math usually works out somewhere in the mid-70s — meaning if you live past that point, waiting wins financially. And with life expectancy where it is, a lot of people live well past it.

None of this means waiting is always right. Health matters. Whether you need the income matters. Whether your spouse's benefit is tied to yours matters. But walking into that decision without running the numbers first is one of the more expensive things a pre-retiree can do.

One conversation about timing can be worth tens of thousands of dollars over a retirement. That's not an exaggeration.

05/27/2026

We're almost halfway through the year. A good time to ask a few questions you probably haven't asked yet.

Are you on track with what you said you wanted to do financially this year? Not in a vague way — actually on track. Contributions where you planned them. Debt moving the direction you wanted. Savings rate where it needs to be.

Has anything changed that your financial plan doesn't know about yet? A new job. A raise. A big expense that's coming. A goal that shifted. Plans don't update themselves.

If you have kids heading to college in the next few years, summer is one of the better windows to look at what you've saved versus what you'll need. The gap between those two numbers is easier to close with time than without it.

None of this requires a full financial overhaul. It's more like checking in with the version of yourself from January and seeing if that person's priorities still match today's reality.

For most people, a mid-year check takes an hour. The cost of skipping it tends to show up later, in decisions made with outdated information.

05/26/2026

You've probably heard the 4% rule. Retire with a million dollars, pull out $40,000 a year, and you'll be fine.

Here's what that advice leaves out.

The original research behind it was done in 1994, using historical market data from a specific 30-year window. It assumed a mix of stocks and bonds, a 30-year retirement, and no major changes to your spending over time. Change any of those variables and the math shifts.

Retire at 55 instead of 65 and you might need the money to last 40 years, not 30. Retire into a down market and the sequence of early withdrawals can do real damage that later recoveries don't fully fix. Add in healthcare costs that tend to climb faster than general inflation and $40,000 a year starts looking different by year 15 than it did on day one.

None of this means the 4% rule is useless. It's a reasonable rough estimate for a starting conversation. The problem is when people treat it as a finished plan.

A real withdrawal strategy looks at your specific accounts, your specific tax situation, your Social Security timing, your actual expenses, and builds from there. The rule gives you a number. The plan gives you a reason to trust it.

To those who gave everything. We remember.
05/25/2026

To those who gave everything. We remember.

Eight consecutive weeks of gains — even as Treasury yields hit levels not seen in nearly nineteen years and the Fed put ...
05/22/2026

Eight consecutive weeks of gains — even as Treasury yields hit levels not seen in nearly nineteen years and the Fed put rate hikes back on the table. The equity story is holding up. The bond side of a balanced portfolio is a different conversation.

This week's Planning Room draws a direct line from what happened in 2022 to what's happening now — on the bond side specifically. If you haven't looked at your bond allocation lately, this episode is a good reason to start.

New episode of Good Returns is live. Link in comments. 👇

05/22/2026

If you're somewhere in the five to fifteen years before retirement, this one's for you. ⏳

Not because anything is wrong. Most people in this window are doing fine by the numbers. It's because the margin for error gets smaller here — and most plans don't fully account for that.

Earlier in your career, a misstep has thirty years to recover. At this stage, it has ten. The questions are different. The tools are different. And the stakes are a lot more concrete.

This is when figuring out how to actually pull money out becomes just as important as figuring out how to grow it. When Social Security timing stops being a future problem and becomes a real decision with real dollars attached. When the sequence of your early retirement returns can make a meaningful difference in how long the money lasts.

We work with a lot of people in this window. These tend to be the most valuable conversations we have — not because there's a crisis to fix, but because the plan gets a lot better when it's dialed in before the stakes are at their highest.

If this is where you are, it might be worth a conversation. No pitch — just a real look at where things stand. 💬

05/21/2026

Most people are tracking the wrong number. 📊

You see 7% on your investment statement and feel good about it. That's the headline number — what your balance did. But what actually matters is what that 7% can buy you.

If inflation is running at 3%, your real gain — in actual purchasing power — is closer to 4%. Still good. But over 30 years, that gap between what your money earns and what the world costs to live in is the difference between a retirement plan that holds and one that quietly runs thin.

And not every dollar takes the same hit. Cash sitting in a savings account gets punched the hardest — it earns almost nothing while groceries, healthcare, and housing keep climbing. A well-built portfolio has historically kept pace with inflation far better over the long run.

This isn't an argument for taking on more risk than makes sense for you. It's an argument for knowing which number you're actually trying to beat — and making sure your plan is built around that one. 💡

05/20/2026

We're going to say something you might not hear from every financial firm: we don't control your returns. 🤷

The market does what it does. Nobody predicted every major move of the last twenty years, and anyone claiming they did is telling you a story after the fact.

What we do control is more valuable than that.

We control whether your plan is built around your actual life — not a generic template. We control whether there's a real process running when the headlines are loud and everything feels urgent. We control whether you make expensive decisions at the worst possible times, which is harder to avoid than it sounds.

Here's the truth: research consistently shows that the biggest drag on most people's long-term returns isn't bad investments. It's behavior. The person who panics and moves to cash when the market drops, then waits too long to get back in, doesn't need better stock picks. They need a calmer, more disciplined process.

That's what we build. Not promises about performance. A process that holds up when things feel hardest. 💪

05/19/2026

We're asking a real question this week and we genuinely want to hear your answers. 👇

What's the one money lesson you wish someone had told you earlier?

Not the generic stuff — we all know "start saving young" and "pay off your credit cards." We're talking about the thing that actually shifted how you think about money. The insight from a real conversation, a hard lesson, or something you finally read that made it click.

Maybe it was figuring out the difference between what something costs and what it's actually worth. Maybe it was realizing that income doesn't matter as much as what you do with the gap between what you make and what you spend. Maybe it was a tax thing nobody explained until it almost cost you.

Whatever it is — drop it in the comments. The best financial lessons travel person to person, not from a textbook. 💬

05/18/2026

There's a version of investing that sounds really smart — and ends up costing a lot of money. 💸

It goes like this: watch the market closely, get out when things look scary, get back in when things calm down. Stay on top of the news. Protect yourself.

The problem isn't the instinct. It's that emotional exits are almost always mistimed. The people who bailed when headlines were at their worst? They were still sitting on the sidelines when the recovery started. Research shows that missing just a handful of the market's best days in a decade can cut your long-term returns dramatically.

But here's the thing nobody says out loud: not reacting emotionally is not the same as ignoring what's happening.

There's a real difference between making moves out of fear and making moves based on what the data actually shows. One is panic. The other is a process. When the evidence points to serious, sustained headwinds — not a bad week, not a scary headline, but real indicators — adjusting your position isn't panic selling. It's being smart about it.

The goal is never to be out of the market. The goal is to be positioned for what the evidence supports — and to stay just as disciplined when things improve.

That's a harder thing to explain than "just stay the course." It's also the honest version. 🎯

Inflation just came in at its highest level in nearly three years. Wholesale prices surged 6% year-over-year. Gas is nea...
05/15/2026

Inflation just came in at its highest level in nearly three years. Wholesale prices surged 6% year-over-year. Gas is near $4.50 a gallon. And today is Jerome Powell's last day as Fed Chair.

This week Matt and Garrett break down what the inflation data is actually telling us — including the number that doesn't get enough attention — and what rising prices mean for the retirement income plan you built in a lower-inflation world.

We're remote this week so it's a tighter episode than usual. But the Planning Room conversation is one worth having before your next advisor meeting.

New episode of Good Returns is live. Link in comments. 👇

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